The Psychiatric Persuasion

In the years between 1900 and 1930, American psychiatrists transformed their profession from a marginal science focused primarily on the care of the mentally ill into a powerful discipline concerned with analyzing the common difficulties of everyday life. How did psychiatrists effect such a dramatic change in their profession's fortunes and aims? Here, Elizabeth Lunbeck examines how psychiatry grew to take the whole world of human endeavor as its object.

"Anyone treating patients or engaging in clinical research to develop new drug or psychosocial treatments should take a few hours to absorb, once again, the brilliance of Persuasion and Healing." -- American Journal of Psychiatry

Since the declaration of the War on Terror in 2001, militant groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have used the internet to disseminate their message and persuade people to commit violence. While many books have studied their operational strategies and battlefield tactics, Media Persuasion in the Islamic State is the first to analyze the culture and psychology of militant persuasion. Drawing upon decades of research in cultural psychiatry, cultural psychology, and psychiatric anthropology, Neil Krishan Aggarwal investigates how the Islamic State has convinced people to engage in violence since its founding in 2003. Through analysis of hundreds of articles, speeches, videos, songs, and bureaucratic documents in English and Arabic, the book traces how the jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi created a new culture and psychology, one that would pit Sunni Muslims against all others after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Aggarwal tracks how Osama bin Laden and al-Zarqawi disagreed over the goal of militancy in jihad before reaching a détente in 2004 and how al-Qaeda in Iraq merged with five other groups to diffuse its militant cultural identity in 2006 before taking advantage of the Syrian civil war to emerge as the Islamic State. Aggarwal offers a definitive analysis of how culture is created, debated, and disseminated within militant organizations like the Islamic State. Psychiatrists, psychologists, and area-studies experts will find a comprehensive, systematic method for analyzing culture and psychology so they can partner with political scientists, policy makers, and counterterrorism experts in crafting counter-messaging strategies against militants.

"Anyone treating patients or engaging in clinical research to develop new drug or psychosocial treatments should take a few hours to absorb, once again, the brilliance of Persuasion and Healing." -- American Journal of Psychiatry

The then-controversial message of Jerome D. Frank's Persuasion and Healing (1991) was that "the shared features of the various methods of psychological therapy are more important than those by which they differ." Alarcon (emeritus, psychiatry, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine), a former student of Frank's, and Julia Frank (psychiatry and behavioral sciences, George Washington U. School of Medicine), his daughter/coauthor, introduce essays treating his book's themes (e.g., the importance of life history, meaning, cultural concepts, demoralization, the mind-body interface); its impact on current practices; relevance to neuroscience; and applications to special populations. Frank's contributions are situated in the history of American psychiatry. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Vienna, 1909. When the celebrated actor Eugen Bischoff is found dead in his garden pavilion, suspicion falls immediately on Baron von Yosch, a well-to-do army officer who was once the lover of the dead man s wife. By all appearances the door was locked from the inside when the two shots rang out the actor took his own life, but someone, or something, drove him to it. The baron sets out to learn all he can about the actor s death in order to clear his name. Meanwhile, within a few days, similar apparent suicides are reported. What started out as a straightforward quest to establish Bischoff s last deeds and discover the truth of his death becomes a search through the ages for an invisible enemy identified only by the actor s dying breath, when he whispered: . . . the Day of Judgment. Leo Perutz combines his hallmark blend of suspense and the fantastic in this spine-tingling mystery.

"Anyone treating patients or engaging in clinical research to develop new drug or psychosocial treatments should take a few hours to absorb, once again, the brilliance of Persuasion and Healing." -- American Journal of Psychiatry

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.