Homo Sovieticus
Author: Velminski, Wladimir
ISBN: 9780262035699
Publisher: RANDOM HOUSE US
Year first published: 10 Feb 2017
Pages: 128
Format: Paperback / softback
How Soviet scientists and pseudoscientists pursued telepathic research, cybernetic simulations, and mass hypnotism over television to control the minds of citizens.BR>BR>b>How Soviet scientists and pseudoscientists pursued telepathic research, cybernetic simulations, and mass hyptonism over television to control the minds of citizens./b>p>In October 1989, as the Cold War was ending and the Berlin Wall about to crumble, television viewers in the Soviet Union tuned in to the first of a series of unusual broadcasts. "Relax, let your thoughts wander free..." intoned the host, the physician and clinical psychotherapist Anatoly Mikhailovich Kashpirovsky. Moscow's Channel One was attempting mass hypnosis over television, a therapeutic session aimed at reassuring citizens panicked over the ongoing political upheaval-and aimed at taking control of their responses to it. Incredibly enough, this last-ditch effort to rally the citizenry was the culmination of decades of official telepathic research, cybernetic simulations, and coded messages undertaken to reinforce ideological conformity. In i>Homo Sovieticus/i>, the art and media scholar Wladimir Velminski explores these scientific and pseudoscientific efforts at mind control./p>p>In a fascinating series of anecdotes, Velminski describes such phenomena as the conflation of mental energy and electromagnetism; the investigation of aura fields through the "Aurathron"; a laboratory that practiced mind control methods on dogs; and attempts to calibrate the thought processes of laborers. "Scientific" diagrams from the period accompany the text. In all of the experimental methods for implanting thoughts into a brain, Velminski finds political and metaphorical contaminations. These apparently technological experiments in telepathy and telekinesis were deployed for purely political purposes./p>
ISBN: 9780262035699
Publisher: RANDOM HOUSE US
Year first published: 10 Feb 2017
Pages: 128
Format: Paperback / softback
How Soviet scientists and pseudoscientists pursued telepathic research, cybernetic simulations, and mass hypnotism over television to control the minds of citizens.BR>BR>b>How Soviet scientists and pseudoscientists pursued telepathic research, cybernetic simulations, and mass hyptonism over television to control the minds of citizens./b>p>In October 1989, as the Cold War was ending and the Berlin Wall about to crumble, television viewers in the Soviet Union tuned in to the first of a series of unusual broadcasts. "Relax, let your thoughts wander free..." intoned the host, the physician and clinical psychotherapist Anatoly Mikhailovich Kashpirovsky. Moscow's Channel One was attempting mass hypnosis over television, a therapeutic session aimed at reassuring citizens panicked over the ongoing political upheaval-and aimed at taking control of their responses to it. Incredibly enough, this last-ditch effort to rally the citizenry was the culmination of decades of official telepathic research, cybernetic simulations, and coded messages undertaken to reinforce ideological conformity. In i>Homo Sovieticus/i>, the art and media scholar Wladimir Velminski explores these scientific and pseudoscientific efforts at mind control./p>p>In a fascinating series of anecdotes, Velminski describes such phenomena as the conflation of mental energy and electromagnetism; the investigation of aura fields through the "Aurathron"; a laboratory that practiced mind control methods on dogs; and attempts to calibrate the thought processes of laborers. "Scientific" diagrams from the period accompany the text. In all of the experimental methods for implanting thoughts into a brain, Velminski finds political and metaphorical contaminations. These apparently technological experiments in telepathy and telekinesis were deployed for purely political purposes./p>
