I owe a large debt of gratitude to the Wellcome Trust; a Senior Investigator Award enabled me to establish a research group at Birkbeck College and to have the necessary time to work on this book. Details of the publications, online resources, broadcasts and films produced under the auspices of this project can be found at www7.bbk.ac.uk/hiddenpersuaders/. My thanks to all those who supported the endeavour at the Trust and the College, and especially to Marcia Holmes, Katie Joice, Ian Magor, Sarah Marks, Naomi Richman and Charlie Williams for their impressive individual research and creative teamwork. Thanks also to Emily Bartlett, Simon Jarrett, Holly Lasko and Nicole Mennell for helpful editorial input and research assistance on the project. To Charlie and Simon for reading my manuscript at short notice, and significantly sharpening it. To Katy Pettit for administering ‘Hidden Persuaders’ with unfussy efficiency and much-needed humour.
Thanks to my patients for their candour and trust, and for enabling me to think afresh about several issues at stake in this work. I cannot name the numerous students, nor list all the academics, archivists and librarians in the UK and US who facilitated my work on this book, but I can mention at least those friends and colleagues who have contributed most directly, and generously, by sharing ideas and reading draft chapters. To Julia Lovell, Lyndal Roper, Quentin Skinner, Gareth Stedman Jones and Eli Zaretsky, for their creative suggestions and sage advice. To Elizabeth Coates Thümmel, Matt ffytche, Stephen Frosh, Simon Garfield, Rufus Olins and Matthew Reisz, for their invaluable thoughts about my work in progress. To Lisa Baraitser and Simon Bayly, for incisive comments, providing so many stimulating thoughts on politics and psychoanalysis along the way. To Chris Wellbelove, my literary agent, for his steady support, and for offering, along with Amy St Johnston, also at Aitken Alexander Associates, such pragmatic guidance when my writing got stuck. To Shan Vahidy, an outstanding editorial ‘troubleshooter’, who has been a pleasure to work with, and who has played a key role in refashioning this book.
To have the chance to discuss this history with the late Zygmunt Bauman and Robert Jay Lifton was truly a privilege. I also had illuminating exchanges on this topic over the years with Ana Antiü, Shaul Bar-Haim, Joanna Bourke, Greg Brenman, Susan Carruthers, Ian Christie, D’Maris Coffman, Matt Cook, Bartek Dziadosz (and the group of talented film-makers who work with him at the Derek Jarman Lab), Nasheed Faruqi, David Feldman, Paul Feldwick, Lily Ford, the late John Forrester, Mary-Clare Hallsworth, Dagmar Herzog, Jenny Langham, Peter Mandler, Don Moss, Rebecca Reich, Hilary Sapire, Simon Schaffer, Rory Sutherland, David Taylor, Phil Tinline and Lynne Zeavin. Thanks to Shui-Bo Wang for putting me in touch with David Hawkins. His contribution, for which I am also thankful, can be seen in Part 2. To Tim Allen, Mike Dibb, Lisa Guenther, Monica Kim, Jonathan Lear, Melissa Parker and Andrew Scull for their rich and thought-provoking presentations at Birkbeck, during the project. Conversations with Catherine Hall, with whom I co-edited a series of pieces on the question of ‘denial’, in History Workshop Journal, were also inspiring.
Kirty Topiwala, then employed at Wellcome, helped to set Brainwashed in motion. I am also grateful to my editor, Cecily Gayford, for her exceptional skill and patience, to Rebecca Gray, Graeme Hall and the team at Profile Books for their excellent input, and to Patrick Taylor for his careful and well-judged copy-editing, Caroline Wilding for the fine index, and Philippa Logan for painstaking proofreading.
My family have lived with this project for longer than reasonable. I am grateful to Irma Brenman Pick, for all her care, lively interest in this work and wealth of insights. To Anna and Tasha Pick for encouragement and the many vivid conversations we’ve had on these matters, not least during the time of pandemic. This book is dedicated to Isobel Pick. I owe her the biggest thanks, for all her generous help and unflagging support. She has exchanged ideas, commented closely on drafts and provided throughout a clear-eyed sense of the relevance of this troubling history in present, dark times.
Daniel Pick
London, 20 January 2022