Century of the Self - Happiness Machines (part one)
Sigmund Freud: humans are irrational and driven by subconscious desires
Edward Bernays: propaganda = public relations; controlling the masses by manipulating the collective unconscious for big business (cigarettes, automobiles)
Women smoking ‘torches of fire’; eliciting a feeling of empowerment and liberty
Shifted America from a needs to a desire culture; turning citizen to consumer
Freud’s theories were published in the US
Humans are driven by irrational, animalistic, dangerous forces (Vienna, Austria, violence) led to a re-thinking of democracy; individual freedom is dangerous
Psychological science could be used as a means of social control to suppress the unconscious (dangerous?) feelings of the masses -> Cold War, Walter Lippmann
Wall Street Crash 1929 = pitfall of consumerism, public relations
Freud ‘Civilisation and its Discontents’: civilisation breeds discontent, but is necessary for survival (control)
Germany, National Socialists: abandoned democracy to create what was believed to be an alternate democracy, not autocratic control (Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda: channeling the feelings of the masses)
Freud ‘Crowd Psychology’: frightening irrationality emerges in groups: libidinal forces towards a leader; aggression to all outsiders; Anschluss 1938
Roosevelt: uprising against corporation, big business; belief in the rational citizen -> scientific polling for an informed democracy
National Association of Manufacturers (representing big business): using PR to create an emotional connectedness between public and business; intertwining concepts of democracy with capitalism = a ‘FREE MARKET UTOPIA’
Discordance between passive consumer vs rational citizen
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/mar/10/medicalscience.highereducation
https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=8339
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sacramento-street-psychiatry/201308/review-century-the-self-bbc-documentary















