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: Hidden Persuasion
A “Common Madness”: TV Psychics and Hypnosis in the Soviet Union
Did Soviet broadcasters use hypnosis to persuade their viewers to conform to communism? Simon Huxtable explores the story of TV ‘psychotherapist’ Anatoly Kashpirovsky, and the rise of parapsychology and suggestion in the last years of the Soviet Union.
Questions of Authority, Persuasion, and Belief: An Interview with Richard Sennett
Richard Sennett talks to Hidden Persuaders’ Daniel Pick about his ideas on ‘thought reform’, truth, narrative and belief.
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.
Persuasion in the Air: Background music and the authenticity of happiness
Alexandra Hui describes an early example of our cultural ambivalence about background music. In 1958 a journalist asked: does it make us happy, even when we would prefer not to be?
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.
Motivated or Manipulated? Ernest Dichter and David McClelland at Work
Kira Lussier, a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto, discusses a recent New York Times article on Amazon employees, placing its critique within the history of how motivational psychology has been used in the workplace.
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.
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 »
