1960s cultural anxieties
A01=Matthew W. Dunne
American Cold War identity
American individualism and freedom
Author_Matthew W. Dunne
brainwashing history
brainwashing in popular imagination
Category=JB
Category=JBFV
Category=NHK
class and gender in Cold War discourse
Cold War cultural analysis
Cold War culture and psychology
Cold War ideology and culture
Cold War media influence
Cold War paranoia and politics
Cold War political discourse
Cold War propaganda studies
Cold War social commentary
Cold War-era social thought
consumerism and conformity
corporate advertising and manipulation
cultural critique of Cold War America
cultural fears of mind control
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
fear of Communist influence
gendered assumptions about susceptibility
George Romney Vietnam controversy
historical mind control debates
historical studies of coercion
individual vs. state control
Korean War POWs
loyalty and trust in authority
media and Cold War politics
media representation of brainwashing
media-driven social anxieties
political and cultural impact of brainwashing
political paranoia in the 1950s
political psychology
postwar American anxieties
propaganda and persuasion
psychological coercion
psychological manipulation in society
psychological warfare history
Republican presidential campaigns
societal skepticism toward authority
subliminal advertising effects
working-class Cold War studies
Product details
- ISBN 9781625340412
- Weight: 477g
- Dimensions: 154 x 231mm
- Publication Date: 17 Dec 2013
- Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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First popularised during the 1950s, the concept of “brainwashing” is often viewed as an example of Cold War paranoia, an amusing relic of a bygone era. Yet as Matthew W. Dunne shows in this study, over time brainwashing came to connote much more than a sinister form of Communist mind control, taking on broader cultural and political meanings.
Moving beyond well-known debates over Korean War POWs and iconic cultural texts like The Manchurian Candidate, Dunne explores the impact of the idea of brainwashing on popular concerns about freedom, individualism, loyalty, and trust in authority. By the late 1950s the concept had been appropriated into critiques of various aspects of American life such as an insistence on conformity, the alleged “softening” of American men, and rampant consumerism fueled by corporate advertising that used “hidden” or “subliminal” forms of persuasion. Because of these associations and growing anxie-ties about the potential misuse of psychology, concerns about brainwashing contributed to a new emphasis on individuality and skepticism toward authority in the 1960s. The notion even played an unusual role in the 1968 presidential race, when Republican frontrunner George Romney’s claim that he had been “brainwashed” about the Vietnam War by the Johnson administration effectively destroyed his campaign.
In addition to analysing the evolving meaning of brainwashing over an extended period of time, A Cold War State of Mind explores the class and gender implications of the idea, such as the assumption that working-class POWs were more susceptible to mind control and that women were more easily taken in by the manipulations of advertisers. .
Moving beyond well-known debates over Korean War POWs and iconic cultural texts like The Manchurian Candidate, Dunne explores the impact of the idea of brainwashing on popular concerns about freedom, individualism, loyalty, and trust in authority. By the late 1950s the concept had been appropriated into critiques of various aspects of American life such as an insistence on conformity, the alleged “softening” of American men, and rampant consumerism fueled by corporate advertising that used “hidden” or “subliminal” forms of persuasion. Because of these associations and growing anxie-ties about the potential misuse of psychology, concerns about brainwashing contributed to a new emphasis on individuality and skepticism toward authority in the 1960s. The notion even played an unusual role in the 1968 presidential race, when Republican frontrunner George Romney’s claim that he had been “brainwashed” about the Vietnam War by the Johnson administration effectively destroyed his campaign.
In addition to analysing the evolving meaning of brainwashing over an extended period of time, A Cold War State of Mind explores the class and gender implications of the idea, such as the assumption that working-class POWs were more susceptible to mind control and that women were more easily taken in by the manipulations of advertisers. .
Matthew W. Dunne is adjunct instructor of history at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.
