> [!cite]- Metadata > 2025-11-18 03:18 > Status: #secondary #documentary > Lexicon: [[Culture, Society & Politics]] > Tags: `Read Time:` > [!Note] Part 1: Happiness Machine > 100 years ago a new theory about human nature was put forward by Sigmund Freud. He had discovered, he said, primitive sexual and aggressive forces hidden deep inside the minds of all human beings. Forces if not controlled, led societies into chaos and destruction. > > This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy. This episode is about Freud's American nephew Edward Bernays. He was the first person to take Freud's ideas of human beings, and use them to manipulate the masses. > > He showed American corporations for the first time how they could make people want things they didn't need by linking mass produced goods to their unconscious desires. Out of this would come a new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying peoples inner selfish desires, one made them happy and thus docile. It was the start of the all consuming self. Which has come to dominate our world today. > > 100 years ago, Freud's ideas were hated by Viennese society. To the powerful nobility Freud's ideas were not only embarrassing, but the very idea of examining one's inner ideas and feelings was a threat to their absolute control. But what frightened the rulers of the empire even more was Freud's idea hidden inside all human beings were dangerous instinctual drives. > > Freud had developed a method he called Psychoanalysis. By analyzing dreams and free association he had unearthed, he said, powerful sexual and aggressive forces which were the remnants of our animal past. Feelings we repressed because they were too dangerous. > > "When I came back to the United States, I decided that if you could use propaganda for war, you could certainly use it for peace. And propaganda got to be a bad word because of the Chairman's using it. So what I did was find other words and founded The Council of Public Relations" > > Bernay's returned to New York and set up as a public relations counselor in a small office off Broadway. It was the first time the term had ever been used. Bernay's was determined to think of new ways to organize crowds and the way they thought of themselves. To do this he turned to the writings of his uncle Sigmund. He wondered if he might make money manipulating the unconscious. > > What Edward got from Freud was indeed this idea, that there is a lot more going on in human decision making. Not only among individuals but more importantly among groups. Edward started to look into the idea that you had to play into people's irrational emotions. > > Bernay's set out to experiment with the minds of the popular classes. His most dramatic experiment was to persuade women to smoke. At that time there was a taboo against women smoking. He called up leading psychoanalyst Abraham A. Brill. He told Bernay's that cigarettes were a symbol of the penis and of male sexual power. He told Bernay's if he could connect cigarettes with the idea of challenging male power then women would smoke, because they would have their own penises. > > Torches of freedom campaign. It made him realize that it was possible to persuade people to behave irrationally if you linked products to their emotional desires and feelings. The idea that smoking actually make women more free was completely irrational, but it made them feel more independent. It meant that irrelevant objects could become powerful emotional symbols of how you wanted to be seen by others. > > Bernay's saw the way to sell product was not to sell it to your intellect, that you ought to buy an automobile. But that you will feel better about it if you have this automobile! I think he originated that idea, that they weren't just purchasing something - they were engaging themselves. Emotionally or personally. It's not, you think you need the piece of clothing, but you'll feel better with this piece of clothing. That was his contribution in a very real sense. > > What the corporations realized they had to do was transform the way the majority of American's thought about products. "We must shift America from a needs to a desires culture." People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. Desire's must overshadow needs. > > In 1927, an American journalist wrote "Change has come over our democracy, it is called consumptionism. The American citizens first importance to his country is now no longer that of citizen, but that of consumer." > > In 1924, the president contacted him. President Coolidge was a quiet taciturn man and had become a national joke. The press portray him as a dull humorless figure. Bernay's solution was to do exactly the same as he had done with products. He persuaded 34 famous film stars to visit the White House. For the first time, politics became involved with public relations. > > Freud began to write about group behavior. About how easy the unconscious aggressive forces in human beings could be triggered when they were in crowds. Freud believed he had underestimated the aggressive instincts in human beings, they were far more dangerous than he originally thought. > > The leading political writer Walter Lipman argued that if human beings were in reality driven by unconscious irrational forces then it was necessary to rethink democracy. What was needed was a new elite that could manage what he called 'The Bewildered Herd.' > > Walter Litman essentially says that the basic mechanism of the mass mind is unreason, is irrationality, is animality. He believes that the mob in the street are people driven not by their minds, but by their spinal cords. > > In the 1920's Bernays wrote a series of books which argued that he had developed the very techniques Litman was calling for. By stimulating people's desires then sating them with products he was creating a new way to manage the irrational force of the masses. He called it the Engineering of Consent. > > In 1928, President Hoover was the first politician to articulate the idea that consumerism had become the central motor of American life. He told advertisers and public relations: "You have taken over the job of creating desire, and have transformed people into constantly moving happiness machines. Machines which have become the key to economic progress." What was beginning to emerge in the 1920's was a new idea of how to run mass democracy. At its heart was the consuming self - which not only made the economy work, but was happy and docile. > > The idea of democracy, at its heart, was about changing the relations of power that had governed the world. Bernays' concept of democracy was one of maintaining the relations of power, even if it meant that one needed to stimulate the psychological lives of the public and in fact, in his mind, that is what was necessary. That if you can keep stimulating the irrational self, then leadership can basically go on doing what it wants to do. > > The Nazis believed that Democracy was dangerous because it unleashed a selfish individualism, but didn't have the means to control it. Hitler's party, the national socialists stood in elections promising in their propaganda that they would abandon democracy, because of the chaos of unemployment that it led to. 35 minutes --- ### **References**