Joel E. Dimsdale - Professor of Psychiatry, Historian & Author
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DARK PERSUASION
A History of Brainwashing from Pavlov to Social Media

BY JOEL E. DIMSDALE

Book Reviews

 … a riveting new book. Dimsdale takes readers through it all, animating the journey with a clear, energetic writing style that shows how the art of dark persuasion… led almost inevitably to today’s misinformation, cyberbullying and cultlike behavior on the internet.”  --The Washington Post, 10.8.2021 MORE >
This book is a fascinating account of coercive persuasion from Pavlov to today's mass believers in conspiracy. Dimsdale’s sobering account makes the reader wonder if what anti-vaxxers, Big Lie believers, and victims of brainwashing techniques have in common is the story told in this book about the socialization of cognition and emotion. Provocative and eye-opening.”  —Arthur Kleinman, author of The Soul of Care
Joel Dimsdale, author of 2016’s intensely thought-provoking Anatomy of Malice expands on that earlier book’s study of the psychology of Nazi leaders by looking at brainwashing across a wide spectrum of the modern era…. Dimsdale is a brilliantly concise and insightful guide … and the book is as energetic and enjoyable as his previous one. … Dark Persuasion was intended as a historical overview of the development of brainwashing. It achieves that goal wonderfully. Nevertheless, many readers will finish it saying “But what about?..." --Open Letters Reviews
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Brainwashing [is] ... ultimately a phenomenon that eludes easy definition while growing ever harder to ignore…. Throughout Dark Persuasion, Dimsdale shows how the idea of brainwashing has been used to justify … not the intricate manipulation of another person’s thoughts but simple abuse, whether conducted by the government or by the leaders of a cult." ​​​
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New Republic
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A remarkable history of the historical background to brainwashing in the twentieth century. This book should be read by anyone interested in how people can believe in something dramatically different from their own observations."
​—Thomas Wise, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
[Dark Persuasion] is teeming with intriguing tales of mental manipulation, including accounts of the Jim Jones cult, Patty Hearst’s post-kidnap transformation and the whole thorny subject of Stockholm Syndrome.”
--The Independent, 9.5.2021
Joel E. Dimsdale describes the refinement of thought-manipulation over the past century, as rival ideologies competed for control of the mind." --The Spectator, 9.25.21  MORE >
Captivating. Illuminating. Frightening. Secrets revealed and myths debunked on the past century’s practices of brainwashing told from the perspective of an experienced psychiatrist and a gifted narrator. A journey never to be forgotten."
​—Stephen M. Stahl, Neuroscience Education Institute
An innovative, original examination of a collection of fascinating psychological and sociocultural phenomena that use coercive persuasion to shape thinking and behavior." —Arthur Barsky, Harvard Medical School
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
A book for our times—timely, compelling, provocative, smart, and ultimately hopeful, in offering a means to our own protection from the forces of darkness."  ​
​—Philippe Sands, author of East West Street
... highly readable and compelling book. Dimsdale’s goal is to prompt reflection on what he sees as the overlooked reality of coercive persuasion at a broader level and the ever-present threat that it poses to individuals and to society at large—a threat, he warns, that is becoming ever-amplified by new technologies and mass media. In this aim, he succeeds admirably." --Sarah Marks, Science
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Table of Contents

Preface     Prelude to Murder: from Rural Del Mar to Heaven’s Gate

Part One     Efforts by Government and Academe
1     Before Pavlov: Torture and Conversion 
2     Pavlov’s Dogs and the Soviet Show Trials 
3     Extracting Information with Drugs: the Military’s Quest in World War              
4     A Cold War Prelude to Korea 
5     The Korean War and the Birth of Brainwashing
6     The CIA Strikes Back: Dead Bodies
7     Dead Memories: the Canadian Legacy of Ewen Cameron

Part Two     Efforts by Criminals and Religious Groups
8     Flash Conversion of Hostages 
9     Patricia Hearst: Where Stockholm Met Indoctrination
10     From Racial Harmony to Death in the Jungle 
11     Heaven’s Gate: Beliefs or Delusions? 

Part Three     Into the 21st century
12     The Beleaguered Persistence of “Brainwashing”
13     Brainwashing’s Future in the 21st Century
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DARK PERSUASION is now available ​from the following book sellers:

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E-books are available in the following apps:
Kindle   |   Apple Books   |   Google Play Books  |  Nook   |   Kobo

Overview 

Brainwashing crept into the twentieth century insidiously, hiding from view in the dog labs of St. Petersburg. By the end of the century, the world was obsessed with it. It promised to make the new man, but it also provided harsh tools for interrogation. Government-sponsored researchers around the world raced to develop techniques to enhance persuasion and also to defend against it, while cult leaders employed it as a tool for indoctrinating followers. 

This book traces the evolution of brainwashing in the 20th century. With its beginnings in torture and religious conversion, coercive persuasion was transformed when Pavlov introduced scientific approaches. His research was enthusiastically supported by Lenin and Stalin, and many believe Pavlov’s techniques helped elicit confessions during the Soviet Show Trials. When World War II erupted, governments raced to develop drugs for interrogation, but this work on coercive persuasion was hidden from public view.

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. But it wasn’t just governmental agencies that were interested in dark persuasion: cults used the techniques as well. The outcomes, whether at the hands of governments or cult leaders, were all-too-often shatteringly destructive. 
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History is shaped by individuals acting in the context of vast impersonal forces. Who were the people who molded brainwashing? What did they think they were doing? What were their motivations? And how will social media and neuroscience research determine the evolution of brainwashing in the 21st century?

​Excerpts from Chapter 2

             The dogs were restless. Penned in their cages in the basement of the Institute for Experimental Medicine, they were alone and weary from their daytime jobs in the professor’s laboratory. But it wasn’t the dark or the isolation or fatigue that got to them. It was the incessant dripping and lapping of water on the floor of their kennel.

            Although September 22, 1924 started out as a fairly typical day in Leningrad, overcast and raining, the rain increased throughout the day until the Neva River once again overran its embankment. This time, the flood would become the largest in centuries and it headed straight for the dogs. 

            The water level in the kennel rose and the dogs started barking. At first, their paws sloshed around in the chilly water, but as the hours went by the water covered their bellies and shoulders until they were half floating in their cages with their nostrils pressed anxiously against the top wire mesh of the cages. They howled in fear and desperately snuffled the air while they could get it.

            At the last moment, a dog handler raced through the flooded streets to the Institute where he encountered chaos—panicked dogs, floating cages, and the fetid water of the Neva. One by one, he rescued the dogs but first he had to force their heads under the water to get them out of their cages. The dogs resisted out of panic.

            The dogs were never the same. Their dispositions changed dramatically: the meek became aggressive and the gregarious became shy. It was as if an entirely new “being” inhabited each dog. This was bad enough, but the researchers were also struck by the fact that the dogs had forgotten all the complex learning they had been taught in the laboratory. The dogs’ memories were wiped clean.

            The staff talked about the dogs’ memory loss for weeks and the scientists wrote their colleagues about this strange event. This might all have been dismissed as a curiosity except that it took place in the laboratory of the Nobel laureate Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov built his career on meticulous observation and experimentation with dogs. For the rest of his life, he talked about the flood, and his comments about traumatic stress and memory reverberated widely, given his relationship with Russia’s Communist leaders…. 

            In October 1919, Lenin visited Pavlov at the Institute of Experimental Medicine. He stayed for two hours; it was more than just a “photo op” visit. Lenin hoped that Pavlov’s experiments could bolster the State’s efforts to mold the New Man. As recounted by one of Pavlov’s colleagues, Lenin described the challenges of building the new world of Communism and asked Pavlov’s advice. How could he control individualism and shape human behavior so that it would conform to Communist thinking? 

                        Pavlov: “Do you mean that you would like to standardize the population of Russia? Make them all behave in the same way?”
                        Lenin: “Exactly… That’s what I want… and you must help us…by your studies of human behavior.” 
 
            Lenin was fascinated when Pavlov described the details of how he was able to shape dogs’ behaviors. He immediately grasped the implications of Pavlov’s studies: 
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                        Lenin: “Does this mean that hereditary factors can be overcome by proper education?”
                        Pavlov: “Under certain conditions—yes. They can be overcome…. Conditioned reflexes can abolish unconditioned reflexes, or, as they are called, natural instinct.”
                        Lenin: “That’s fine. Excellent. That’s exactly what I wanted to know.”  
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