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Prof Daniel Pick

Positions held:
  • Professor of History, Department of History, Classics & Archaeology
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  • Overview

    Overview

    Biography

    Professor Daniel Pick, psychoanalyst and historian, has worked in the history dept at Birkbeck since 2005. He contributes to various cross-disciplinary teaching programmes, including regularly, the 'Psychoanalytic  Studies' MA, administered by the Psychosocial Studies dept. He has supervised and examined numerous doctoral projects, and welcomes new applications in his areas of specialism. 

     

    Daniel is a fellow of both the British Psychoanalytical Society  and the Royal Historical Society. He has taught and lectured widely in the UK and abroad. His publications include Faces of Degeneration (CUP, 1989), War Machine (Yale University Press, 1994), Svengali’s Web (Yale University Press, 2000), The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind (OUP, 2012), and, as co-editor, Dreams and History (Routledge, 2004), and Psychoanalysis in the Age of Totalitarianism (Routledge, 2016). His new book, Brainwashed: A New History of Thought Control, will be published by Profile in 2022. He is a former editor and now  associate editor of History Workshop Journal, and has been the historical consultant to a number of  TV and radio programmes. Daniel  has presented over the last ten years a series of documentaries on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4.

     

    At Birkbeck, he has designed and taught courses on various aspects of  the history and theory of psychoanalysis, modern cultural and intellectual history, history of ideas, the human sciences, and political thought. 


    Between 2014 and 2021, he held a Senior Investigator large grant from the Wellcome Trust, for a team-based project, involving a network of researchers and film-makers,  entitled 'Hidden Persuaders': Brainwashing, Culture, Clinical Knowledge and the Cold War Human Sciences, c. 1950-1990'. 

    Administrative responsibilities

    • Departmental representative, Psychoanalytic Studies MA; member of HCA Research Committee, and of the Steering Group of the Birkbeck Institute of the Humanities

    ORCID

    0000-0002-4378-2001
  • Supervision and teaching

    Supervision and teaching

    Supervision

    Supervisions within Birkbeck:
    6

    In addition to the alumni listed, I also supervised Daniel Wilson (awarded 2010), and Lee Scrivner (awarded 2011) at Birkbeck.

    Current doctoral researchers

    • ZARA HAGHPANAH-SHIRWAN
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor, onwards

    Doctoral alumni since 2013-14

    • CHARLIE WILLIAMS
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor,
      Awarded:
      2018
    • CLARE ROCHE
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor,
      Awarded:
      2016
    • SHAUL BAR-HAIM
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor,
      Awarded:
      2015
    • KATIE JOICE
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor,
      Title of thesis:
      The Empty Frame: Infancy, Mental Illness and the Postwar Visual Imagination 1942-72
      Awarded:
      2023
    • IAN MAGOR
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor,
      Title of thesis:
      The Captured Mind: Race, Brainwashing, and American Film, c1941-53
      Awarded:
      2020
  • Publications

    Publications

    Article

    Book

    Book Section

    • ffytche, Matt and Pick, Daniel (2016) Introduction. In: ffytche, Matt and Pick, Daniel (eds.) Psychoanalysis in the Age of Totalitarianism. The New Library of Psychoanalysis 'Beyond the Couch' Series. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. pp. 3-19. ISBN 9781138793897.
    • Christie, Ian and Pick, Daniel (2015) Hidden in plain sight: uncovering the secret history of brainwashing - a dialogue. In: Arbeit, M. and Christie, Ian (eds.) Where is History Today? New Ways of Representing the Past. Olomouc, Czech Republic: Palacký University Press. pp. 55-70. ISBN 9788024447605.
    • Pick, Daniel (2011) The politics of nature: science and religion in the age of Darwin. In: Stedman Jones, G. and Claeys, G. (eds.) The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Political Thought. The Cambridge History of Political Thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 649-690. ISBN 9780521430562.
    • Pick, Daniel (2011) Psychoanalysis, history and national culture. In: Feldman, David and Lawrence, J. (eds.) Structures and Transformations in Modern British History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 210-236. ISBN 9780521518826.
    • Pick, Daniel (2011) Introduction. In: de Masi, F. (ed.) The Enigma of the Suicide Bomber. London, UK: Karnac Books. pp. 17-31. ISBN 9781855758223.
    • Pick, Daniel (2008) Il caso Rudolfo Hess. In: Fortunati, V. and Fortezza, D. and Ascari, M. (eds.) Conflitti: strategie di rappresentazione della guerra nella cultura contemporanea. Rome, Italy: Meltemi Editore. pp. 321-332. ISBN 9788883536540.
    • Pick, Daniel (2007) Dreams in contemporary psychoanalysis. In: Raulff, H. and Dorrmann, M. and Peto, J. and Arnold, K. (eds.) Sleeping and Dreaming. London, UK: Black Dog Publishing. pp. 101-109. ISBN 9781906155056.
    • Pick, Daniel (2007) Dreams in contemporary psychoanalysis. In: Schlaf und Traum. Böhlau Verlag Wien Köln Weimar. pp. 65-73. ISBN 9783412187064.
    • Pick, Daniel (2007) Maladies of the will: freedom, fetters and the fear of Freud. In: Bivins, R. and Pickstone, J. (eds.) Medicine, Madness, and Social History: Essays in Memory of Roy Porter. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 197-208. ISBN 9780230235359.
    • Pick, Daniel and Du Maurier, G. (2006) Introduction - Trilby. In: Trilby. Penguin. ISBN 9780141937694.
    • Pick, Daniel (2006) Degeneration. In: Merriman, J. and Winter, J. (eds.) Encyclopaedia of Europe, 1789-1914. New York, USA: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 183-187. ISBN 9780684313597.
    • Pick, Daniel (2006) Introduction. In: Pick, Daniel (ed.) Trilby. London, UK: Penguin. ISBN 9780140434038.
    • Pick, Daniel (2005) Body and will. In: Dassen, P. and Kemperink, M. (eds.) The many faces of evolution in Europe c. 1860-1914. Groningen Studies in Cultural Change. Leuven, Belgium: Peeters. pp. 17-39. ISBN 9789042916210.
    • Pick, Daniel (2002) Nevrosi di guerra. In: Bresciani Califano, Mimma (ed.) L'uomo e le macchine. Fondazione Carlo Marchi - Quaderni. Firenze, Italy: L. S. Olschki. pp. 195-215. ISBN 8822251059.
    • Pick, Daniel (2001) Degeneration. In: Lock, S. and Last, J.M. and Dunea, G. (eds.) Oxford Companion to Medicine. Oxford Reference. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 214-217. ISBN 9780192629500.
    • Pick, Daniel (1998) Powers of suggestion: Svengali and the Fin de Siècle. In: Cheyette, B. and Marcus, L. (eds.) Modernity, Culture and 'The Jew'. Cambridge, UK: Polity. pp. 105-125. ISBN 9780745620411.
    • Pick, Daniel (1996) Stories of the eye. In: Porter, R. (ed.) Rewriting the Self. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. pp. 186-202. ISBN 9780415142809.

    Conference Item

    Editorial

    • Pick, Daniel and Roper, L. (1999) Editorial. History Workshop Journal 48 (1-4), Oxford university Press. ISSN 1363-3554.