notes on The Century of the Self (2002), Adam Curtis's exploration on how Freud’s ideas about the unconscious mind have been used by those in power to control people in an age of democracy.
Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays was the first person to take his ideas and use them to manipulate the masses. He did this by linking mass produced goods to unconscious desires. Satisfy passive desires and therefore make people more compliant. this is when public relations was created, replacing propaganda which had become a bad word ≈WW2.
1st experiment: make women smoke
Products started being sold as necessities and were durable. The emotional connection to a product or service shifted America from needs to desires. This was Bernays' plan.
First connections between products and media: Product placements in films & linking beauty products to models. Products were bought to express your inner-self to others. Bernays also persuaded actors to go to the White House → politics became part of daily public talk
1927: Consumption. Americans went from citizens to consumers.
Bernays becomes Freud's agent and publishes his books, using his controversial ideas (sex, dreams, cocaine) to appeal to the public and create word of mouth. He made him famous (wild ideas), acceptable to the public (rational ideas) and profited.
The idea of immense forces (Freud's subconscious) hidden in plain sight terrified journalists. People no longer believed human beings could make rational decisions by themselves ∴ trust in Government/Democracy fell. Bernays proposed an elite to manage the "bewildered herd". They would govern by controlling the unconscious minds of the masses and The Engineering of Consent: stimulating people’s inner desires and sating them with consumer products.
1928: Hoover in power. He articulated that consumerism was the central motor of American life. He agreed people have transformed into constantly moving happiness machines, which became the key to economic progress (and also created a peaceful society).
Bernays discovered that by stimulating the irrational self of people, government could do what they wanted. He became one of the most prominent figures in the US.
Oct 29, 1929: While commemorating the 50th anniversary of the lightbulb, the US elite at the time (Hoover, Rockefeller, Bernays, prominent bankers…) saw the biggest stock market crash in history. People lost money and stopped buying goods they didn't need, Bernays' work collapsed
Freud retired. He wrote Civilization and its Discontents, where he argued that Civilization was created to control the animal forces inside human beings.
1933: Roosevelt elected. He wanted to revive the idea that Human Beings were rational and decided to involve the American Public into the decisions.
1937: Roosevelt reelected. His New Deal stated it was the government's job to run industrial economies.
Bad news for business → Return of Edward Bernays. He attacked Roosevelt’s New Deal by creating an emotional connection between corporations and the public. He fabricated the idea that businesses, not politics, were the ones that created America’s Future.
Roosevelt's team quickly realized Bernays' strategy and launched ads exposing big corporation's plans. Since Roosevelt advocated that humans were rational, they wanted people to judge by themselves.
Bernays' response was to create the narrative that an Utopia would become reality if large stage capitalism was unleashed. He used the 1939 NYC World Fair and designed the entire fair to transmit the message "Democracy + Capitalism = ❤️"
1938: Hitler annexes Vienna. Freud leaves to London and dies a couple months later.
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the idea that by stimulating people’s inner desires and then sating them with consumer products, you can manage the irrational thoughts of the masses.
After WW2, 34% of all US soldiers evacuated were discharged because of mental problems. The army turned to psychoanalysis for help.
1946: Truman signs the National Mental Health Act.
Psychoanalysts became very influential since top politicians wanted to be psychoanalyzed. Their ideas were soon translated into the advertisement industry. Ernest Dichter: showed value in focus group studies of products.
Bernays was once again one of the most powerful PR men in the US. He advised many big corporations, politicians and Eisenhower. After the United Fruits & Guatemala coup d'état in 1954, Bernays proved that by appealing to the public's inner fears, you could do more that just get them to buy products.
Is it wrong to give people what they want by bypassing their defenses?
PR started using celebrities (mostly represented by advertisements companies like Freud Corporations) as trojan horses to get advertisements into the editorial content of newspapers.
Anna Freud did not intend for her work to be taken this way, but accepted it. Meanwhile, the kids she treated started developing crises, alcoholism and anxiety attacks.
1953: USSR's first nuclear bomb. The US worried about reassuring population and hired Bernays to orchestrate an attack on Communism, shape US citizens’ fears and help politicians win the Cold War.
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Student Unions started to denounce consumerism & corporate America was a way of keeping the masses docile while the government is at war. New idea: If it isn’t possible to get rid of the policeman in one’s head by overthrowing the state, then one should remove the controls implanted by the state in one’s own mind.
There is a Policeman inside all our heads, he must be destroyed
Freud described an uncontrolled raging inferno of emotions. Reich complemented his ideas by stating that such range of emotion is a result of not allowing the original impulse to express itself.
1960s: Personal transformation movement, self-exploration was booming.
Corporate America starts to worry since behaviors become unpredictable. Marketing realized that the new expressive selves (hippies) were still consumers, but would only buy products that expressed their personality.
But individuality meant variety, and this didn't work in corporate America where the systems of mass production were only profitable if they made many numbers of the same object.
1970s: Corporations decide to profit by helping individuals express themselves. Researchers (mainly the Stanford Research Institute) discovered that people could be defined by different behavior patterns they chose to express themselves: self-expression was not infinite.
Reagan runs for President campaigning on individualism and attacking 50 years of government interference in people’s lives.
1981: Reagan elected. Demographics showed most of his voters were young people with no pattern of social classes, ages, sex or party.
From a limited range of mass produced goods that people would buy to multiple ranges of products that allow people to express their individuality, based on their lifestyles. A generation who once rebelled against conformity imposted by consumerism now embraced it: it helped them to be themselves.
The concern used to be that supply > demand. Since self-expression allowed for unlimited needs, it also meant unlimited demand, products and services.
While the liberation of the self freed people from social constraints, it also made them increasingly dependent on businesses for their identity. Corporations realized it was in their interests to make people feel like unique individuals and offer them ways to express that individuality.
New idea now dominates society: Satisfaction of individual feelings and desires is our highest priority.
1992: Clinton elected.
This was a disaster for Clinton who decided to forget ideologies and turn politics into consumer business: instead of trying to move people, he saw what people wanted and moved himself into that arena.
1996: Clinton wins reelection. He ends the Welfare program, 60 years after Roosevelt's efforts.
To deal with the ongoing inequality and decaying of social fabric, government needs to turn against the Freudian view of human beings and make people think beyond their self-interest. Businesses thrive on appealing to the unconscious side of people. Government needs to instead engage with the public in a rational discussions.
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