Hidden Persuaders’ Katie Joice interviews Camille Robcis on the French tradition of Institutional Psychotherapy and its experiments in therapeutic practice.
Institutional Psychotherapy in France: An Interview with Camille Robcis
Blog
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.
Agents of Pacification, Agents of Change: Radical Psychiatry in 1969
How did mental health professionals respond to the social and political upheavals of the 1960s? Lucas Richert explores the radical psychiatry movement.
Dictators on the Couch
Producer David Stenhouse on psychological profiling, as featured in BBC Radio 4’s Dictators on the Couch, presented by Hidden Persuaders’ Daniel Pick.
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?
