The Manchurian Automaton

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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.

Critical Incidents: Laura Stark on APA Ethics Policy

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A still from the film Obedience (1962), a production by the psychologist Stanley Milgram made in the course of his ‘Obedience to Authority’ experiments at Yale University. It is now widely believed that these experiments could not be recreated today due to ethical guidelines established by psychologists in 1973.   By Laura Stark   ‘I… Read more »

Watch this blog: New post-doc position

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In early 2016 the Hidden Persuaders project will advertise a post-doctoral research position to be based at Birkbeck College, University of London. The position will begin in September 2016 and continue for three years. Watch this blog for additional information about this opportunity, and to keep up to date with the work and development of… Read more »

What we’re reading now: The APA report

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The American Psychological Association’s Independent Review on ethics, national security and torture—in historical context By Marcie Holmes   The Hidden Persuaders project studies the history of ‘brainwashing’ and other forms of mind control as they relate to the expertise and status of the psy professions during the Cold War. Our inquiries here chart important chapters… Read more »

New video essays by Ian Magor

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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

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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 »