Daniel Pick Interview Notes
Historian, Psychoanalyst, Author
YouTube: “Arash’s World Interview with 2023 Sigourney Award Recipient Daniel Pick on Thought Control and Brainwashing”
Podcast: “Be Different and Think for Yourself: On Psychoanalysis, the History of Brainwashing and Thought Control with Sigourney Award Winner Daniel Pick”
Book: “Brainwashed: A New History of Thought Control”
In this episode, I have the great pleasure of speaking with Sigourney Award recipient Daniel Pick who is a Historian, Psychoanalyst, and Author of the thought-provoking book “Brainwashed: A New History of Thought Control”! His historical perspective combined with a psychoanalytic approach adds wonderful insights and helps us see connections between various issues and matters that are of extreme relevance and importance for today’s world.
Brainwashing is an often charged and loaded word, but it was interesting to see that the term itself has evolved out of post-war tensions and during the Cold War, although it had been previously given other names and referred to as possession or mesmerism.
Nonetheless, the practices have changed since the 1950s and 60s by including and appropriating insights from psychoanalysis followed by a variety of projects and experiments aimed at creating resistance and resilience on one hand and influencing and manipulating others by changing thought patterns and belief systems. This was done on both sides of the political spectrum, and it is assumed that the term itself brainwashing may have come from a Chinese literal translation of “cleansing the mind”.
Moreover, we talk about Freud and his opposition during the heydays of psychoanalysis, his revolutionary insights combined with a new therapeutic approach that has been altered and modified throughout the years and has led to different and diverse methods, theories, and approaches in the rich and fertile psychoanalytic field.
Finally, we look at the drive towards rigid dogmatic thinking while following and embracing charismatic leaders alongside the dangers of groupthink, peer pressure, and totalitarianism. We also discuss the unique psychological and historical underpinnings and undercurrents of Nazi Germany but also what experiments and research in the “psy” disciplines have shown us regarding obedience and authority. We finish off with the example of road rage how previously sweet docile people can quickly and briefly turn into monsters of sorts.
00:36: Personal Intro:
Psychoanalyst from Britain. Background in literature and history. Interested in cultural history and the history of ideas. Exploring the history of psychoanalysis and how psychoanalysis can help us understand our historical past.
02:39:
Studying and researching the history of brainwashing and hidden persuasion. Talking about book “Brainwashed: A New History of Thought Control”. Involved in project of psychoanalysis, fascism, and Nazism. Cold War and the language of the mind. Questions on influence and persuasion. Freud’s follower, Victor Tausk on schizophrenic patients. Their perception and illusion to be controlled by the influencing machine. But also everyday anxiety. How much am I being myself, given freedom to think and to explore? And how much am I being nudged and persuaded? Freud shows “free association” over hypnotism to explore that free-flowing aspect. Attempt to free your mind.
06:07:
In politics and in culture, brainwashing more apparent after World War II. Previously, we had other ones to take over the mind and mind control, like possession, mesmerism, animal magnetism, suggestion, thought control. But different anxieties in a polarized Cold War world after communism in China. Brainwashing, a translation of the Chinese term of “cleansing the mind”. Communism and the battle for the mind. Propaganda and powerful new techniques. American POWs held by North Koreans and Chinese who chose to live in Mao’s China. How could American soldiers freely choose to live in Mao's China? They must have been “brainwashed”.
09:21:
The power and the dark side of psychoanalysis. It can lead to freedom, but also lead to influence, control, and manipulation. Part of all the “psy” professions. At times used other than for the welfare of the patients, which should be based and focused on enhancing freedom. But even well-meaning analysts, including Freud, may have strained into a kind of persuasion. Psychoanalysis arousing anxiety as a form of manipulation or a “dangerous science”. Idea that it was a Jewish science. Antisemitic discourse and paranoia on the power of the psychoanalyst. Freud tried to widen circle by including Jung.
12:50:
Early critics who claimed that psychoanalysis takes the free will of patients. Considered the moral and immoral back then in magazines and journals, intelligence organizations in the West like CIA during Cold War period developed projects countering what was being done on the other side. Humanist science and Communist ideology with new scientific techniques to devastate and break the mind. A sort of blitzkrieg on the mind. Western soldiers needed to have countermeasures of resistance and resilience. Other projects like MK-Ultra and the Cuba manual that are now publicly accessible. Sensory deprivation overload, use of LSD. Clinicians funded by CIA. Later with War on Terror to enhance interrogation, influenced by sets of experience in the 1950s and 60s.
17:32:
Zimbardo and Milgram studies and labs for studying group processes and propensity. Political parties and the question of crowds and power of the 19th century. From French Revolution onward, the idea of the crowd as an actor to determine the course of history that can overthrow the State. Also reflected in literature and works by Dickens and Zola. Development of field of “crowd psychology”. Freud looked at both individual and mass psychology. Hypnotic rapport between the leader and the led. Fantasies and delusions. As Fascism developing in Italy and Germany, Freud wrote paper about crowds, political parties, and power.
21:06:
Freud’s therapeutic approach as a “surgeon” and his drive to turn psychoanalysis into a biological science. Otto Rank’s criticism of that method as well as the difference between a psychology of likeness and one of difference. Similarities and differences between communism, fascism, Nazism, and the idea of totalitarianism. How unconscious fantasy at work in politics. Not just rational choices and reason. Otto Rank opening up and exploring more the irrational side of psychoanalysis. Tolerance and intolerance in Freud. Complicated double side to this story. Freud as intolerant and patriarch of the discipline, legislating and excommunicating members. The breaks and schisms. Also, Freud’s wish to have a vibrant movement.
27:43:
Freud’s longing and aspirations for turning psychoanalysis into a science. Freud’s dialogue with Einstein in the 1930s. Maybe every science comes down to a kind of mythology, both endorsing and undercutting some of his own claims.
29:16:
Talking about the book “The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind”. The peculiarity of German history, influence of the masses, and peer pressure. Many voting for the Nazis and death squads with ordinary men. Henry Murray did a profile on Hitler. Psychoanalysis and Study of Propaganda and de-nazification, which was a post-war project.
36:39:
Psychoanalytic work on early period of life of mothers and babies, fathers, and toddlers. Work of Anna Freud and Melanie Klein becomes relevant as fascists and liberal democrats are “made in the cradle” or in early life. Infancy and child-rearing becoming the central political question and the importance of mental health in the post-war world.
38:00:
Finding the balance between individual freedom and following authority. Respect, discipline, and freedom. Policy and schooling. Experiments in alternative forms of teaching. Critiques of the traditional school model, the de-schooling movement. Questions on authority and freedom, also in the clinical setting. Inequalities in medical and therapeutic protocols. Inviting the person to think about idolization and slavish devotion. Debates about the openness of analysts who talk about their own feelings. Authority and authoritarianism. What is it that draws people toward dogmatic, fascistic, disciplinarian, intolerant states of mind. Adorno and the Frankfurt School. Using psychoanalysis, social theory, and history to understand these different forces. What is the right kind of education that would enable people to think and to critically reflect on their own situations. Psychoanalysis has to be part of that story.
44:33:
The case of road rage. Gaining freedom from the dark forces within. Under pressure, we can revert to monstrous states of mind. Hopefully we recover some sense of sanity, something to hold us in check. We feel a blind rage. In popular culture, the states of mind between reason and passion, between thinking and the collapse of thinking, brainwashing, and the movie “The Manchurian Candidate”. Groupthink and studies of cults.
48:01:
Paranoid styles in politics like conspiracy theories and infantile feelings being mobilized. Melanie Klein and these infantile states in all of us. Paranoid-schizoid versus depressive position, movement and not being stuck in one position of either good or bad.
49:15:
Hannah Arendt's writing about politics. When it works, people are encouraged to come together and think. Information and debate. There is time, not a quick fix or closed down. We are political animals. Aristotelian idea. How politics is essential. A space of real possibility of investigating and debating and arguing without polarized division.
50:33:
The power of the individual and Malick’s “A Hidden Life”. Marx and doubt everything. Any ideology or system of thought can become a dogma or an ideology. The basic idea of liberal democracy. The power to question, doubt, and be different. A project with local schools, inviting teenagers to make films about hidden persuasion. Young people growing up in the Internet age. Peer pressure to use social media. Pathologizing a young student for not following the trend and for not following the norm. She was immediately shamed. Pressure of being different. Technology liberating and enhancing but also addictive and coercive.
Historian, Psychoanalyst, Author
YouTube: “Arash’s World Interview with 2023 Sigourney Award Recipient Daniel Pick on Thought Control and Brainwashing”
Podcast: “Be Different and Think for Yourself: On Psychoanalysis, the History of Brainwashing and Thought Control with Sigourney Award Winner Daniel Pick”
Book: “Brainwashed: A New History of Thought Control”
In this episode, I have the great pleasure of speaking with Sigourney Award recipient Daniel Pick who is a Historian, Psychoanalyst, and Author of the thought-provoking book “Brainwashed: A New History of Thought Control”! His historical perspective combined with a psychoanalytic approach adds wonderful insights and helps us see connections between various issues and matters that are of extreme relevance and importance for today’s world.
Brainwashing is an often charged and loaded word, but it was interesting to see that the term itself has evolved out of post-war tensions and during the Cold War, although it had been previously given other names and referred to as possession or mesmerism.
Nonetheless, the practices have changed since the 1950s and 60s by including and appropriating insights from psychoanalysis followed by a variety of projects and experiments aimed at creating resistance and resilience on one hand and influencing and manipulating others by changing thought patterns and belief systems. This was done on both sides of the political spectrum, and it is assumed that the term itself brainwashing may have come from a Chinese literal translation of “cleansing the mind”.
Moreover, we talk about Freud and his opposition during the heydays of psychoanalysis, his revolutionary insights combined with a new therapeutic approach that has been altered and modified throughout the years and has led to different and diverse methods, theories, and approaches in the rich and fertile psychoanalytic field.
Finally, we look at the drive towards rigid dogmatic thinking while following and embracing charismatic leaders alongside the dangers of groupthink, peer pressure, and totalitarianism. We also discuss the unique psychological and historical underpinnings and undercurrents of Nazi Germany but also what experiments and research in the “psy” disciplines have shown us regarding obedience and authority. We finish off with the example of road rage how previously sweet docile people can quickly and briefly turn into monsters of sorts.
00:36: Personal Intro:
Psychoanalyst from Britain. Background in literature and history. Interested in cultural history and the history of ideas. Exploring the history of psychoanalysis and how psychoanalysis can help us understand our historical past.
02:39:
Studying and researching the history of brainwashing and hidden persuasion. Talking about book “Brainwashed: A New History of Thought Control”. Involved in project of psychoanalysis, fascism, and Nazism. Cold War and the language of the mind. Questions on influence and persuasion. Freud’s follower, Victor Tausk on schizophrenic patients. Their perception and illusion to be controlled by the influencing machine. But also everyday anxiety. How much am I being myself, given freedom to think and to explore? And how much am I being nudged and persuaded? Freud shows “free association” over hypnotism to explore that free-flowing aspect. Attempt to free your mind.
06:07:
In politics and in culture, brainwashing more apparent after World War II. Previously, we had other ones to take over the mind and mind control, like possession, mesmerism, animal magnetism, suggestion, thought control. But different anxieties in a polarized Cold War world after communism in China. Brainwashing, a translation of the Chinese term of “cleansing the mind”. Communism and the battle for the mind. Propaganda and powerful new techniques. American POWs held by North Koreans and Chinese who chose to live in Mao’s China. How could American soldiers freely choose to live in Mao's China? They must have been “brainwashed”.
09:21:
The power and the dark side of psychoanalysis. It can lead to freedom, but also lead to influence, control, and manipulation. Part of all the “psy” professions. At times used other than for the welfare of the patients, which should be based and focused on enhancing freedom. But even well-meaning analysts, including Freud, may have strained into a kind of persuasion. Psychoanalysis arousing anxiety as a form of manipulation or a “dangerous science”. Idea that it was a Jewish science. Antisemitic discourse and paranoia on the power of the psychoanalyst. Freud tried to widen circle by including Jung.
12:50:
Early critics who claimed that psychoanalysis takes the free will of patients. Considered the moral and immoral back then in magazines and journals, intelligence organizations in the West like CIA during Cold War period developed projects countering what was being done on the other side. Humanist science and Communist ideology with new scientific techniques to devastate and break the mind. A sort of blitzkrieg on the mind. Western soldiers needed to have countermeasures of resistance and resilience. Other projects like MK-Ultra and the Cuba manual that are now publicly accessible. Sensory deprivation overload, use of LSD. Clinicians funded by CIA. Later with War on Terror to enhance interrogation, influenced by sets of experience in the 1950s and 60s.
17:32:
Zimbardo and Milgram studies and labs for studying group processes and propensity. Political parties and the question of crowds and power of the 19th century. From French Revolution onward, the idea of the crowd as an actor to determine the course of history that can overthrow the State. Also reflected in literature and works by Dickens and Zola. Development of field of “crowd psychology”. Freud looked at both individual and mass psychology. Hypnotic rapport between the leader and the led. Fantasies and delusions. As Fascism developing in Italy and Germany, Freud wrote paper about crowds, political parties, and power.
21:06:
Freud’s therapeutic approach as a “surgeon” and his drive to turn psychoanalysis into a biological science. Otto Rank’s criticism of that method as well as the difference between a psychology of likeness and one of difference. Similarities and differences between communism, fascism, Nazism, and the idea of totalitarianism. How unconscious fantasy at work in politics. Not just rational choices and reason. Otto Rank opening up and exploring more the irrational side of psychoanalysis. Tolerance and intolerance in Freud. Complicated double side to this story. Freud as intolerant and patriarch of the discipline, legislating and excommunicating members. The breaks and schisms. Also, Freud’s wish to have a vibrant movement.
27:43:
Freud’s longing and aspirations for turning psychoanalysis into a science. Freud’s dialogue with Einstein in the 1930s. Maybe every science comes down to a kind of mythology, both endorsing and undercutting some of his own claims.
29:16:
Talking about the book “The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind”. The peculiarity of German history, influence of the masses, and peer pressure. Many voting for the Nazis and death squads with ordinary men. Henry Murray did a profile on Hitler. Psychoanalysis and Study of Propaganda and de-nazification, which was a post-war project.
36:39:
Psychoanalytic work on early period of life of mothers and babies, fathers, and toddlers. Work of Anna Freud and Melanie Klein becomes relevant as fascists and liberal democrats are “made in the cradle” or in early life. Infancy and child-rearing becoming the central political question and the importance of mental health in the post-war world.
38:00:
Finding the balance between individual freedom and following authority. Respect, discipline, and freedom. Policy and schooling. Experiments in alternative forms of teaching. Critiques of the traditional school model, the de-schooling movement. Questions on authority and freedom, also in the clinical setting. Inequalities in medical and therapeutic protocols. Inviting the person to think about idolization and slavish devotion. Debates about the openness of analysts who talk about their own feelings. Authority and authoritarianism. What is it that draws people toward dogmatic, fascistic, disciplinarian, intolerant states of mind. Adorno and the Frankfurt School. Using psychoanalysis, social theory, and history to understand these different forces. What is the right kind of education that would enable people to think and to critically reflect on their own situations. Psychoanalysis has to be part of that story.
44:33:
The case of road rage. Gaining freedom from the dark forces within. Under pressure, we can revert to monstrous states of mind. Hopefully we recover some sense of sanity, something to hold us in check. We feel a blind rage. In popular culture, the states of mind between reason and passion, between thinking and the collapse of thinking, brainwashing, and the movie “The Manchurian Candidate”. Groupthink and studies of cults.
48:01:
Paranoid styles in politics like conspiracy theories and infantile feelings being mobilized. Melanie Klein and these infantile states in all of us. Paranoid-schizoid versus depressive position, movement and not being stuck in one position of either good or bad.
49:15:
Hannah Arendt's writing about politics. When it works, people are encouraged to come together and think. Information and debate. There is time, not a quick fix or closed down. We are political animals. Aristotelian idea. How politics is essential. A space of real possibility of investigating and debating and arguing without polarized division.
50:33:
The power of the individual and Malick’s “A Hidden Life”. Marx and doubt everything. Any ideology or system of thought can become a dogma or an ideology. The basic idea of liberal democracy. The power to question, doubt, and be different. A project with local schools, inviting teenagers to make films about hidden persuasion. Young people growing up in the Internet age. Peer pressure to use social media. Pathologizing a young student for not following the trend and for not following the norm. She was immediately shamed. Pressure of being different. Technology liberating and enhancing but also addictive and coercive.
