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Conspiracies? The "Paranoid Style" Revisited, in Psychoanalytic Thought, History, and Political Life - Daniel Pick, PhD (Recorded self-study)
Dr. Daniel Pick reflects on psychoanalytic thought about paranoia and considers its relevance to the exploration of mass phenomena, past and present. He draws on past work by a range of writers, including Freud, Tausk, Erikson, Klein, and Bion. He also returns 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 concludes by engaging with various contemporary explorations of the crisis of democracy, the AI revolution, and the so-called ‘deep state’.
Target Audience
_____ Introductory __x___ Intermediate ______ Advanced
Learning Objectives
- Learn about key psychoanalytic ideas regarding paranoid states of mind, as developed by Freud, Klein and others.
- Understand some key endeavors by historians and cultural commentators to apply ideas about paranoia, and the paranoid style’ to cultural, social and political phenomena, past and present.
- Identify the potential richness of applied psychoanalytic thought in interpreting mass phenomena, note opportunities for understanding what may be at stake in contemporary ‘conspiracy theory’, and recognize potential pitfalls when likening minds, groups, cultures, and states.
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).
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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.
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Available Credit
- 1.50 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™
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- 1.50 APA
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- 1.50 ASWB-ACE
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