The Cold War: a history of brainwashing and the psychological professions
Professor Pick awarded £900,000 for study into role of the clinical professions
Professor Daniel Pick of Birkbeck’s Department of History, Classics and Archaeology has been awarded £900, 000 by the Wellcome Trust for a new study into the role of the clinical professions in “brainwashing” during the Cold War.
The project will fund three PhD studentships, two three-year postdoctoral research posts, two visiting scholars, two major conferences, a series of roundtables, a short film and website, and various publications.
Professor Pick (pictured right) said: “The project is on the history of ideas about brainwashing and mind control, indoctrination and psychological warfare, particularly in Anglo-American thought during the Cold War. There will be an overarching question about the role of the psychological and clinical professions in this history.”
Brainwashing and the Cold War
From the 1950s until the fall of the Berlin Wall there were many popular images about the techniques used for mind control. These emerged in films, such as The Manchurian Candidate (1962), and in public debates. There was much discussion and concern about the techniques that might be used, particularly on American prisoners of war in Korea, during the early 1950s, which could break the will of an individual and persuade him to tell secrets or even to change sides.
Professor Pick explains: “The project will look at how various psychological techniques were developed, and used, by both sides in the Cold War, to try and achieve enthusiastic allegiance, or at least grudging consent, in populations and in the cases of captive individuals. It will also consider the ideas of psychological manipulation that were circulating in popular culture and human sciences at the time. Of course, some of the images of mind control were entirely fantastical; but it would be a mistake to imagine popular fears about techniques of ‘hidden persuasion’ were simply fanciful. We will explore both cultural anxieties, and actual practices of psychological and behavioural ‘modification’; in addition, we will collect and contextualise first-hand testimonials from psychiatrists, journalists and former prisoners of war to build up an archive of recollections, as well as formal reports on this subject.”
Winning hearts and minds
New ideas in psychology were employed during the Cold War period to try and influence the behaviour of large groups as well as individual prisoners. The project will look at the role that psychoanalysts and psychiatrists played in supporting western governments to influence public opinion, and retain the loyalty of populations in colonial contexts, for example attempts by British and French advisers to win ‘hearts and minds’ in Kenya and Algeria.
Popular culture and subliminal messaging
At the same time that the Cold War was developing, a new consumerist culture was thriving – fed by ever-more sophisticated advertising techniques. As well as anxiety about mind manipulation of American soldiers captured in Korea, questions began to be asked about the influence of psychiatry and the use of subliminal messaging and other techniques in advertising. Professor Pick says: “In 1957, Vance Packard published The Hidden Persuaders, which shone a spotlight on the role of psychology in advertising and kick-started a series of discussions about the morality of some of the psychological techniques employed. We’ll be exploring Vance Packard’s own archives as part of the project.”
Psychological professionals: agents of mind control?
Concerns about the use of psychology in individual and collective behaviour control led to the development of an “anti-psychiatry” movement in the 1960s. Professor Pick’s study will examine how much of the criticism of the ‘psy’ professions drew upon the language and fears associated with “brainwashing” and ‘totalistic’ forms of social control.
“The term ‘brainwashing’ was coined in 1950 by an American journalist,” explains Professor Pick, “But this idea of influencing someone to the point that they are almost zombie-like in their actions is clearly at the more extreme end of mind control. We will be looking not only at books but also at a variety of unpublished records, including important papers on brainwashing in the Wellcome Library archives. The aim here is to examine why and how the psychological professions were so centrally involved with these debates at that time, and how they were perceived.”
Psychological professions in today’s “War on Terror”
The final strand of this project will look at how techniques developed during the Cold War have impacted on current practices, particularly in the so-called “War on Terror”.
Professor Pick says: “The involvement of psychological science professionals in the work of the CIA during the Cold War has only recently been systematically explored. We will be looking at the implications of the experimental work that was carried out with ‘enhanced interrogation’ in the past, and its many legacies in today’s War on Terror.”