If you have an interest in mass psychology and the power of advertising, this is a remarkably eloquent and epic 4 part series from BBC 4 and director Adam Curtis which explores the influence of Freudian psychoanalysis and Edward Bernays’ PR techniques in shaping western mass media, politics and consumer culture.
If you can look past the dark and ominous veneer and sit through the 4 one hour segments – it will provide some truly relevant back story for anyone involved in the advertising industry and especially those that use powerful empathy tools like personas.
More details of each episode below ...
Episode 1: Happiness Machines
The story and relationship between Sigmund Freud - the father of psychoanalysis, and his American nephew Edward Bernays – one of the architects of modern ‘public relations’ in the 1920s. Bernays’ techniques of mass-consumer persuasion were deeply influenced by Freud’s work and applied successfully by many companies to systematically link mass-produced goods to the unconscious desires of the population at large.
Episode 2: The Engineering of Consent
This episode explores how those in power in post-war America used Freud's ideas about the unconscious mind to suppress the savage potential lurking within each individual. If left to its own devices – the population would revert to the irrational instincts that resulted in the previous decade of war in Europe.
Episode 3: The Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed
In the 1960s, radical psychotherapists like Wilhelm Reich, a pupil of Freud’s, challenged influence of Freud’s ideas in America. Rather than pursuing repression and control of the unconscious, this alternate school of thought encouraged self-expression. This resulted in the atomization of the traditional ‘self’ in popular culture and gave rise to the Me Generation. Businesses soon adapted to this change but still used psychoanalytic techniques and researcg methodologies proposed by groups like Stamford Research Institute’s VALs system (Values and Lifestyles) to read the inner desires of the New Self.
Episode 4: Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering
This final episode reveals how politics has applied the same principles explored in the first 3 episodes to understand and read the desires of the emergent self.
Tomas Roldan
The story and relationship between Sigmund Freud - the father of psychoanalysis, and his American nephew Edward Bernays – one of the architects of modern ‘public relations’ in the 1920s. Bernays’ techniques of mass-consumer persuasion were deeply influenced by Freud’s work and applied successfully by many companies to systematically link mass-produced goods to the unconscious desires of the population at large.
Episode 2: The Engineering of Consent
This episode explores how those in power in post-war America used Freud's ideas about the unconscious mind to suppress the savage potential lurking within each individual. If left to its own devices – the population would revert to the irrational instincts that resulted in the previous decade of war in Europe.
Episode 3: The Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed
In the 1960s, radical psychotherapists like Wilhelm Reich, a pupil of Freud’s, challenged influence of Freud’s ideas in America. Rather than pursuing repression and control of the unconscious, this alternate school of thought encouraged self-expression. This resulted in the atomization of the traditional ‘self’ in popular culture and gave rise to the Me Generation. Businesses soon adapted to this change but still used psychoanalytic techniques and researcg methodologies proposed by groups like Stamford Research Institute’s VALs system (Values and Lifestyles) to read the inner desires of the New Self.
Episode 4: Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering
This final episode reveals how politics has applied the same principles explored in the first 3 episodes to understand and read the desires of the emergent self.
Tomas Roldan
Strategists & Planners
Comments (0)