English Workshop: Century of the Self Workshop. Part 1 of 4

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BBC The Century of the Self. Part I

1 of 4. Happiness Machines

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A hundred years ago a new theory about human nature was put forth by Sigmund Freud.

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He had discovered he said, primitive, sexual and aggressive forces

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hidden deep inside the minds of all human beings.

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Forces which if not controlled, led individuals and societies to chaos and destruction.

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This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories

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to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy.

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But the heart of the story is not just Sigmund Freud but other members of the Freud family.

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This episode is about Freud's American nephew, Edward Bernays.

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Bernays is almost completely unknown today but his influence

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on the 20th century was nearly as great as his uncles.

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Because Bernays was the first person to take Freud's idea

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about human beings and use them to manipulate the masses.

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He showed American corporations for the first time how to they could make people want

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things they didn't need by linking mass produced goods to their unconscious desires.

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Out of this would come a new political ideal of how to control the masses.

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By satisfying people's inner selfish desires one made them happy and thus docile.

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It was the start of the all-consuming self which has come to dominate our world today.

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Part One - Happiness Machines

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Freud's ideas about how the human mind works have now become an accepted part of society.

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As have psychoanalysts.

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Every year the psychotherapists' ball is held in a grand palace in Vienna.

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Dr. Alfred Fritz, President World Council for Psychotherapy This is the psychotherapy ball.

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Psychotherapists come, some advanced patients come, former patients come,

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and many other people - friends, but also people from the Viennese society

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who like to come to a nice, elegant, comfortable ball.

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But it was not always so.

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A hundred years ago Freud's ideas were hated by Viennese society.

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At that time Vienna was the center of a vast empire ruleing central Europe.

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And to the powerful nobility of the Habsburg accord, Freud's ideas were not only embarrassing,

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but the very idea of examining and analyzing ones inner feelings

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was a threat to their absolute control.

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Countess Erzie Karolyi - Budapest: You see at that time these people had the power

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and of course you just weren't allowed to show your bloody feelings, I mean you just couldn't.

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You know if you were unhappy, can you imagine,

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for instance you sit somewhere in the country, in a castle, you are deeply unhappy, you are a woman;

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you couldn't go to your made and cry on her shoulders, you couldn't go into the village

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and complain about your feelings,

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it was like selling yourself to someone, you just couldn't. You know?

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Because they had to respect you. Now of course, Freud, he put that thought very much into question

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you see to examine yourself you would have to put other things into question - the society,

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everything that surrounds you and that was not a good thing at that time.

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- Why not?

- Because your self-created empire to a certain extent would have fallen to bits

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much earlier already.

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But what frightened the rulers of the empire even more was Freud's idea

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that hidden inside all human beings

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were dangerous instinctual drives.

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Freud had devised a method he called psychoanalysis.

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By analyzing dreams and free association he had unearthed he said

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powerful sexual and aggressive forces which were the remnants of our animal past.

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Feelings we repressed because they were too dangerous.

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Dr. Earnest Jones - Colleague of Freud: Freud devised a method

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for exploring the hidden part of the mind which we nowadays call the unconscious

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this the part is totally unknown to our consciousness.

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That there exists a barrier in all our minds which prevents these

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hidden and unwelcome impulses from the unconscious from emerging.

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In 1914 the Austria-Hungarian Empire led Europe into war.

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As the horror mounted Freud saw it as terrible evidence of the truth of his findings.

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The saddest thing he wrote, is that, this is exactly the way we should have expected

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people to behave, from our knowledge of psychoanalysis.

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Governments had unleashed the primitive forces in humans beings

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and no one seemed to know how to stop them.

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At that time, Freud's young nephew, Edward Bernays was working as a press agent in America.

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His main client was the world famous opera singer Caruso who was touring the United States.

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Bernays' parents had emigrated to America 20 years before,

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but he kept in touch with his Uncle who joined him for Holidays in the Alps.

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But Bernays was now about to return to Europe for a very different reason.

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On the night that Caruso opened in Toledo Ohio

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America announced that it was entering the war against Germany and Austria.

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As a part of the war effort, the US government set up a committee on public information

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and Bernays was employed to promote America's war aims in the press.

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The president Woodrow Wilson, had announced that the United States would fight

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not to restore the old empires

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but to bring democracy to all of Europe.

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Bernays proved extremely skillful at promoting this idea both at home and abroad

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and at the end of the war was asked to accompany the President to the Paris Peace Conference.

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Edward Bernays - 1991: Then to my surprise they asked me to go

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with Woodrow Wilson to the peace conference.

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And at the age of 26 I was in Paris for the entire time of the peace conference

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that was held in the suburb of Paris and we worked to make the world safe for democracy.

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That was the big slogan.

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Wilson's reception in Paris astounded Bernays and the other American propagandists.

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Their propaganda has portrayed Wilson as a liberator deci a trebuit ;a am g[sitof the people.

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The man who would create a new world in which the individual would be free.

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They had made him a hero of the masses.

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And as he watched the crowd surge around Wilson,

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Bernays began to wonder whether it would be possible

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to do the same type of mass persuasion, but in peace time.

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Edward Bernays - 1991: When I came back to the United States, I decided

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that if you could use propaganda for war you could certainly use it for peace.

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And propaganda got to be a bad word because of the Germans using it.

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So what I did was try to find some other words so we found the word "Council on Public Relations".

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Bernays returned to New York and set up as a Public Relations Councilman

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in small office off Broadway.

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It was the first time the term had even been used.

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Since the end of the 19th century, America had become a mass industrial society

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with millions clustered together in the cities.

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Bernays was determined to find a way to manage and alter the way

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these new crowds thought and felt.

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To do this he turned to the writings of his Uncle Sigmund.

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While in Paris Bernays had sent his Uncle a gift of some Havana cigars.

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In return Freud had sent him a copy of his "General Introduction to Psychoanalysis".

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Bernays read it, and the picture of hidden irrational forces inside human beings, fascinated him.

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He wondered whether he might make money by manipulation of the unconscious.

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Pat Jackson - Public Relations Adviser and Colleague of Bernays:

What Eddie got from Freud, was indeed this idea

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that there is a lot more going on in human decision making.

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Not only among individuals but even more importantly among groups

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that this idea that information drives behavior.

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So Eddie began to formulate this idea that you had to look at things that will play

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to people's irrational emotions.

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You see, that mooved Eddie immediately into a different category from other people in his field

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and most government officials and managers of the day

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who thought if you just hit people with all this factual information

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they would look at that say go "of course"

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and Eddie knew that was not the way the world worked.

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Bernays set out to experiment with the minds of the popular classes.

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His most dramatic experiment was to persuade women to smoke.

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At that time there was a taboo against women smoking and one of his early clients George Hill,

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the President of the American Tobacco corporation asked Bernays to find a way of breaking it.

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Edward Bernays - 1991:

He says we're losing half of our market.

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Because men have invoked a taboo against women smoking in public.

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Can you do anything about that? I said let me think about it.

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And then I said: If I may have permission to see a psychoanalyst

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to find out what cigarettes mean to women.

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He said: what'll cost? So I called up Dr. Brille,

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A.A. Brille, who was the leading psychoanalyst in New York at the time.

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- How come you didn't call your uncle? Why didn'y you call your uncle?

- Cause he was in Vienna..

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A.A. Brille was one of the first psychoanalysts in America.

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And for a large fee, he told Bernays that cigarettes were a symbol of the penis

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and of male sexual power.

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He told Bernays that if he could

find a way to connect cigarettes

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with the idea of challenging male power

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then women would smoke, because then they would have their own penises.

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Every year New York held an Easter day parade to which thousands came.

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And Bernays decided to stage an event there .

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He persuaded a group of rich debutants to hide cigarettes under their clothes.

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Then, they should join the parade and at a given signal from him

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they were to light up the cigarettes dramatically.

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Bernays then informed the press that he had heard that a group of suffragettes

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were preparing to protest by lighting up what they called torches of freedom.

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Pat Jackson - Public Relations Adviser and Colleague of Bernays:

He knew this would be an outcry,

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and he knew that all of the photographers would be there to capture this moment

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so he was ready with a phrase which was "torches of freedom".

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So here you have a symbol, women, young women, debutantes,

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smoking a cigarette in public with a phrase that means

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anybody who believes in this kind of equality

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pretty much has to support them in the ensuing debate about this,

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because... "torches of freedom".

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I mean, What's on all our American coins? it's liberty, she's holding up the torch, you see?

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and so all of this is there together, there's emotion, there's memory and there's a rational phrase,

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even knowing it's using a lot of emotionall, it's a phrase that works in a rational sense...

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And all of this is together...

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And So the next day this was not just in all the New York papers

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it was across the United States and around the world.

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And from that point forward the sale of cigarettes to woman began to rise.

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He had made them socially acceptable with a single symbolic act.

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What Bernays had created was the idea that if a women smoked

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it made her more powerful and independent.

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An idea that still persists today.

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It made him realize that it was possible to persuade people to behave irrationally

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if you link products to their emotional desires and feelings.

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The idea that smoking actually made women freer, was completely irrational.

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But it made them feel more independent.

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It meant that irrelevant objects could become powerful emotional symbols

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of how you wanted to be seen by others.

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Peter Strauss - Employee of Bernays 1948-1952: Eddie Bernays saw the way

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to sell product was not to sell it to your intellect,

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that you ought to buy an automobile,

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but that you will feel better about it if you have this automobile.

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I think he originated that idea, that they weren't just purchasing something

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that they were engaging themselves emotionally or personally in that product or service.

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It's not that you think you need a new piece of clothing

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but you will feel better with the piece of clothing.

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That was his contribution in a very real sense.

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We see it all over the place today, but I think he originated the idea,

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the emotional connect to a product or service.

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What Bernays was doing fascinated America's corporations.

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They had come out of the war rich and powerful, but they had a growing worry.

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The system of mass production had flourished during the war

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and now millions of goods were pouring off production lines.

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that they were frightened of was the danger of overproduction,

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that there would come a point when people had enough goods and would simply stop buying.

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Up until that point, the majority of products were still sold to the masses on the basis of need.

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While the rich had long been used to luxury goods, for the millions of working class Americans

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most products were still advertised as necessities.

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Goods like shoes, stockings, even cars were promoted in functional terms, for their durability.

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The aim of the advertisements were simply to show people the products practical virtues, nothing more.

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What the corporations realized they had to do was transform the way the majority of Americans

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thought about products.

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One leading Wall Street banker, Paul Mazer of Leahman Brothers was clear about what was necessary.

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We must shift America, he wrote, from a needs, to a desires culture.

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People must be trained to desire, to want new things even before the old had been entirely consumed.

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We must shape a new mentality in America.

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Man's desires must overshadow his needs.

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Peter Solomon - Investment Banker - Leahman Brothers: Prior to that time

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there was no American consumer, there was the American worker.

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And there was the American owner.

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And they manufactured, and they saved and they ate what they had to

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and the people shopped for what they needed.

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And while the very rich may have bought things they didn't need, most people did not.

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And Mazer envisioned a break with that, where you would have things that you didn't actually need,

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but you wanted, as opposed to needed.

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And the man who would be at the center of changing that mentality for the corporations,

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was Edward Bernays.

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Stuart Ewen - Historian of Public Relations: Bernays really is the guy within the United States,

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more than anybody else,

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who sort of brings out to the table psychological theory as something that is an essential part of

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how, from the corporate side, of how we are going to appeal to the masses effectively

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and the whole sort of merchandising establishment and the sales establishment

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is ready for Sigmund Freud.

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I mean they are ready for understanding what motivates the human mind.

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And so there's this real openness to Bernays techniques being used to sell products to the masses.

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Beginning in the early 20's the New York banks funded the creation of chains of

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department stores across America.

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They were to be the outlets for the mass produced goods.

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And Bernays' job was to produce the new type of customer.

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Bernays began to create many of the techniques of mass consumer persuasion that we now live with.

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He was employed by William Randolph Hurst to promote his new women's magazines,

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and Bernays glamorized them by placing articles and advertisements

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that linked products made by others of his clients

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to famous film stars like Clara Bow, who was also his client.

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Bernays also began the practice of product placement in movies,

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and he dressed the stars at the films premieres

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with clothes and jewelry from other firms he represented.

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He was, he claimed, the first person to tell car companies

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they could sell cars as symbols of male sexuality.

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He employed psychologists to issue reports that said products were good for you

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and then pretended they were independent studies.

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He organized fashion shows in department stores

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and paid celebrities to repeat the new and essential message,

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you bought things not just for need but to express your inner sense of your self to others.

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Mrs. Stillman, 1920s Celebrity Aviator: There's a psychology of dress,

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have you ever thought about it?

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How it can express your character?

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00:19:18,396 --> 00:19:22,213

You all have interesting characters but some of them are all hidden.

235

00:19:22,714 --> 00:19:28,287

I wonder why you all want to dress always the same, with the same hats and the same coats.

236

00:19:28,965 --> 00:19:32,821

I'm sure all of you are interesting and have wonderful things about you,

237

00:19:33,134 --> 00:19:38,678

but looking at you in the street you all look so much the same.

238

00:19:39,154 --> 00:19:42,841

And that's why I'm talking to you about the psychology of dress.

239

00:19:43,117 --> 00:19:46,664

Try and express yourselves better in your dress.

240

00:19:50,007 --> 00:19:53,395

Bring out certain things that you think are hidden.

241

00:19:54,180 --> 00:19:57,133

I wonder if you've thought about this angle of your personality.

242

00:19:59,073 --> 00:20:02,946

- I'd like to ask you some questions...

- Why do you like short skirts?

243

00:20:03,197 --> 00:20:04,979

- Oh, because there's more to see...

244

00:20:05,259 --> 00:20:09,842

- More to see, eh?

- What good does that do you?

245

00:20:10,431 --> 00:20:14,218

- It makes you more attractive.

246

00:20:14,511 --> 00:20:15,906

- oh, it does?

247

00:20:19,355 --> 00:20:24,788

In 1927 an American journalist wrote: A change has come over our democracy,

248

00:20:25,042 --> 00:20:27,259

it is called consumptionism.

249

00:20:27,807 --> 00:20:32,698

The American citizens first importance to his country is now no longer that of citizen,

250

00:20:32,935 --> 00:20:35,423

but that of consumer.

251

00:20:37,032 --> 00:20:41,606

The growing wave of consumerism helped in turn to create a stock market boom.

252

00:20:42,044 --> 00:20:45,064

And yet again Edward Bernays became involved.

253

00:20:45,575 --> 00:20:49,360

Promoting the novel idea that ordinary people should buy shares,

254

00:20:49,684 --> 00:20:52,923

borrowing money from banks, that he also represented.

255

00:20:53,532 --> 00:20:56,287

And yet again, millions followed his advice.

256

00:20:57,360 --> 00:21:00,732

Peter Strauss - Employee of Bernays 1948-1952: He was uniquely knowledgeable about

257

00:21:00,732 --> 00:21:05,261

how people in large numbers are going to react to products and ideas,

258

00:21:07,451 --> 00:21:10,561

but in political terms if he were to go out

259

00:21:10,954 --> 00:21:14,373

I can't imagine he could get three people to stand and listen.

260

00:21:14,809 --> 00:21:19,421

He wasn't particularly articulate, he was kind of funny looking, and didn't have

261

00:21:19,672 --> 00:21:24,818

any sense of reaching out for people one on one. None at all.

262

00:21:25,248 --> 00:21:28,951

He didn't talk about, didn't think about people in groups of one,

263

00:21:29,266 --> 00:21:32,440

he thought about people in groups of thousands.

264

00:21:41,329 --> 00:21:45,438

Bernays soon became famous as the man who understood the mind of the crowd,

265

00:21:45,925 --> 00:21:49,138

and in 1924 the President contacted him.

266

00:21:50,237 --> 00:21:54,352

President Coolidge was a quiet taciturn man and had become a national joke.

267

00:21:55,348 --> 00:21:58,006

The press portrayed him as a dull humorless figure.

268

00:21:58,907 --> 00:22:02,908

Bernays' solution was to do exactly the same as he had done with products.

269

00:22:03,283 --> 00:22:06,677

He persuaded 34 famous film stars to visit the White House,

270

00:22:08,130 --> 00:22:12,083

and for the first time politics became involved with public relations.

271

00:22:14,017 --> 00:22:20,849

Bernays speaking in 1991:

And I lined up these 34 people and I'd say what's your name,

272

00:22:21,793 --> 00:22:26,362

and he'd say Al Jolson, and I'd say Mr. President, Al Jolson.

273

00:22:27,073 --> 00:22:34,444

The next day every newspaper in the United States had a front page story:

274

00:22:35,385 --> 00:22:41,865

"President Coolidge Entertains Actors at White House".

275

00:22:42,680 --> 00:22:50,007

And the Times had a headline which said "President Nearly Laughed"

276

00:22:54,232 --> 00:22:56,230

and everybody was happy.

277

00:23:00,369 --> 00:23:06,273

But while Bernays became rich and powerful in

America, in Vienna his uncle was facing disaster.

278

00:23:06,725 --> 00:23:10,995

Like much of Europe Vienna was suffering an economic crisis and massive inflation

279

00:23:11,242 --> 00:23:13,990

which wiped out all of Freud's' savings.

280

00:23:14,384 --> 00:23:17,544

Facing bankruptcy he wrote to his nephew for help.

281

00:23:18,399 --> 00:23:23,169

Bernays responded by arranging for Freud's works to be published for the first time in America,

282

00:23:23,962 --> 00:23:29,680

and began to send his uncle precious dollars which Freud kept secretly in a foreign bank account.

283

00:23:32,897 --> 00:23:34,609

Pat Jackson - Public Relations Adviser and Colleague of Bernays:

He was Freud's "agent"

284

00:23:34,609 --> 00:23:36,568

if you will, to get his books published.

285

00:23:36,815 --> 00:23:40,314

Well of course, once the books were being published, Eddie couldn't help himself but to

286

00:23:40,726 --> 00:23:46,798

promote these books; see that everybody read them, make them controversial;

287

00:23:47,172 --> 00:23:50,398

emphasize the fact that "do you know what Freud says about sex?"

288

00:23:50,612 --> 00:23:53,765

and what he thinks cigarettes are a symbol of and so on and so forth...

289

00:23:53,987 --> 00:23:55,845

How do you suppose all those stories got out?

290

00:23:56,047 --> 00:23:59,596

Certainly the academics weren't spreading these around the country, Eddie Bernays was...

291

00:24:00,298 --> 00:24:06,922

Then when Freud became accepted, well then of course to go to a client and go 'well Uncle Siggy'

292

00:24:07,321 --> 00:24:09,098

see then that had some cache.

293

00:24:09,355 --> 00:24:16,381

But notice there, first Eddie created Uncle Siggy in the US, made him acceptable secondly,

294

00:24:16,614 --> 00:24:21,980

and thirdly then, capitalized on Uncle Siggy. Typical Bernays performance.

295

00:24:22,791 --> 00:24:26,800

Bernays also suggested Freud promote

himself in the United States.

296

00:24:27,018 --> 00:24:31,864

He proposed his uncle write an article

for Cosmopolitan, the magazine that Bernays represented,

297

00:24:32,197 --> 00:24:35,443

entitled 'A Woman's Mental Place in the Home'.

298

00:24:35,760 --> 00:24:39,238

Freud was furious. Such an idea

he said was unthinkable,

299

00:24:39,481 --> 00:24:42,273

it was vulgar and anyway,

he hated America.

300

00:24:44,740 --> 00:24:48,025

Freud was becoming increasingly pessimistic about human beings.

301

00:24:48,992 --> 00:24:52,430

In the mid 20s he retreated in the summers to the Alps,

302

00:24:52,771 --> 00:24:57,022

sometimes staying in an old hotel, the Pension Moritz in Berchtesgaden.

303

00:24:57,700 --> 00:24:59,054

It is now a ruin.

304

00:25:00,647 --> 00:25:03,039

Freud began to write about group behavior;

305

00:25:03,714 --> 00:25:07,287

about how easily the unconscious aggressive forces of human beings

306

00:25:07,573 --> 00:25:10,368

could be triggered when they were in crowds.

307

00:25:11,295 --> 00:25:15,400

Freud believed he had underestimated

the aggressive instincts within human beings;

308

00:25:16,265 --> 00:25:19,577

they were far more dangerous than he had originally thought.

309

00:25:20,888 --> 00:25:27,026

Dr. Ernst Federn - Viennese Psychoanalyst:

After World War-I, Freud was basically a pessimist.

310

00:25:27,427 --> 00:25:32,014

He felt that man is an impossible creature

311

00:25:33,229 --> 00:25:39,994

and a very sadistic and bad species

312

00:25:41,683 --> 00:25:45,639

and did not believe that man can be improved.

313

00:25:45,955 --> 00:25:48,717

Man is a ferocious animal,

314

00:25:48,981 --> 00:25:53,527

the most ferocious animal that exists.

315

00:25:54,119 --> 00:25:58,026

They enjoy torturing and killing

316

00:25:58,402 --> 00:26:00,902

and he didn't like man.

317

00:26:03,905 --> 00:26:07,529

The publication of Freud's works in America had an extraordinary effect

318

00:26:07,734 --> 00:26:10,704

on journalists and intellectuals in the 1920s.

319

00:26:10,996 --> 00:26:16,469

What fascinated and frightened them was the picture Freud painted of submerged dangerous forces

320

00:26:16,707 --> 00:26:20,016

lurking just under the surface of modern society.

321

00:26:20,530 --> 00:26:23,838

Forces that could erupt easily to produce the frenzied mob

322

00:26:24,050 --> 00:26:26,737

which had the power to destroy even governments.

323

00:26:26,997 --> 00:26:29,687

It was this they believed had happened in Russia.

324

00:26:31,121 --> 00:26:35,403

To many this meant that one of the guiding principles of mass democracy was wrong;

325

00:26:35,936 --> 00:26:40,553

the belief that human beings could be trusted to make decisions on a rational basis.

326

00:26:41,834 --> 00:26:44,747

The leading political writer, Walter Lippmann argued that

327

00:26:44,976 --> 00:26:49,468

if human beings were in reality driven by unconscious irrational forces

328

00:26:49,769 --> 00:26:52,080

then it was necessary to re-think democracy.

329

00:26:53,809 --> 00:26:58,517

What was needed was a new elite that could manage what he called the bewildered herd.

330

00:26:59,400 --> 00:27:03,027

This would be done through psychological techniques that would control

331

00:27:03,233 --> 00:27:05,568

the unconscious feelings of the masses.

332

00:27:07,621 --> 00:27:10,925

Stewart Ewen - Historian of Public Relations:

And so here you have Walter Lippmann, probably the most influential

333

00:27:11,166 --> 00:27:13,956

political thinker in the United States,

334

00:27:14,172 --> 00:27:19,339

who is essentially saying the basic mechanism of the mass mind is unreason,

335

00:27:19,591 --> 00:27:22,246

is irrationality, is animality.

336

00:27:22,447 --> 00:27:26,812

He believes that the mob in the street, which is how he sees ordinary people,

337

00:27:27,213 --> 00:27:30,751

are people who are driven not by their minds but by their spinal chords.

338

00:27:31,140 --> 00:27:36,340

The notion of animal drives, unconscious and instinctual drives,

339

00:27:36,340 --> 00:27:39,043

lurking beneath the surface of civilization;

340

00:27:39,393 --> 00:27:42,860

and so they started looking towards

psychological science

341

00:27:43,213 --> 00:27:49,111

as a way of understanding the mechanisms by which the popular mind works

342

00:27:50,151 --> 00:27:55,923

specifically with the goal of figuring out

how to understand and how to apply

343

00:27:56,151 --> 00:27:59,935

those mechanisms to strategies for social control.

344

00:28:01,122 --> 00:28:04,064

Edward Bernays was fascinated by Lippmann's arguments

345

00:28:04,718 --> 00:28:07,940

and also saw a way to promote himself by using them.

346

00:28:09,939 --> 00:28:14,562

In the 1920s he began to write a series of books which argued that he had developed

347

00:28:14,562 --> 00:28:17,312

the very techniques that Lippmann was calling for.

348

00:28:18,189 --> 00:28:22,675

By stimulating people's inner desires and then sating them with consumer products

349

00:28:23,019 --> 00:28:27,343

he was creating a new way to manage the irrational force of the masses.

350

00:28:28,952 --> 00:28:31,346

He called it "The engineering of consent".

351

00:28:33,079 --> 00:28:36,947

Ann Bernays, Daughter of Edward Bernays:

Democracy to my father was a wonderful concept,

352

00:28:37,265 --> 00:28:42,984

but I don't think he felt that all those publics out there had reliable judgment,

353

00:28:43,453 --> 00:28:50,915

and that they very easily might vote for the wrong man or want the wrong thing;

354

00:28:51,257 --> 00:28:54,206

so that they had to be guided from above.

355

00:28:55,463 --> 00:28:58,719

It's enlightened despotism in a sense.

356

00:29:00,346 --> 00:29:06,513

You appeal to their desires and unrecognized longings, that sort of thing.

357

00:29:08,373 --> 00:29:17,672

That you can tap into their deepest desires or their deepest fears and use that to your own purposes.

358

00:29:18,741 --> 00:29:23,529

And then in 1928 a President came to power, who agreed with Bernays.

359

00:29:24,676 --> 00:29:27,874

President Hoover was the first politician to articulate the idea

360

00:29:28,185 --> 00:29:31,875

that consumerism would become the central motor of American life.

361

00:29:33,063 --> 00:29:37,469

After his election he told a group of advertisers and public relations men:

362

00:29:38,233 --> 00:29:41,310

"You Have taken over the job of creating desire

363

00:29:42,062 --> 00:29:46,811

and have transformed people into constantly moving happiness machines.

364

00:29:47,586 --> 00:29:51,488

Machines which have become the key to economic progress."

365

00:29:53,998 --> 00:29:59,814

What was beginning to emerge in the 1920s was a new idea of how to run mass democracy.

366

00:30:00,983 --> 00:30:05,847

At it's heart was the consuming self which not only made the economy work

367

00:30:06,346 --> 00:30:10,711

but was also happy and docile and so created a stable society.

368

00:30:13,088 --> 00:30:17,180

Stewart Ewen - Historian of Public Relations:

Both Bernays and Lippmann's concept of managing the masses

369

00:30:17,440 --> 00:30:23,213

takes the idea of democracy and turns it into a palliative,

370

00:30:23,753 --> 00:30:28,910

It turns it into giving people some kind of feel good medication

371

00:30:29,705 --> 00:30:33,313

that will respond to an immediate pain or immediate yearning

372

00:30:33,626 --> 00:30:37,628

but will not alter the objective circumstances one iota.

373

00:30:39,761 --> 00:30:45,532

The idea of democracy at it's heart was about changing the relations of power

374

00:30:45,765 --> 00:30:48,126

that had governed the world for so long;

375

00:30:48,341 --> 00:30:53,078

and Bernays' concept of democracy was one of maintaining the relations of power,

376

00:30:53,296 --> 00:30:58,662

even if it meant that one needed to stimulate the psychological lives of the public.

377

00:30:59,377 --> 00:31:02,439

And in fact in his mind that is what was necessary.

378

00:31:04,192 --> 00:31:07,517

That if you can keep stimulating the irrational self

379

00:31:08,290 --> 00:31:12,451

then leadership can go on doing what it wants to do.

380

00:31:14,232 --> 00:31:17,327

Bernays now became one of the central figures in a business elite

381

00:31:17,608 --> 00:31:21,546

that dominated American society and politics in the 1920s.

382

00:31:22,482 --> 00:31:28,172

He also became extremely rich and lived in a suite of rooms in one of New York's most expensive hotels

383

00:31:28,629 --> 00:31:30,639

where he gave frequent parties.

384

00:31:31,019 --> 00:31:34,362

Peter Strauss - Employee of Bernays 1948-1952:

Oh my goodness, he had a home in the corner suite

385

00:31:34,921 --> 00:31:37,537

of the Sherry Netherland hotel

386

00:31:37,537 --> 00:31:39,017

and here's this wonderful suite with all these windows

387

00:31:39,017 --> 00:31:41,509

looking out on central park and across at the plaza,

388

00:31:41,509 --> 00:31:43,298

and on the square,

389

00:31:43,637 --> 00:31:46,860

and he would use this place to hold a soiree.

390

00:31:47,111 --> 00:31:50,268

The mayor would come, all the media leaders would come,

391

00:31:50,268 --> 00:31:53,516

the political leaders, the business leaders, the people in the arts;

392

00:31:53,516 --> 00:31:59,614

it was a who's who. People wanted to know Eddie Bernays because he himself

393

00:31:59,832 --> 00:32:05,697

became a sort of a famous man, a sort of magician that could make things happen.

394

00:32:05,697 --> 00:32:08,112

Ann Bernays, Daughter of Edward Bernays:

He knows everybody he knows the mayor,

395

00:32:08,112 --> 00:32:13,971

and he knows the senator, and he calls politicians on the telephone as if he did get

396

00:32:14,230 --> 00:32:20,946

literally a high or bang out of doing what he did,

397

00:32:21,207 --> 00:32:25,302

and that's fine, but it can be a little hard on the people around you.

398

00:32:25,801 --> 00:32:29,364

Especially when you make other people feel stupid.

399

00:32:30,114 --> 00:32:33,180

The people who worked for him were stupid, the children were stupid,

400

00:32:33,510 --> 00:32:40,741

and if people did things in a way that he wouldn't have done them, they were stupid.

401

00:32:41,114 --> 00:32:44,896

It was a word that he used over and over:

"don't be stupid".

402

00:32:45,949 --> 00:32:49,794

- And the masses?

- They were stupid.

403

00:32:54,805 --> 00:32:58,695

But Bernays' power was about to be destroyed dramatically

404

00:32:58,929 --> 00:33:02,867

and by a type of human rationality that he could do nothing to control.

405

00:33:03,901 --> 00:33:08,587

At the end of October 1929 Bernays organized a huge national event to celebrate

406

00:33:08,587 --> 00:33:12,305

the 50th anniversary of the invention of the light bulb.

407

00:33:12,649 --> 00:33:17,512

President Hoover, the leaders of major corporations and bankers like John D Rockefeller

408

00:33:17,715 --> 00:33:22,149

were all summoned by Bernays to celebrate the power of American business.

409

00:33:23,141 --> 00:33:27,744

But even as they gathered news came through that shares on the New York stock exchange

410

00:33:27,744 --> 00:33:30,650

were beginning to fall catastrophically.

411

00:33:34,519 --> 00:33:38,602

Throughout the 1920s speculators had borrowed billions of dollars.

412

00:33:38,602 --> 00:33:44,440

The banks had promoted the idea that this was a new era where market crashes were a thing of the past.

413

00:33:45,148 --> 00:33:50,819

But they were wrong. What was about to happend was the biggest stock market crash in history.

414

00:33:51,303 --> 00:33:56,116

Investors had panicked and begun to sell in a blind relentless fury that no reassurance

415

00:33:56,116 --> 00:33:59,603

by bankers or politicians could halt.

416

00:34:02,981 --> 00:34:07,805

And on the 29th of October 1929, the market collapsed.

417

00:34:15,832 --> 00:34:18,418

The effect of the crash on the American economy was disastrous.

418

00:34:19,208 --> 00:34:22,631

Faced with recession and unemployment, millions of American workers

419

00:34:22,631 --> 00:34:25,399

stopped buying goods they didn't need.

420

00:34:25,399 --> 00:34:29,544

The consumer boom that Bernays had done so much to engineer, disappeared.

421

00:34:29,921 --> 00:34:33,806

And he and the profession of public relations fell from favor.

422

00:34:34,178 --> 00:34:37,308

Bernays' brief moment of power seemed to be over.

423

00:34:46,776 --> 00:34:50,196

The effect of the Wall Street crash on Europe was also catastrophic.

424

00:34:50,799 --> 00:34:54,999

It intensified the growing economic and political crisis in the new democracies.

425

00:34:56,010 --> 00:34:58,935

In both Germany and Austria, there were violent street battles

426

00:34:59,143 --> 00:35:02,205

between the armed wings of different political parties.

427

00:35:06,402 --> 00:35:12,548

Against this backdrop Freud who was suffering from cancer of the jaw retreated yet again to the alps.

428

00:35:14,483 --> 00:35:17,651

He wrote a book called "Civilization and it's Discontents".

429

00:35:19,089 --> 00:35:24,207

It was a powerful attack on the idea that civilization was an expression of human progress.

430

00:35:25,946 --> 00:35:30,697

Instead Freud argued, civilization had been constructed to control

431

00:35:31,007 --> 00:35:34,351

the dangerous animal forces inside human beings.

432

00:35:35,976 --> 00:35:39,709

What was implicit in Freud's argument was that the ideal of individual freedom

433

00:35:40,000 --> 00:35:43,209

which was at the heart of democracy was impossible.

434

00:35:43,912 --> 00:35:48,886

Human beings could never be allowed to truly express themselves because it was too dangerous.

435

00:35:50,010 --> 00:35:54,728

They must always be controlled and thus always be discontent.

436

00:35:59,710 --> 00:36:03,625

Dr. Ernst Federn - Viennese Psychoanalyst:

Man doesn't want to be civilized

437

00:36:04,386 --> 00:36:09,899

and civilization brings discontent but is necessarily to survival

438

00:36:12,564 --> 00:36:19,211

so he must be discontent because this would be the only way to keep you within your limits.

439

00:36:20,288 --> 00:36:26,562

- What did Freud think about the idea of the equality of man?

- He didn't believe in it.

440

00:36:28,567 --> 00:36:36,629

We had 32 parties and Hitler said: "before those parties don't vanish there is no Germany".

441

00:36:37,128 --> 00:36:47,090

That's true, you can't have 32 parties so they said this one person will put an end to this comedy.

442

00:36:48,364 --> 00:36:50,788

Freud was not alone in his pessimism.

443

00:36:51,005 --> 00:36:56,286

Politicians like Adolf Hitler emerged from a growing despair in the 1920s about democracy.

444

00:36:57,039 --> 00:37:01,992

The Nazis were convinced that democracy was dangerous because it unleashed a selfish individualism

445

00:37:02,383 --> 00:37:04,728

but didn't have the means to control it.

446

00:37:05,883 --> 00:37:10,403

Hitler's party - "The National Socialists" stood in elections promising in their propaganda

447

00:37:10,663 --> 00:37:15,218

they would abandon democracy because of the chaos and unemployment it led to.

448

00:37:17,479 --> 00:37:20,322

"The democratic parties are promising a heaven on earth!"

449

00:37:27,030 --> 00:37:32,251

"38 parties - over 6 million unemployed"

450

00:37:35,626 --> 00:37:39,490

In March 1933, the National Socialists were elected to power in Germany

451

00:37:39,908 --> 00:37:44,724

and they set out to create a society that would control human beings in a different way.

452

00:37:46,502 --> 00:37:49,191

One of their first acts was to take control of business.

453

00:37:49,833 --> 00:37:53,057

The planning of production would in the future be done by the state.

454

00:37:53,412 --> 00:37:57,411

The free market was too unstable as the crash in America had proven.

455

00:37:58,756 --> 00:38:01,429

Workers leisure time was also planned by the state

456

00:38:01,684 --> 00:38:04,349

through a new organization called "strength through joy".

457

00:38:05,210 --> 00:38:08,086

One of it's mottos was: "Service, not self!".

458

00:38:14,266 --> 00:38:18,691

But the Nazi's did not see this as return to an old form autocratic control.

459

00:38:19,409 --> 00:38:21,658

It was a new alternative to democracy,

460

00:38:21,910 --> 00:38:25,473

in which the feelings and desires of the masses would still be central,

461

00:38:26,493 --> 00:38:30,409

but they would be channeled in such a way as to bind the nation together.

462

00:38:31,274 --> 00:38:35,728

The chief exponent of this was Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda.

462

00:38:37,274 --> 00:38:43,728

It may be a good thing to hold power based on guns

462

00:38:44,274 --> 00:38:47,728

It is far better though if you win the heart of the nation

462

00:38:48,274 --> 00:38:50,728

and keep it's affection !

463

00:38:53,102 --> 00:38:57,698

Goebbels organized huge rallies whose function he said was to forge the mind of the nation

464

00:38:58,024 --> 00:39:01,479

into a unity of thinking, feeling and desire.

465

00:39:02,280 --> 00:39:04,718

One of his inspirations, he told an American journalist

466

00:39:04,919 --> 00:39:08,431

was the writings of Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays.

467

00:39:10,372 --> 00:39:13,573

In his work on crowd psychology, Freud had described how

468

00:39:13,822 --> 00:39:18,949

the frightening irrationality inside human beings could emerge in such groups.

469

00:39:19,156 --> 00:39:23,478

The deep what he called 'libidinal' forces of desire were given up to the leader

470

00:39:24,123 --> 00:39:28,129

while the aggressive instincts are unleashed on those outside the group.

471

00:39:28,814 --> 00:39:33,510

Freud wrote this as a warning, but the Nazis were deliberately encouraging these forces

472

00:39:33,889 --> 00:39:37,261

because they believed they could master and control them.

473

00:39:41,190 --> 00:39:47,391

Dr Leoppold Lowenthal - Freudian Psychoanalyst at a rally in Vienna in 2000:

Freud was saying that masses

474

00:39:47,637 --> 00:39:51,753

are bound by libidinal forces.

475

00:39:52,515 --> 00:40:01,107

They love each other and delegate their ideas and feelings through the "jack on top".

476

00:40:01,724 --> 00:40:04,734

What are libidinal forces?

477

00:40:05,004 --> 00:40:06,984

Well, forces of love.

478

00:40:09,500 --> 00:40:15,482

Not hate?

No,.. hate?... Hate is delegated on the others, outside.

478

00:40:28,500 --> 00:40:30,482

The mob...

479

00:40:40,196 --> 00:40:45,770

I could see from afar, looking up between the trees

480

00:40:45,770 --> 00:40:50,953

how there were hundreds of thousands of people when they passed Hitler

481

00:40:51,206 --> 00:41:01,382

they were speaking completely delirious and they

began to shout, this cries will never get out of my ears...

482

00:41:01,666 --> 00:41:12,082

"Heil! Sieg Heil!" (Hail! Hail Victory!)...and here I got confirmation how those irrational forces,

483

00:41:12,300 --> 00:41:19,197

uncontrollable forces in Germany, in the Germans, had erupted, were brought out

484

00:41:19,535 --> 00:41:31,080

were running wild where the party was marching, marching on."

484

00:41:29,535 --> 00:41:35,080

Fuehrer (Leader's) comand we will follow!

484

00:41:40,535 --> 00:41:42,080

Crowds and their behavior

485

00:41:44,301 --> 00:41:48,523

And in America too democracy was under threat from the force of the angry mob.

486

00:41:50,428 --> 00:41:53,263

The effect of the stock market crash had been disastrous.

487

00:41:53,849 --> 00:41:58,835

There was growing violence as an angry population took out there frustration on the corporations

488

00:41:59,055 --> 00:42:01,491

who were seen to have caused this disaster.

489

00:42:03,209 --> 00:42:08,704

Then in 1932 a new President was elected who was also going to use the power of the state

490

00:42:08,930 --> 00:42:11,337

to control the free market.

491

00:42:11,712 --> 00:42:15,944

But his aim, was not to destroy democracy, but to strengthen it.

492

00:42:16,168 --> 00:42:20,422

And to do this he was going to develop a new way of dealing with the masses.

493

00:42:21,854 --> 00:42:25,711

President Roosevelt's in his inauguration speech:

"I am prepared under my constitutional duty

494

00:42:25,928 --> 00:42:31,672

to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of stricken world, may require.

495

00:42:32,076 --> 00:42:36,091

But, in the event that the national emergency is still critical

496

00:42:36,496 --> 00:42:41,871

I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me.

497

00:42:42,432 --> 00:42:45,779

I shall ask the congress for the one remaining instrument

498

00:42:46,218 --> 00:42:51,406

to meet the crisis - broad executive power."

499

00:42:56,875 --> 00:42:59,658

It was the start of what would become known as "The New Deal".

500

00:43:00,623 --> 00:43:04,181

Roosevelt assembled a group of young

technocrats and planners in Washington.

501

00:43:05,210 --> 00:43:10,850

He told them that their job was to plan and run giant new industrial projects for the good of the nation.

502

00:43:12,179 --> 00:43:15,343

Roosevelt was convinced the stock market crash had shown

503

00:43:15,678 --> 00:43:19,976

that "laissez faire"-capitalism could no longer run modern industrial economies.

504

00:43:20,446 --> 00:43:22,656

This has become the job of government.

505

00:43:23,884 --> 00:43:29,039

Big business was horrified but The New Deal had attracted the admiration of the Nazis,

506

00:43:29,373 --> 00:43:31,664

especially Joseph Goebbels.

507

00:43:34,088 --> 00:43:40,759

Joseph Goebbels:

"I am very interested in social developments in America.

508

00:43:40,998 --> 00:43:47,165

I believe that President Roosevelt has chosen the right path.

509

00:43:47,506 --> 00:43:52,624

We are dealing with the greatest social problems ever known.

510

00:43:52,826 --> 00:44:02,453

Millions of unemployed must get their jobs back and this cannot be left to private initiative.

511

00:44:07,472 --> 00:44:12,222

It's the government that must tackle the problem."

512

00:44:14,961 --> 00:44:19,291

But although Roosevelt like the Nazis was trying to organize society in a different way,

513

00:44:20,075 --> 00:44:23,849

unlike the Nazis he believed that human beings were rational

514

00:44:24,065 --> 00:44:27,126

and could be trusted to take an active part in government.

515

00:44:28,607 --> 00:44:32,440

Roosevelt believed it was possible to explain his policies to ordinary Americans

516

00:44:32,440 --> 00:44:34,904

and to take into account their opinions.

517

00:44:35,732 --> 00:44:41,316

To do this he was helped by the new ideas of an American social scientist called George Gallup.

518

00:44:43,065 --> 00:44:47,667

"Favorite reading of new deal Washington - the survey of US public opinion.

519

00:44:47,920 --> 00:44:52,638

From offices at Princeton New Jersey a famed statistician, dr. George Gallup tells Washington

520

00:44:52,858 --> 00:44:55,731

from week to week, what the nation is thinking.

521

00:44:57,187 --> 00:45:02,438

And in New York Fortune Magazines analyst Elmo

Roper compiles for publication a continuous record

522

00:45:02,438 --> 00:45:06,569

of the nations approval or disapproval of how the country is being run."

523

00:45:07,468 --> 00:45:12,767

Gallup and Roper rejected Bernays' view that human beings were at the mercy of unconscious forces

524

00:45:13,015 --> 00:45:15,830

and so needed to be controlled.

525

00:45:16,069 --> 00:45:19,268

Their system of opinion polling was based on the idea that people

526

00:45:19,608 --> 00:45:22,515

could be trusted to know what they wanted.

527

00:45:22,879 --> 00:45:27,131

They argued that one could measure and

predict the opinions and behavior of the public

528

00:45:27,351 --> 00:45:32,114

if one asked strictly factual questions and avoided manipulating their emotions.

528

00:45:35,351 --> 00:45:39,114

Well, how about this one? Do you think Franklin D. Roosevelt's new deal

528

00:45:39,651 --> 00:45:41,114

has been bad for the nation in general?

528

00:45:42,651 --> 00:45:45,614

No, that question is loaded.. It automaticly sugests an answer..

528

00:45:46,151 --> 00:45:52,114

Well, how 'bout this? Is your present feeling towards president Roosevelt, one of general aproval,

528

00:45:53,151 --> 00:45:55,114

or general disaproval?

528

00:45:56,151 --> 00:45:58,114

That's better!...

529

00:45:59,175 --> 00:46:03,895

George Gallup Jr. - Son of George Gallup:

Prior to scientific polling the view of many people

530

00:46:04,176 --> 00:46:07,551

was that you couldn't trust public opinion, that it was irrational;

531

00:46:08,238 --> 00:46:12,303

that it was ill-informed, that it was chaotic, unruly and so forth;

532

00:46:12,613 --> 00:46:15,364

and so that opinnnion should be dismissed.

533

00:46:15,612 --> 00:46:22,554

But with scientific polling I think it established very clearly that people are rational,

534

00:46:22,866 --> 00:46:24,742

that they do make good decisions,

535

00:46:24,951 --> 00:46:29,616

and this offers democracy a chance to be truly informed by the public

536

00:46:29,888 --> 00:46:33,802

giving everybody a voice in the way the country is run.

537

00:46:34,321 --> 00:46:37,925

I know my father wouldn't necessarily say that the voice of the public is the voice of God,

538

00:46:38,146 --> 00:46:44,162

but he did feel very much that the voice of the people is a rational voice and should be heard.

539

00:46:45,927 --> 00:46:50,640

What Roosevelt was doing was forging a new

connection between the masses and politicians.

540

00:46:51,492 --> 00:46:55,931

No longer were they irrational consumers who were managed by sating their desires,

541

00:46:56,138 --> 00:47:00,837

instead, they were sensible citizens who could take part in the governing of the country.

542

00:47:01,608 --> 00:47:07,432

In 1936 Roosevelt stood for re-election. He promised further control over big business.

543

00:47:07,715 --> 00:47:10,682

To the corporations it was the beginning of a dictatorship.

544

00:47:15,471 --> 00:47:19,338

Big business leader speaking in an interview:

"Roosevelt interferes with private enterprise

545

00:47:19,845 --> 00:47:23,025

and he's running the country into debt for generations to come.

546

00:47:23,025 --> 00:47:26,596

The way to get recovery is to let business alone."

547

00:47:26,902 --> 00:47:29,423

But Roosevelt was triumphantly re-elected.

547

00:47:29,602 --> 00:47:34,223

"It looks , my friens, like a real land-slide, this time..

547

00:47:35,202 --> 00:47:42,423

So, please let me thank you again, and tell you that I hope to see you all very soon,

547

00:47:43,302 --> 00:47:44,923

and wish you an affectionate good night!

548

00:47:46,390 --> 00:47:51,871

Faced with this, business now decided to fight back, to regain power in America.

549

00:47:52,591 --> 00:47:56,656

At the heart of the battle would be Edward Bernays and the profession he had invented,

550

00:47:56,991 --> 00:47:59,340

public relations.

551

00:48:00,797 --> 00:48:03,393

Stewart Ewen - Historian of Public Relations:

Following that lecture,

552

00:48:03,393 --> 00:48:09,123

business people start to get together and start to carry on discussions,

553

00:48:09,123 --> 00:48:14,419

primarily in private and they start talking to each other about the need to sort of carry on

554

00:48:14,656 --> 00:48:18,531

ideological warfare against the New Deal.

555

00:48:18,865 --> 00:48:24,969

And to sort of reassert the sort of connectedness between the idea of democracy on the one hand

556

00:48:25,179 --> 00:48:28,420

and the idea of privately owned business on the other.

557

00:48:28,782 --> 00:48:32,847

And so, under the umbrella of an organization that still exists

558

00:48:32,847 --> 00:48:36,124

which is called The National Association of Manufacturers

559

00:48:36,471 --> 00:48:41,422

and whose membership included all of the major corporations of the United States

560

00:48:42,155 --> 00:48:48,876

a campaign is launched explicitly designed to create emotional attachments

561

00:48:49,102 --> 00:48:51,921

between the public and big business;

562

00:48:52,334 --> 00:48:56,815

it's Bernays' techniques being used on a grand scale. I mean totally.

562

00:48:57,334 --> 00:49:00,815

A film story of the "General Motors Parade of Progress"

563

00:49:16,129 --> 00:49:20,147

The campaign set out to show dramatically that it was business not politicians

564

00:49:20,147 --> 00:49:22,315

who have created modern America.

565

00:49:28,034 --> 00:49:31,876

Bernays was an advisor to General Motors but he was no longer alone.

566

00:49:32,474 --> 00:49:34,474

The industry he had founded now flourished

567

00:49:34,692 --> 00:49:39,036

as hundreds of public relations advisors organized a vast campaign.

568

00:49:39,686 --> 00:49:43,504

They not only used advertisements and billboards but managed to insinuate their message

569

00:49:43,504 --> 00:49:46,525

into the editorial pages of the newspapers.

570

00:49:49,276 --> 00:49:51,193

It became a bitter fight.

571

00:49:51,441 --> 00:49:56,053

In response to the campaign the government made films to warn about the unscrupulous manipulation

572

00:49:56,053 --> 00:49:58,867

of the press by big business

573

00:49:59,085 --> 00:50:03,381

and the central villain was the new figure of the public relations man.

574

00:50:05,883 --> 00:50:09,413

"They try to achieve their ends by working entirely behind the scenes

575

00:50:09,616 --> 00:50:12,133

corrupting and deceiving the public.

576

00:50:12,480 --> 00:50:17,133

The aims of such groups may be either good or bad so far as the public interest is concerned,

577

00:50:17,458 --> 00:50:22,040

but their methods are a grave danger to democratic institutions."

578

00:50:22,975 --> 00:50:27,759

The films also showed how the responsible citizens could monitor the press themselves.

579

00:50:28,468 --> 00:50:33,038

They could create a chart that analyzed the reporting for signs of hidden bias.

580

00:50:35,225 --> 00:50:41,510

But such earnest instruction was to be no match for the powerful imagination of Edward Bernays.

581

00:50:44,841 --> 00:50:49,042

He was about to help create a vision of the utopia that free market capitalism

582

00:50:49,399 --> 00:50:52,854

would build in America if it was unleashed.

583

00:51:02,065 --> 00:51:08,282

In 1939 New York hosted the World's Fair.

Edward Bernays was a central adviser.

584

00:51:08,868 --> 00:51:14,373

He insisted that the theme be the link between democracy and American business.

585

00:51:20,687 --> 00:51:26,719

At the heart of the fair was a giant white dome that Bernays named "Democra-City"

586

00:51:29,532 --> 00:51:33,475

and the central exhibit was a vast working model of America's future

587

00:51:33,764 --> 00:51:36,793

constructed by the General Motors corporation.

588

00:51:37,794 --> 00:51:40,421

Ann Bernays - Daughter of Edward Bernays:

To my father, the World's Fair,

589

00:51:40,624 --> 00:51:44,258

was an opportunity to keep the status quo.

590

00:51:44,365 --> 00:51:51,375

That is, capitalism in a democracy, democracy and capitalism and that marriage.

591

00:51:57,144 --> 00:52:02,744

He did that by manipulating people and getting them to think that

592

00:52:03,244 --> 00:52:07,400

you couldn't have real democracy in anything but a capitalist society

593

00:52:08,536 --> 00:52:14,942

which was capable of doing anything; of creating these wonderful highways,

594

00:52:15,275 --> 00:52:20,193

of making moving pictures inside everybody's house,

595

00:52:21,661 --> 00:52:25,926

of telephones that didn't need chords, of sleek roadsters.

596

00:52:28,087 --> 00:52:33,519

It was consumerist but at the same time you inferred that

597

00:52:33,995 --> 00:52:37,482

in a funny way that democracy and capitalism went together.

598

00:52:39,055 --> 00:52:43,947

The World's Fair was an extraordinary success and captured America's imagination.

599

00:52:44,666 --> 00:52:48,120

The vision it portrayed was of a new form of democracy

600

00:52:48,493 --> 00:52:54,898

in which business responded to people's innermost desires in a way politicians could never do.

601

00:52:56,323 --> 00:53:00,672

But it was a form of democracy that depended on treating people not as active citizens,

602

00:53:00,978 --> 00:53:06,387

like Roosevelt did, but as passive consumers. Because this Bernays believed,

603

00:53:06,680 --> 00:53:10,244

was the key to control in a mass democracy.

604

00:53:11,150 --> 00:53:13,431

Stewart Ewen - Historian of Public Relations:

It's not that the people are in charge

605

00:53:13,744 --> 00:53:17,244

but that the people's desires are in charge.

606

00:53:17,486 --> 00:53:22,996

The people are not in charge, the people exercise no decision making power within this environment.

607

00:53:23,428 --> 00:53:29,285

So democracy is reduced from something which assumes an active citizenry

608

00:53:29,659 --> 00:53:32,939

to the idea of the public as passive consumers

609

00:53:36,634 --> 00:53:40,458

driven primarily by instinctual or unconscious desires

610

00:53:40,848 --> 00:53:45,868

and that if you can in fact trigger those needs and desires, you can get what you want from them.

611

00:53:48,908 --> 00:53:54,629

But this struggle between the two views of human beings as to whether they were rational or irrational

612

00:53:55,035 --> 00:53:58,525

was about to be dramatically affected by events in Europe.

613

00:53:59,283 --> 00:54:03,002

Events that would also change the fortunes of the Freud family.

614

00:54:06,411 --> 00:54:12,025

In March 1938 the Nazis annexed Austria. It was called the Anschluss.

615

00:54:12,286 --> 00:54:16,192

Hitler arrived in Vienna to an extraordinary outpouring of mass adulation

616

00:54:16,916 --> 00:54:21,710

but even as he drove through the city behind the scenes the Nazis were systematically whipping up

617

00:54:22,036 --> 00:54:27,539

and unleashing the hatred of the crowd against the enemies of the new greater Germany.

618

00:54:29,339 --> 00:54:32,537

Marcel Faust - Resident of Vienna 1930's:

The Anschluss was a kind of an explosion

619

00:54:32,756 --> 00:54:35,975

of terrible hatred of aginst enemies, so called enemies

620

00:54:36,322 --> 00:54:42,381

or whatever they considered as enemies, against the Jews totally

621

00:54:43,357 --> 00:54:50,504

and also against a lot of Austrians who opposed the Nazis in Austria.

622

00:54:51,596 --> 00:54:55,608

They said it's legitimate now, you can do what you want, so they did it...

623

00:54:56,009 --> 00:54:59,743

Stealing and robbing and killing, I can't stay there a while;

624

00:54:59,840 --> 00:55:09,186

human depravity was always near to normal behavior, it can change very quickly...

625

00:55:18,490 --> 00:55:23,937

As the violence and assassinations raged in Vienna, Freud decided he had to leave.

626

00:55:24,440 --> 00:55:27,626

His aim was to go to Britain, but he knew Britain like many countries

627

00:55:27,908 --> 00:55:30,615

was refusing entrance to most Jewish refugees.

628

00:55:33,469 --> 00:55:37,029

But help came from the leading

psychoanalyst in Britain, Ernest Jones.

629

00:55:38,001 --> 00:55:41,627

He was in the same ice skating club as the Home Secretary - Sir Samuel Hall,

630

00:55:42,303 --> 00:55:46,127

and Jones persuaded Hall to issue Freud a British work permit

631

00:55:49,398 --> 00:55:56,098

and in May 1938 Freud, his daughter Anna and

other members of his family set off for London.

632

00:56:03,190 --> 00:56:07,752

Freud arrived in London as Britain was preparing for war and he settled with his daughter Anna

633

00:56:08,118 --> 00:56:10,204

in a house in Hampstead.

634

00:56:11,297 --> 00:56:15,519

But Freud's cancer was now far advanced and in September 1939,

635

00:56:15,754 --> 00:56:19,876

just 3 weeks after the outbreak of war, he died.

636

00:56:25,002 --> 00:56:29,163

The second world war would utterly transform the way government saw democracy

637

00:56:29,662 --> 00:56:31,746

and the people they governed.

638

00:56:33,767 --> 00:56:37,631

Next week's program will show how the

American government, as a result of the war

639

00:56:37,911 --> 00:56:43,243

became convinced there were savage dangerous forces hidden inside all human beings.

640

00:56:43,852 --> 00:56:45,975

Forces that needed to be controlled.

641

00:56:47,693 --> 00:56:51,255

The terrible evidence from the death camps seemed to show what happened

642

00:56:51,505 --> 00:56:53,961

when these forces were unleashed.

643

00:56:54,311 --> 00:56:57,054

And politicians and planners in post war America

644

00:56:57,054 --> 00:57:00,311

would come to believe that hidden under the surface of their own population

645

00:57:00,311 --> 00:57:03,289

were the same dangerous forces.

646

00:57:05,914 --> 00:57:11,141

And they would turn to the Freud family

to help control this enemy within.

647

00:57:16,328 --> 00:57:21,790

And ever adaptable Edward Bernays would work

not just for the American government but the CIA

648

00:57:25,227 --> 00:57:29,811

and Sigmund Freud's daughter Anna,

would also become powerful in the United States

649

00:57:30,136 --> 00:57:34,884

because she believed that people could

be taught to control the irrational forces within them.

650

00:57:35,604 --> 00:57:42,057

Out of this, would come vast government

programs to manage the inner psychological life of the masses.

Century of the Self . Parts 1 to 4Part 1

English Workshop

Century of the Self Workshop. Part 1 of 4

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