Podcasts on the historical and contemporary relationships between child psychoanalysis, observation and visual culture from the Hidden Persuaders Symposium, 6th April 2019, Freud Museum London.
Tag: Film and Hidden Persuasion
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.
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.
Beyond Brainwashing: Propaganda, Public Health, and Chinese Allegations of Germ Warfare in Manchuria
Mary Augusta Brazelton explains how one of the first scandals involving ‘Communist brainwashing’ also serves as an entry point for understanding how the Chinese Communist Party used biomedical expertise to consolidate its political power at home.
The Archaeology of Mind Design – Frederic Migayrou
Professor Frederic Migrayrou presents a history on the diverse techniques used by psychologists, artists and designers to subvert, excavate, reshape and reformat ‘the mind design.’ Using light, sound, drugs, hypnosis, architecture and psychotherapy, these practitioners concocted a plethora of far-out experiments aimed at altering consciousness. In this lecture Migayrou explores this colourful history and the many objects left behind in its wake.
Albert Mason on the medicine and magic of hypnotism
Dr. Albert Mason talks to Marcia Holmes about his career in medical hypnotism and psychoanalysis, and describes his experiences as scientific consultant for The Ipcress File film and testing for ESP with Arthur Koestler.
The Manchurian Automaton
Artificial Intelligence, Orientalism, totalitarianism, brainwashing, and the counter-culture: all these themes, and more, were deftly woven together by the historian of science, Simon Schaffer in a memorable lecture delivered at an engaging conference on cinema, Cold War and mind control which took place earlier this year. This event was organised by the Hidden Persuaders Project in partnership with the Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image, and held on 3-4 July 2015.
New video essays by Ian Magor
Image: Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (dir. Fritz Lang 1922) In July 2015, the Hidden Persuaders project and the Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image hosted a workshop, Brainwash: History, Cinema and the Psy Professions. Birkbeck graduate and video essayist Ian Magor presented several of his recent pieces at the event. These works comment on… Read more »
Hiding in plain sight
Cinema, psychoanalysis and the history of brainwashing Ian Christie, Anniversary Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck College, is a distinguished and influential cinema scholar. When Prof. Christie recently interviewed Daniel Pick about popular interest in brainwashing, their conversation quickly became a lively dialogue between two historians on mid-twentieth-century cinema’s fascination with psychoanalysis,… Read more »
Upcoming Workshop–Brainwash: History, Cinema and the Psy Professions
The Hidden Persuaders Project and the Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image cordially invite you to: Brainwash: History, Cinema and the Psy Professions 3rd and 4th of July 2015, 10:00am-6:00pm Birkbeck Cinema 43 Gordon Square WC1H 0PD London United Kingdom The history of cinema, like the history of psychoanalysis, psychiatry and psychotherapy, percolates with… Read more »
