Hidden Persuaders? Brainwashing, Culture, Clinical Knowledge and the Cold War Human Sciences c. 1950-1990. (360G-Wellcome-103344_Z_13_Z)

This research offers original, wide-ranging analyses of practices and fears of brainwashing. Setting out from records of Korean War POWs, it investigates the storms of controversy and myth around clinical involvement in so-called mind control across and beyond the Cold War. This history deserves close scrutiny; it still resonates in contemporary culture, influencing public understanding of how captive human subjects may be pacified, re-educated and indoctrinated. I will assemble a team to ex plore the history, ethics and scope of brainwashing, and contextualise psychiatric reports, military archives, film and oral testimony. This is a panoramic, comparative investigation of theories and techniques of psychological warfare and behavioural experimentation, spanning political thought, human sciences, culture and counter-insurgency strategies. It asks how the reputation of the psychological professions was affected, long-term, by collusions (real and imagined) with military intellige nce and private corporations. Given the rich historiography of the post-war human sciences and recent declassification of key archives, this is the ideal time to study these phenomena, and a last opportunity to record surviving psychiatrists (such as Robert Jay Lifton) who shaped debates in this field. Through ambitious books, associated doctoral and post-doctoral projects, eye-catching events, film, exhibition and Internet, this path-breaking initiative brings this history (East and Wes t) into dialogue with policy questions regarding detainees' mental health, considering the safeguards required to protect POWs, prisoners of conscience and others from intrusive treatments, covert torture, and more subtle means of hidden persuasion today.