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The Hidden Persuaders research group examines ‘brainwashing’ in the Cold War for the roles, real and imagined, played by psychologists, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts. Our project engaged young people in an exploration of the history of fears about brainwashing, and enabled them to explore their thoughts and ideas about the forces that shape their lives in contemporary society, through film-making. Working with three schools in the Camden area of London, our partners at the Derek Jarman Lab media hub, Birkbeck, University of London, and an artist facilitator (Lizzie Burns), we invited Year 12 students to learn filming and editing to create their own short video essays. The use of this format resulted in a significant depth of engagement and generated a wealth of creative responses. The various stages of the film-making process enabled the students to work out the terms of an argument and to consider how best to express it concisely. In the resulting films, they came up with a variety of forms of visual storytelling, and used the medium to express their thoughts, feelings and ideas in diverse ways, giving us a range of new perspectives which we could consider in relation to our historical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hidden Persuaders research group examines 'brainwashing' in the Cold War for the roles, real and imagined, played by psychologists, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts. Our project engaged young people in an exploration of the history of fears about brainwashing, and enabled them to explore their thoughts and ideas about the forces that shape their lives in contemporary society, through film-making. Working with three schools in the Camden area of London, our partners at the Derek Jarman Lab media hub, Birkbeck, University of London, and an artist facilitator (Lizzie Burns), we invited Year 12 students to learn filming and editing to create their own short video essays. The use of this format resulted in a significant depth of engagement and generated a wealth of creative responses. The various stages of the film-making process enabled the students to work out the terms of an argument and to consider how best to express it concisely. In the resulting films, they came up with a variety of forms of visual storytelling, and used the medium to express their thoughts, feelings and ideas in diverse ways, giving us a range of new perspectives which we could consider in relation to our historical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of new religious movements (NRMs) have spent considerable energy studying the role of news media in constructing public narratives about religious innovation. This article proposes that similar attention be paid to popular culture. It is argued that fictional media has a unique ability to shape public discourse about NRMs precisely because it is free to present any narrative its authors desire. Furthermore, a diachronic study of television and films over the last half-century reveals an ongoing public conversation about NRMs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Historian Richard Hofstadter's observations about American cold-war politics are used to contextualize Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and argue that substantive claims about the nature of scientific knowledge and scientific change found in Structure were adopted from this cold-war political culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the history of forensic hypnosis in the Cold War era. The author discusses American concerns about Communist projects using hypnosis for mind control and describes the use of hypnosis in legal cases. Specific topics addressed include altered mental states, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) MK-ULTRA program, forensic hypnotist William Joseph Bryan's role in the 1962 film "The Manchurian Candidate," and the relationship between hypnosis and memory.

The article discusses the "sleeper effect" concept in the Cold War era and in post-September 11, 2001 terrorism. The author discusses 1880s research on hypnosis and hypnotic crimes from scientists including Jean-Martin Charcot, Auguste Forel, and Hippolyte Bernheim. The author describes Cold War concerns about Communist brainwashing, including their depiction in the book and film "The Manchurian Candidate" by Richard Condon, and compares them to 21st-century concerns about "sleeper cells" of terrorists.