Producer David Stenhouse on psychological profiling, as featured in BBC Radio 4’s Dictators on the Couch, presented by Hidden Persuaders’ Daniel Pick.
Dictators on the Couch
Blog
Edward Hunter and the origins of ‘brainwashing’
Marcia Holmes considers the oft-told story of how Edward Hunter, an American journalist, introduced the term ‘brainwashing’ into English. Was Hunter working for the CIA when he doggedly promoted the threat of ‘brainwashing’ to his Western readers?
Psychotherapy for Champions: Autosuggestion, ‘Self-Perfection’ and the Training of Soviet Athletes
Aleksandra Brokman on the USSR’s use of psychological techniques to improve athletes’ performance, when sport was a key arena of Cold War competition.
What We’re Reading Now: Across the Iron Curtain
Sarah Marks reflects on histories of the human sciences across East and West, and what we could still learn about the ‘psy’ professions in the Cold War.
Grey Walter in the Age of Brainwashing
Despite his influence on Cold War pop-cultural, and countercultural, discussions about the brain, Grey Walter was curiously reticent on the subject of ‘brainwashing’. Andreas Killen shows how, nevertheless, Walter’s work played a key role in debates about mind control.
Psychic Driving at the Museum of the Normal: ‘Stop Thinking about Death… and Stop Shouting at People’
‘Psychic driving’ is a Cold War-era technology for reprogramming the mind that has a sordid history. David Saunders reports on its continuing appeal.
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?
Collusion with torture – a case from Brazil
Aline Rubin reminds us that there have been harrowing points of intersection between psychoanalysis and political oppression, particularly in Brazil. Scholars of psychoanalysis have only begun to reckon with this challenging history.
A Psychedelic Renaissance – Will we avoid tripping this time?
Erika Dyck discusses the legacies of LSD’s Cold War reputation, and the implications for the recent renaissance in ‘psychedelic science’.
Reflections on ‘Interrogations: Psy Sciences, Coercion and Confession in a Time of Cold War’
To what extent did the events of the Cold War alter the methods, aims and spaces of interrogation? How might this history intersect with developments in the ‘psy’ sciences? In July 2016, the Hidden Persuaders project hosted a workshop on these questions.
