![](https://education.austenriggs.org/sites/default/files/styles/course_image/public/course/2024-06/DanielPick_headshot-square.jpg?itok=I7SnhSfg)
Conspiracies? The "Paranoid Style” Revisited, in Psychoanalytic Thought, History, and Political Life - Daniel Pick, PhD (Live)
2024-25 Friday Night Guest Lecture Series
Dr. Daniel Pick will reflect on psychoanalytic thought about paranoia and consider its relevance to the exploration of mass phenomena, past and present. He will draw on past work by a range of writers, including Freud, Tausk, Erikson, Klein, and Bion. He will also return to the work of historians and philosophers, including Hofstadter and Arendt, whose work is useful for exploring conspiracy theory and ’the paranoid style’. The talk will conclude by engaging with various contemporary explorations of the crisis of democracy, the AI revolution, and the so-called ‘deep state’.
Daniel Pick, PhD, is a psychoanalyst and historian. He is a training analyst at the British Psychoanalytical Society, and professor emeritus at Birkbeck College, University of London. He received a Sigourney Award in 2023 and held a senior investigator grant from the Wellcome Trust (2014-21) for a team-based project on the history of ideas about brainwashing, He is an associate editor of History Workshop Journal and an occasional broadcaster who has made a series of documentaries for BBC Radio. His publications include Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, c. 1848-1918 (Cambridge University Press, 1989), Svengali’s Web: The Alien Enchanter in Modern Culture (Yale University Press, 2000), Psychoanalysis: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2015), The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind: Hitler, Hess, and the Analysts (OUP. 2012), and Brainwashed: A New History of Thought Control (Profile/Wellcome Collection 2022). He also co-edited Psychoanalysis in the Age of Totalitarianism (New Library of Psychoanalysis, Routledge, 2017).
Austen Riggs Center Inc. adheres to the ACCME’s Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Medical Education. All those at Austen Riggs Center involved in the planning of this activity, including the presenter(s) listed above, report they have no relevant financial relationships with an ineligible company*.
The views and opinions expressed in this presentation are those of the presenter(s) and do not necessarily represent the official policy or position of the Austen Riggs Center.
* An ineligible company is any entity whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients.
In support of improving patient care, The Austen Riggs Center is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) to provide continuing education for the healthcare team