Brainwashed: A New History of Thought Control - Couverture souple

Pick, Daniel

 
9781781257906: Brainwashed: A New History of Thought Control

Synopsis

'A frankly brilliant book' - GUARDIAN

'An absorbing exploration ... Pick does not stumble' - TORTOISE

'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.

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À propos de l?auteur

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.

À propos de la quatrième de couverture

A brilliant and mind-bending exploration of brainwashing and thought control

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

Autres éditions populaires du même titre

9781781257890: Brainwashed: A New History of Thought Control

Edition présentée

ISBN 10 :  1781257892 ISBN 13 :  9781781257890
Editeur : Wellcome Collection, 2022
Couverture rigide