DARK PERSUASION
A History of Brainwashing from Pavlov to Social Media 
​by Joel E. Dimsdale

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A harrowing account of brainwashing’s pervasive role in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries 

This gripping book traces the evolution of brainwashing from its beginnings in torture and religious conversion into the age of neuroscience and social media. When Pavlov introduced scientific approaches, his research was enthusiastically supported by Lenin and Stalin, setting the stage for major breakthroughs in tools for social, political, and religious control.  
 
Tracing these developments through many of the past century’s major conflagrations, Dimsdale narrates how when World War II erupted, governments secretly raced to develop drugs for interrogation. Brainwashing returned to the spotlight during the Cold War in the hands of the North Koreans and Chinese. In response, a huge Manhattan Project of the Mind was established to study memory obliteration, indoctrination during sleep, and hallucinogens. Cults used the techniques as well. Nobel laureates, university academics, intelligence operatives, criminals, and clerics all populate this shattering and dark story—one that hasn’t yet ended.
In an age with deep concern that we are being manipulated by artificial intelligence and algorithms, this is an important topic and a timely, well-written book. The question of how large groups of seemingly reasonable people come to hold obviously unreasonable beliefs is one of the deepest questions of our age." 
— Tanya Luhrmann, author of ​When God Talks Back

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Dr. Joel Dimsdale is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Research Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at University of California, San Diego. He was previously on the faculty of Harvard Medical School. He is an active investigator; a former career awardee of the American Heart Association; and past president of the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research, the American Psychosomatic Society, and the Society of Behavioral Medicine. He has been a consultant to the President’s Commission on Mental Health, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Academy of Sciences, and is a long-time reviewer for the National Institutes of Health. He has edited multiple books and authored more than 500 scientific papers.

Other books by Dr. Dimsdale ​include ​Anatomy of Malice: The Enigma of the Nazi War Criminals (2016); Survivors, Victims and Perpetrators: Essays on the Nazi Holocaust (1980); Somatic Presentations of Mental Disorders (2009); Quality of Life in Behavioral Medicine Research (1995), and Psychosomatic Medicine: Psychiatric Clinics of North America (2011).