Brainwashed: A New History of Thought Control

(Paperback, Main)

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'A frankly brilliant book' The Guardian

'An extraordinarily engrossing and wide-ranging analysis of a word and a concept. I fell under its spell immediately' Simon Garfield

In 1953, a group of prisoners of war who had fought against the communist invasion of South Korea were released. They chose - apparently freely - to move to Mao's China. Among those refusing repatriation were twenty-one American GIs. Their decision sparked alarm in the West: why didn't they want to come home What was going on

Soon, people were saying that the POWs' had been 'brainwashed'. Was this something new or a phenomenon that has been around for centuries The belief that it is possible to marshal scientific knowledge to govern someone's mind gained enormous attention. In an era of Cold War paranoia and experimentation on 'altered states', the idea of brainwashing flourished, appearing in everything from critiques of CIA research on LSD to warnings of corporate groupthink, from visions of automaton assassins to conspiracy theories about 'global elites'. Today, brainwashing is almost taken for granted - built into our psychological and political language, rooted in the way we think about minds and societies. How did we get to this point - and why

Psychoanalyst and historian Daniel Pick delves into the mysterious world of brainwashing in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from The Manchurian Candidate to ISIS, TV advertising to online algorithms. Mixing fascinating case studies with historical and psychological insights, Brainwashed is a stimulating journey into the mysteries of thought control.

Reviews

'A frankly brilliant book' - Kathryn Hughes

'Daniel Pick has done the most wonderful, engaging and compelling job in tracing the roots of this particular strain of post-war anxiety in all it's forms, from totalitarian tyrannies and espionage, right up to today's fears of fake news and ubiquitous algorithms. And [he] has terrific range: whether discussing the delicacy of democracy or psychiatric hospitals, Pick's account is mesmerising and generous, [leaving] you continually wondering about your own power to resist.' - Sinclair McKay

'Dizzyingly fluent ... a reminder that, in the matter of thinking for ourselves, cages come in all sizes and shapes' - Anthony Cummins

'Daniel Pick has here taken a great step toward answering a great preoccupation of the twentieth century' - Professor Eli Zaretsky, The New School for Social Research and author of Secrets of The Soul: A Social and Cultural History of Psychoanalysis

'Mixing insights from his practice as a psychoanalyst, Daniel Pick takes us on a gripping ride through the history and makes us ponder how, in a digital economy that moves ever faster, we can ever think for ourselves. A thought-provoking must read.' - Professor Lyndall Roper, Oxford University

Author Bio

Daniel Pick is a psychoanalyst, historian, university teacher, writer and broadcaster. He is Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London, a fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and author of several books on modern cultural history, psychoanalysis, and the history of the human sciences.