IN PERSON BOOKING | Daniel Pick | The Fear of Hidden Influence: Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Political Life

Discuannt: Eileen McGinley

Wednesday 12 June 2024

In Person at the Institute of Psychoanalysis and Online via Zoom

What is ‘brainwashing’? How far have the psychological professions been implicated in sinister practices of brainwashing and/or or in cultural mythologies about total mind control? To what extent has the term ‘brainwashing’, which first came to prominence in the early Cold War, resonated in psychoanalysis, culture, and political life? Daniel Pick will draw on material from his recent book, Brainwashed: A New History of Thought Control, set the idea in historical context, and introduce a cluster of ideas about freedom and coercion of the mind that gained a strong purchase in Western societies after 1945. Eileen McGinley will respond, and she and Daniel will then discuss the relevance of these themes in psychoanalytic thought, inviting wider reflections from the audience about how fears of covert influence, and indoctrination, might shadow our clinical practice today.

Daniel Pick is a Training and Supervising Analyst with the British Psychoanalytical Society and historian. He is Professor Emeritus, Birkbeck College, University of London. His books include Brainwashed: A New History of Thought Control (Profile/Wellcome Collection 2022).

Eileen McGinley is a Training and Supervising Analyst with the British Psychoanalytical Society. Formerly Consultant Psychiatrist in Psychotherapy in the NHS at the Maudsley Hospital, London.

Should you wish to join this meeting online, you can register here: Zoom registration only.

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