Tag: Battles of the Mind
On re-reading 1984
When James Brown returned to George Orwell’s dystopia in an age of pervasive social media intrusion and a global pandemic, it felt a very different novel to the one he had read as a teenager.
A Cultural History of the Brain in the 1950s
Historian Andreas Killen on the history of the brain at the start of the Cold War.
Narratives of Apocalypse
Naomi Richman explores the cultural history of apocalyptic thought and how it can guide us in imagining a better future.
A Faceless Crisis
Naomi Richman examines the language, metaphors and imagery that our minds attach to the ‘invisible enemy’ that is coronavirus.
Gifted Children as Hidden Persuaders in the Cold War
Jennifer Crane explores how gifted children were imagined as potential peacetime leaders, or as dangerous future citizens who might use their unique talents to subvert authority.
Psychological Warfare and Cold War Science
We interview Audra Wolf about her new book, Freedom’s Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science.
Manipulation Out of Control: J.A.M. Meerloo’s ‘Menticide’
Maarten Derksen uncovers the history of ‘menticide’, an alternative way to understand brainwashing made popular in Meerloo’s 1956 The Rape of the Mind.
A New Documentary Film: ‘David Hawkins: A Battle of the Mind’
Nasheed Qamar Faruqi writes on the making of her film about the youngest of the 21 American POWs who ‘chose’ Mao’s China at the end of the Korean War.
Brainwashing in Communist Czechoslovakia – And After
Sarah Marks on how ‘brainwashing’ was used as a Cold War code-word for Communist mass indoctrination; and to express anxieties about consumerism after ’89.
