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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 ruling 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 human 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 had portrayed Wilson as a liberator of 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 moved 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 it cost? So I called up Dr. Brille,
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A.A. Brille, who was the leading psychoanalyst in New York at that time.
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- How come you didn't call your uncle? Why didn't 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 emotional, 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 Lehman 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 - Lehman 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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00:19:01,912 --> 00:19:05,128
and then pretended they were independent studies.
228
00:19:06,009 --> 00:19:08,411
He organized fashion shows in department stores
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00:19:08,784 --> 00:19:12,167
and paid celebrities to repeat the new and essential message,
230
00:19:12,708 --> 00:19:17,882
you bought things not just for need but to express your inner sense of your self to others.
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00:19:21,181 --> 00:19:23,463
Mrs. Stillman, 1920s Celebrity Aviator:
There's a psychology of dress,
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00:19:23,463 --> 00:19:24,960
have you ever thought about it?
233
00:19:25,163 --> 00:19:27,009
How it can express your character?
234
00:19:28,242 --> 00:19:32,059
You all have interesting characters but some of them are all hidden.
235
00:19:32,560 --> 00:19:38,133
I wonder why you all want to dress always the same, with the same hats and the same coats.
236
00:19:38,811 --> 00:19:42,667
I'm sure all of you are interesting and have wonderful things about you,
237
00:19:42,980 --> 00:19:48,524
but looking at you in the street you all look so much the same.
238
00:19:49,000 --> 00:19:52,687
And that's why I'm talking to you about the psychology of dress.
239
00:19:52,963 --> 00:19:56,510
Try and express yourselves better in your dress.
240
00:19:59,853 --> 00:20:03,241
Bring out certain things that you think are hidden.
241
00:20:04,026 --> 00:20:06,979
I wonder if you've thought about this angle of your personality.
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00:20:08,919 --> 00:20:12,792
- I'd like to ask you some questions...
- Why do you like short skirts?
243
00:20:13,043 --> 00:20:14,825
- Oh, because there's more to see...
244
00:20:15,105 --> 00:20:19,688
- More to see, eh?
- What good does that do you?
245
00:20:20,277 --> 00:20:24,064
- It makes you more attractive.
246
00:20:24,357 --> 00:20:25,752
- oh, it does?
247
00:20:29,201 --> 00:20:34,634
In 1927 an American journalist wrote: A change has come over our democracy,
248
00:20:34,888 --> 00:20:37,105
it is called consumptionism.
249
00:20:37,653 --> 00:20:42,544
The American citizen's first importance to his country is now no longer that of citizen,
250
00:20:42,781 --> 00:20:45,269
but that of consumer.
251
00:20:46,878 --> 00:20:51,452
The growing wave of consumerism helped in turn to create a stock market boom.
252
00:20:51,890 --> 00:20:54,910
And yet again Edward Bernays became involved.
253
00:20:55,421 --> 00:20:59,206
Promoting the novel idea that ordinary people should buy shares,
254
00:20:59,530 --> 00:21:02,769
borrowing money from banks, that he also represented.
255
00:21:03,378 --> 00:21:06,133
And yet again, millions followed his advice.
256
00:21:07,206 --> 00:21:10,578
Peter Strauss - Employee of Bernays 1948-1952:
He was uniquely knowledgeable about
257
00:21:10,578 --> 00:21:15,107
how people in large numbers are going to react to products and ideas,
258
00:21:17,297 --> 00:21:20,407
but in political terms if he were to go out
259
00:21:20,800 --> 00:21:24,219
I can't imagine he could get three people to stand and listen.
260
00:21:24,655 --> 00:21:29,267
He wasn't particularly articulate, he was kind of funny looking, and didn't have
261
00:21:29,518 --> 00:21:34,664
any sense of reaching out for people one on one. None at all.
262
00:21:35,094 --> 00:21:38,797
He didn't talk about, didn't think about people in groups of one,
263
00:21:39,112 --> 00:21:42,286
he thought about people in groups of thousands.
264
00:21:51,175 --> 00:21:55,284
Bernays soon became famous as the man who understood the mind of the crowd,
265
00:21:55,771 --> 00:21:58,984
and in 1924 the President contacted him.
266
00:22:00,083 --> 00:22:04,198
President Coolidge was a quiet taciturn man and had become a national joke.
267
00:22:05,194 --> 00:22:07,852
The press portrayed him as a dull humorless figure.
268
00:22:08,753 --> 00:22:12,754
Bernays' solution was to do exactly the same as he had done with products.
269
00:22:13,129 --> 00:22:16,523
He persuaded 34 famous film stars to visit the White House,
270
00:22:17,976 --> 00:22:21,929
and for the first time politics became involved with public relations.
271
00:22:23,863 --> 00:22:30,695
Bernays speaking in 1991:
And I lined up these 34 people and I'd say what's your name,
272
00:22:31,639 --> 00:22:36,208
and he'd say Al Jolson, and I'd say Mr. President, Al Jolson.
273
00:22:36,919 --> 00:22:44,290
The next day every newspaper in the United States had a front page story:
274
00:22:45,231 --> 00:22:51,711
"President Coolidge Entertains Actors at White House".
275
00:22:52,526 --> 00:22:59,853
And the Times had a headline which said "President Nearly Laughed"
276
00:23:04,078 --> 00:23:06,076
and everybody was happy.
277
00:23:10,215 --> 00:23:16,119
But while Bernays became rich and powerful in
America, in Vienna his uncle was facing disaster.
278
00:23:16,571 --> 00:23:20,841
Like much of Europe Vienna was suffering an economic crisis and massive inflation
279
00:23:21,088 --> 00:23:23,836
which wiped out all of Freud's' savings.
280
00:23:24,230 --> 00:23:27,390
Facing bankruptcy he wrote to his nephew for help.
281
00:23:28,245 --> 00:23:33,015
Bernays responded by arranging for Freud's works to be published for the first time in America,
282
00:23:33,808 --> 00:23:39,526
and began to send his uncle precious dollars which Freud kept secretly in a foreign bank account.
283
00:23:42,743 --> 00:23:44,455
Pat Jackson - Public Relations Adviser and Colleague of Bernays:
He was Freud's "agent"
284
00:23:44,455 --> 00:23:46,414
if you will, to get his books published.
285
00:23:46,661 --> 00:23:50,160
Well of course, once the books were being published, Eddie couldn't help himself but to
286
00:23:50,572 --> 00:23:56,644
promote these books; see that everybody read them, make them controversial;
287
00:23:57,018 --> 00:24:00,244
emphasize the fact that "do you know what Freud says about sex?"
288
00:24:00,458 --> 00:24:03,611
and what he thinks cigarettes are a symbol of and so on and so forth...
289
00:24:03,833 --> 00:24:05,691
How do you suppose all those stories got out?
290
00:24:05,893 --> 00:24:09,442
Certainly the academics weren't spreading these around the country, Eddie Bernays was...
291
00:24:10,144 --> 00:24:16,768
Then when Freud became accepted, well then of course to go to a client and go 'well Uncle Siggy'
292
00:24:17,167 --> 00:24:18,944
see then that had some cache.
293
00:24:19,201 --> 00:24:26,227
But notice there, first Eddie created Uncle Siggy in the US, made him acceptable secondly,
294
00:24:26,460 --> 00:24:31,826
and thirdly then, capitalized on Uncle Siggy. Typical Bernays performance.
295
00:24:32,637 --> 00:24:36,646
Bernays also suggested Freud promote himself in the United States.
296
00:24:36,864 --> 00:24:41,710
He proposed his uncle write an article for Cosmopolitan, the magazine that Bernays represented,
297
00:24:42,043 --> 00:24:45,289
entitled 'A Woman's Mental Place in the Home'.
298
00:24:45,606 --> 00:24:49,084
Freud was furious. Such an idea he said was unthinkable,
299
00:24:49,327 --> 00:24:52,119
it was vulgar and anyway, he hated America.
300
00:24:54,586 --> 00:24:57,871
Freud was becoming increasingly pessimistic about human beings.
301
00:24:58,838 --> 00:25:02,276
In the mid 20s he retreated in the summers to the Alps,
302
00:25:02,617 --> 00:25:06,868
sometimes staying in an old hotel, the Pension Moritz in Berchtesgaden.
303
00:25:07,546 --> 00:25:08,900
It is now a ruin.
304
00:25:10,493 --> 00:25:12,885
Freud began to write about group behavior;
305
00:25:13,560 --> 00:25:17,133
about how easily the unconscious aggressive forces of human beings
306
00:25:17,419 --> 00:25:20,214
could be triggered when they were in crowds.
307
00:25:21,141 --> 00:25:25,246
Freud believed he had underestimated the aggressive instincts within human beings;
308
00:25:26,111 --> 00:25:29,423
they were far more dangerous than he had originally thought.
309
00:25:30,734 --> 00:25:36,872
Dr. Ernst Federn - Viennese Psychoanalyst:
After World War-I, Freud was basically a pessimist.
310
00:25:37,273 --> 00:25:41,860
He felt that man is an impossible creature
311
00:25:43,075 --> 00:25:49,840
and a very sadistic and bad species
312
00:25:51,529 --> 00:25:55,485
and did not believe that man can be improved.
313
00:25:55,801 --> 00:25:58,563
Man is a ferocious animal,
314
00:25:58,827 --> 00:26:03,373
the most ferocious animal that exists.
315
00:26:03,965 --> 00:26:07,872
They enjoy torturing and killing
316
00:26:08,248 --> 00:26:10,748
and he didn't like man.
317
00:26:13,751 --> 00:26:17,375
The publication of Freud's works in America had an extraordinary effect
318
00:26:17,580 --> 00:26:20,550
on journalists and intellectuals in the 1920s.
319
00:26:20,842 --> 00:26:26,315
What fascinated and frightened them was the picture Freud painted of submerged dangerous forces
320
00:26:26,553 --> 00:26:29,862
lurking just under the surface of modern society.
321
00:26:30,376 --> 00:26:33,684
Forces that could erupt easily to produce the frenzied mob
322
00:26:33,896 --> 00:26:36,583
which had the power to destroy even governments.
323
00:26:36,843 --> 00:26:39,533
It was this they believed had happened in Russia.
324
00:26:40,967 --> 00:26:45,249
To many this meant that one of the guiding principles of mass democracy was wrong;
325
00:26:45,782 --> 00:26:50,399
the belief that human beings could be trusted to make decisions on a rational basis.
326
00:26:51,680 --> 00:26:54,593
The leading political writer, Walter Lippmann argued that
327
00:26:54,822 --> 00:26:59,314
if human beings were in reality driven by unconscious irrational forces
328
00:26:59,615 --> 00:27:01,926
then it was necessary to re-think democracy.
329
00:27:03,655 --> 00:27:08,363
What was needed was a new elite that could manage what he called the bewildered herd.
330
00:27:09,246 --> 00:27:12,873
This would be done through psychological techniques that would control
331
00:27:13,079 --> 00:27:15,414
the unconscious feelings of the masses.
332
00:27:17,467 --> 00:27:20,771
Stewart Ewen - Historian of Public Relations:
And so here you have Walter Lippmann, probably the most influential
333
00:27:21,012 --> 00:27:23,802
political thinker in the United States,
334
00:27:24,018 --> 00:27:29,185
who is essentially saying the basic mechanism of the mass mind is unreason,
335
00:27:29,437 --> 00:27:32,092
is irrationality, is animality.
336
00:27:32,293 --> 00:27:36,658
He believes that the mob in the street, which is how he sees ordinary people,
337
00:27:37,059 --> 00:27:40,597
are people who are driven not by their minds but by their spinal chords.
338
00:27:40,986 --> 00:27:46,186
The notion of animal drives, unconscious and instinctual drives,
339
00:27:46,186 --> 00:27:48,889
lurking beneath the surface of civilization;
340
00:27:49,239 --> 00:27:52,706
and so they started looking towards
psychological science
341
00:27:53,059 --> 00:27:58,957
as a way of understanding the mechanisms by which the popular mind works
342
00:27:59,997 --> 00:28:05,769
specifically with the goal of figuring out
how to understand and how to apply
343
00:28:05,997 --> 00:28:09,781
those mechanisms to strategies for social control.
344
00:28:10,968 --> 00:28:13,910
Edward Bernays was fascinated by Lippmann's arguments
345
00:28:14,564 --> 00:28:17,786
and also saw a way to promote himself by using them.
346
00:28:19,785 --> 00:28:24,408
In the 1920s he began to write a series of books which argued that he had developed
347
00:28:24,408 --> 00:28:27,158
the very techniques that Lippmann was calling for.
348
00:28:28,035 --> 00:28:32,521
By stimulating people's inner desires and then sating them with consumer products
349
00:28:32,865 --> 00:28:37,189
he was creating a new way to manage the irrational force of the masses.
350
00:28:38,798 --> 00:28:41,192
He called it "The engineering of consent".
351
00:28:42,925 --> 00:28:46,793
Ann Bernays, Daughter of Edward Bernays:
Democracy to my father was a wonderful concept,
352
00:28:47,111 --> 00:28:52,830
but I don't think he felt that all those publics out there had reliable judgment,
353
00:28:53,299 --> 00:29:00,761
and that they very easily might vote for the wrong man or want the wrong thing;
354
00:29:01,103 --> 00:29:04,052
so that they had to be guided from above.
355
00:29:05,309 --> 00:29:08,565
It's enlightened despotism in a sense.
356
00:29:10,192 --> 00:29:16,359
You appeal to their desires and unrecognized longings, that sort of thing.
357
00:29:18,219 --> 00:29:27,518
That you can tap into their deepest desires or their deepest fears and use that to your own purposes.
358
00:29:28,587 --> 00:29:33,375
And then in 1928 a President came to power, who agreed with Bernays.
359
00:29:34,522 --> 00:29:37,720
President Hoover was the first politician to articulate the idea
360
00:29:38,031 --> 00:29:41,721
that consumerism would become the central motor of American life.
361
00:29:42,909 --> 00:29:47,315
After his election he told a group of advertisers and public relations men:
362
00:29:48,079 --> 00:29:51,156
"You Have taken over the job of creating desire
363
00:29:51,908 --> 00:29:56,657
and have transformed people into constantly moving happiness machines.
364
00:29:57,432 --> 00:30:01,334
Machines which have become the key to economic progress."
365
00:30:03,844 --> 00:30:09,660
What was beginning to emerge in the 1920s was a new idea of how to run mass democracy.
366
00:30:10,829 --> 00:30:15,693
At it's heart was the consuming self which not only made the economy work
367
00:30:16,192 --> 00:30:20,557
but was also happy and docile and so created a stable society.
368
00:30:22,934 --> 00:30:27,026
Stewart Ewen - Historian of Public Relations:
Both Bernays and Lippmann's concept of managing the masses
369
00:30:27,286 --> 00:30:33,059
takes the idea of democracy and turns it into a palliative,
370
00:30:33,599 --> 00:30:38,756
It turns it into giving people some kind of feel good medication
371
00:30:39,551 --> 00:30:43,159
that will respond to an immediate pain or immediate yearning
372
00:30:43,472 --> 00:30:47,474
but will not alter the objective circumstances one iota.
373
00:30:49,607 --> 00:30:55,378
The idea of democracy at it's heart was about changing the relations of power
374
00:30:55,611 --> 00:30:57,972
that had governed the world for so long;
375
00:30:58,187 --> 00:31:02,924
and Bernays' concept of democracy was one of maintaining the relations of power,
376
00:31:03,142 --> 00:31:08,508
even if it meant that one needed to stimulate the psychological lives of the public.
377
00:31:09,223 --> 00:31:12,285
And in fact in his mind that is what was necessary.
378
00:31:14,038 --> 00:31:17,363
That if you can keep stimulating the irrational self
379
00:31:18,136 --> 00:31:22,297
then leadership can go on doing what it wants to do.
380
00:31:24,078 --> 00:31:27,173
Bernays now became one of the central figures in a business elite
381
00:31:27,454 --> 00:31:31,392
that dominated American society and politics in the 1920s.
382
00:31:32,328 --> 00:31:38,018
He also became extremely rich and lived in a suite of rooms in one of New York's most expensive hotels
383
00:31:38,475 --> 00:31:40,485
where he gave frequent parties.
384
00:31:40,865 --> 00:31:44,208
Peter Strauss - Employee of Bernays 1948-1952:
Oh my goodness, he had a home in the corner suite
385
00:31:44,767 --> 00:31:47,383
of the Sherry Netherland hotel
386
00:31:47,383 --> 00:31:48,863
and here's this wonderful suite with all these windows
387
00:31:48,863 --> 00:31:51,355
looking out on central park and across at the plaza,
388
00:31:51,355 --> 00:31:53,144
and on the square,
389
00:31:53,483 --> 00:31:56,706
and he would use this place to hold a soiree.
390
00:31:56,957 --> 00:32:00,114
The mayor would come, all the media leaders would come,
391
00:32:00,114 --> 00:32:03,362
the political leaders, the business leaders, the people in the arts;
392
00:32:03,362 --> 00:32:09,460
it was a who's who. People wanted to know Eddie Bernays because he himself
393
00:32:09,678 --> 00:32:15,543
became a sort of a famous man, a sort of magician that could make things happen.
394
00:32:15,543 --> 00:32:17,958
Ann Bernays, Daughter of Edward Bernays:
He knows everybody he knows the mayor,
395
00:32:17,958 --> 00:32:23,817
and he knows the senator, and he calls politicians on the telephone as if he did get
396
00:32:24,076 --> 00:32:30,792
literally a high or bang out of doing what he did,
397
00:32:31,053 --> 00:32:35,148
and that's fine, but it can be a little hard on the people around you.
398
00:32:35,647 --> 00:32:39,210
Especially when you make other people feel stupid.
399
00:32:39,960 --> 00:32:43,026
The people who worked for him were stupid, the children were stupid,
400
00:32:43,356 --> 00:32:50,587
and if people did things in a way that he wouldn't have done them, they were stupid.
401
00:32:50,960 --> 00:32:54,742
It was a word that he used over and over:
"don't be stupid".
402
00:32:55,795 --> 00:32:59,640
- And the masses?
- They were stupid.
403
00:33:04,651 --> 00:33:08,541
But Bernays' power was about to be destroyed dramatically
404
00:33:08,775 --> 00:33:12,713
and by a type of human rationality that he could do nothing to control.
405
00:33:13,747 --> 00:33:18,433
At the end of October 1929 Bernays organized a huge national event to celebrate
406
00:33:18,433 --> 00:33:22,151
the 50th anniversary of the invention of the light bulb.
407
00:33:22,495 --> 00:33:27,358
President Hoover, the leaders of major corporations and bankers like John D Rockefeller
408
00:33:27,561 --> 00:33:31,995
were all summoned by Bernays to celebrate the power of American business.
409
00:33:32,987 --> 00:33:37,590
But even as they gathered news came through that shares on the New York stock exchange
410
00:33:37,590 --> 00:33:40,496
were beginning to fall catastrophically.
411
00:33:44,365 --> 00:33:48,448
Throughout the 1920s speculators had borrowed billions of dollars.
412
00:33:48,448 --> 00:33:54,286
The banks had promoted the idea that this was a new era where market crashes were a thing of the past.
413
00:33:54,994 --> 00:34:00,665
But they were wrong. What was about to happen was the biggest stock market crash in history.
414
00:34:01,149 --> 00:34:05,962
Investors had panicked and begun to sell in a blind relentless fury that no reassurance
415
00:34:05,962 --> 00:34:09,449
by bankers or politicians could halt.
416
00:34:12,827 --> 00:34:17,651
And on the 29th of October 1929, the market collapsed.
417
00:34:25,678 --> 00:34:28,264
The effect of the crash on the American economy was disastrous.
418
00:34:29,054 --> 00:34:32,477
Faced with recession and unemployment, millions of American workers
419
00:34:32,477 --> 00:34:35,245
stopped buying goods they didn't need.
420
00:34:35,245 --> 00:34:39,390
The consumer boom that Bernays had done so much to engineer, disappeared.
421
00:34:39,767 --> 00:34:43,652
And he and the profession of public relations fell from favor.
422
00:34:44,024 --> 00:34:47,154
Bernays' brief moment of power seemed to be over.
423
00:34:56,622 --> 00:35:00,042
The effect of the Wall Street crash on Europe was also catastrophic.
424
00:35:00,645 --> 00:35:04,845
It intensified the growing economic and political crisis in the new democracies.
425
00:35:05,856 --> 00:35:08,781
In both Germany and Austria, there were violent street battles
426
00:35:08,989 --> 00:35:12,051
between the armed wings of different political parties.
427
00:35:16,248 --> 00:35:22,394
Against this backdrop Freud who was suffering from cancer of the jaw retreated yet again to the alps.
428
00:35:24,329 --> 00:35:27,497
He wrote a book called "Civilization and it's Discontents".
429
00:35:28,935 --> 00:35:34,053
It was a powerful attack on the idea that civilization was an expression of human progress.
430
00:35:35,792 --> 00:35:40,543
Instead Freud argued, civilization had been constructed to control
431
00:35:40,853 --> 00:35:44,197
the dangerous animal forces inside human beings.
432
00:35:45,822 --> 00:35:49,555
What was implicit in Freud's argument was that the ideal of individual freedom
433
00:35:49,846 --> 00:35:53,055
which was at the heart of democracy was impossible.
434
00:35:53,758 --> 00:35:58,732
Human beings could never be allowed to truly express themselves because it was too dangerous.
435
00:35:59,856 --> 00:36:04,574
They must always be controlled and thus always be discontent.
436
00:36:09,556 --> 00:36:13,471
Dr. Ernst Federn - Viennese Psychoanalyst:
Man doesn't want to be civilized
437
00:36:14,232 --> 00:36:19,745
and civilization brings discontent but is necessarily to survival
438
00:36:22,410 --> 00:36:29,057
so he must be discontent because this would be the only way to keep you within your limits.
439
00:36:30,134 --> 00:36:36,408
- What did Freud think about the idea of the equality of man?
- He didn't believe in it.
440
00:36:38,413 --> 00:36:46,475
We had 32 parties and Hitler said: "before those parties don't vanish there is no Germany".
441
00:36:46,974 --> 00:36:56,936
That's true, you can't have 32 parties so they said this one person will put an end to this comedy.
442
00:36:58,210 --> 00:37:00,634
Freud was not alone in his pessimism.
443
00:37:00,851 --> 00:37:06,132
Politicians like Adolf Hitler emerged from a growing despair in the 1920s about democracy.
444
00:37:06,885 --> 00:37:11,838
The Nazis were convinced that democracy was dangerous because it unleashed a selfish individualism
445
00:37:12,229 --> 00:37:14,574
but didn't have the means to control it.
446
00:37:15,729 --> 00:37:20,249
Hitler's party - "The National Socialists" stood in elections promising in their propaganda
447
00:37:20,509 --> 00:37:25,064
they would abandon democracy because of the chaos and unemployment it led to.
448
00:37:27,325 --> 00:37:30,168
"The democratic parties are promising a heaven on earth!"
449
00:37:36,876 --> 00:37:42,097
"38 parties - over 6 million unemployed"
450
00:37:45,472 --> 00:37:49,336
In March 1933, the National Socialists were elected to power in Germany
451
00:37:49,754 --> 00:37:54,570
and they set out to create a society that would control human beings in a different way.
452
00:37:56,348 --> 00:37:59,037
One of their first acts was to take control of business.
453
00:37:59,679 --> 00:38:02,903
The planning of production would in the future be done by the state.
454
00:38:03,258 --> 00:38:07,257
The free market was too unstable as the crash in America had proven.
455
00:38:08,602 --> 00:38:11,275
Workers leisure time was also planned by the state
456
00:38:11,530 --> 00:38:14,195
through a new organization called "strength through joy".
457
00:38:15,056 --> 00:38:17,932
One of it's mottos was: "Service, not self!".
458
00:38:24,112 --> 00:38:28,537
But the Nazi's did not see this as return to an old form autocratic control.
459
00:38:29,255 --> 00:38:31,504
It was a new alternative to democracy,
460
00:38:31,756 --> 00:38:35,319
in which the feelings and desires of the masses would still be central,
461
00:38:36,339 --> 00:38:40,255
but they would be channeled in such a way as to bind the nation together.
462
00:38:41,120 --> 00:38:45,574
The chief exponent of this was Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda.
463
00:38:47,120 --> 00:38:53,574
It may be a good thing to hold power based on guns
464
00:38:54,120 --> 00:38:57,574
It is far better though if you win the heart of the nation
465
00:38:58,120 --> 00:39:00,574
and keep it's affection !
466
00:39:02,948 --> 00:39:07,544
Goebbels organized huge rallies whose function he said was to forge the mind of the nation
467
00:39:07,870 --> 00:39:11,325
into a unity of thinking, feeling and desire.
468
00:39:12,126 --> 00:39:14,564
One of his inspirations, he told an American journalist
469
00:39:14,765 --> 00:39:18,277
was the writings of Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays.
470
00:39:20,218 --> 00:39:23,419
In his work on crowd psychology, Freud had described how
471
00:39:23,668 --> 00:39:28,795
the frightening irrationality inside human beings could emerge in such groups.
472
00:39:29,002 --> 00:39:33,324
The deep what he called 'libidinal' forces of desire were given up to the leader
473
00:39:33,969 --> 00:39:37,975
while the aggressive instincts are unleashed on those outside the group.
474
00:39:38,660 --> 00:39:43,356
Freud wrote this as a warning, but the Nazis were deliberately encouraging these forces
475
00:39:43,735 --> 00:39:47,107
because they believed they could master and control them.
476
00:39:51,036 --> 00:39:57,237
Dr Leoppold Lowenthal - Freudian Psychoanalyst at a rally in Vienna in 2000:
Freud was saying that masses
477
00:39:57,483 --> 00:40:01,599
are bound by libidinal forces.
478
00:40:02,361 --> 00:40:10,953
They love each other and delegate their ideas and feelings through the "jack on top".
479
00:40:11,570 --> 00:40:14,580
What are libidinal forces?
480
00:40:14,850 --> 00:40:16,830
Well, forces of love.
481
00:40:19,346 --> 00:40:25,328
Not hate?
No,.. hate?... Hate is delegated on the others, outside.
482
00:40:38,346 --> 00:40:40,328
The mob...
483
00:40:50,042 --> 00:40:55,616
I could see from afar, looking up between the trees
484
00:40:55,616 --> 00:41:00,799
how there were hundreds of thousands of people when they passed Hitler
485
00:41:01,052 --> 00:41:11,228
they were speaking completely delirious and they
began to shout, this cries will never get out of my ears...
486
00:41:11,512 --> 00:41:21,928
"Heil! Sieg Heil!" (Hail! Hail Victory!)...and here I got confirmation how those irrational forces,
487
00:41:22,146 --> 00:41:29,043
uncontrollable forces in Germany, in the Germans, had erupted, were brought out
488
00:41:29,381 --> 00:41:40,926
were running wild where the party was marching, marching on."
489
00:41:39,381 --> 00:41:44,926
Fuehrer (Leader's) command we will follow!
490
00:41:50,381 --> 00:41:51,926
Crowds and their behavior
491
00:41:54,147 --> 00:41:58,369
And in America too democracy was under threat from the force of the angry mob.
492
00:42:00,274 --> 00:42:03,109
The effect of the stock market crash had been disastrous.
493
00:42:03,695 --> 00:42:08,681
There was growing violence as an angry population took out there frustration on the corporations
494
00:42:08,901 --> 00:42:11,337
who were seen to have caused this disaster.
495
00:42:13,055 --> 00:42:18,550
Then in 1932 a new President was elected who was also going to use the power of the state
496
00:42:18,776 --> 00:42:21,183
to control the free market.
497
00:42:21,558 --> 00:42:25,790
But his aim, was not to destroy democracy, but to strengthen it.
498
00:42:26,014 --> 00:42:30,268
And to do this he was going to develop a new way of dealing with the masses.
499
00:42:31,700 --> 00:42:35,557
President Roosevelt's in his inauguration speech:
"I am prepared under my constitutional duty
500
00:42:35,774 --> 00:42:41,518
to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of stricken world, may require.
501
00:42:41,922 --> 00:42:45,937
But, in the event that the national emergency is still critical
502
00:42:46,342 --> 00:42:51,717
I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me.
503
00:42:52,278 --> 00:42:55,625
I shall ask the congress for the one remaining instrument
504
00:42:56,064 --> 00:43:01,252
to meet the crisis - broad executive power."
505
00:43:06,721 --> 00:43:09,504
It was the start of what would become known as "The New Deal".
506
00:43:10,469 --> 00:43:14,027
Roosevelt assembled a group of young
technocrats and planners in Washington.
507
00:43:15,056 --> 00:43:20,696
He told them that their job was to plan and run giant new industrial projects for the good of the nation.
508
00:43:22,025 --> 00:43:25,189
Roosevelt was convinced the stock market crash had shown
509
00:43:25,524 --> 00:43:29,822
that "laissez faire"-capitalism could no longer run modern industrial economies.
510
00:43:30,292 --> 00:43:32,502
This has become the job of government.
511
00:43:33,730 --> 00:43:38,885
Big business was horrified but The New Deal had attracted the admiration of the Nazis,
512
00:43:39,219 --> 00:43:41,510
especially Joseph Goebbels.
513
00:43:43,934 --> 00:43:50,605
Joseph Goebbels:
"I am very interested in social developments in America.
514
00:43:50,844 --> 00:43:57,011
I believe that President Roosevelt has chosen the right path.
515
00:43:57,352 --> 00:44:02,470
We are dealing with the greatest social problems ever known.
516
00:44:02,672 --> 00:44:12,299
Millions of unemployed must get their jobs back and this cannot be left to private initiative.
517
00:44:17,318 --> 00:44:22,068
It's the government that must tackle the problem."
518
00:44:24,807 --> 00:44:29,137
But although Roosevelt like the Nazis was trying to organize society in a different way,
519
00:44:29,921 --> 00:44:33,695
unlike the Nazis he believed that human beings were rational
520
00:44:33,911 --> 00:44:36,972
and could be trusted to take an active part in government.
521
00:44:38,453 --> 00:44:42,286
Roosevelt believed it was possible to explain his policies to ordinary Americans
522
00:44:42,286 --> 00:44:44,750
and to take into account their opinions.
523
00:44:45,578 --> 00:44:51,162
To do this he was helped by the new ideas of an American social scientist called George Gallup.
524
00:44:52,911 --> 00:44:57,513
"Favorite reading of new deal Washington - the survey of US public opinion.
525
00:44:57,766 --> 00:45:02,484
From offices at Princeton New Jersey a famed statistician, Dr. George Gallup tells Washington
526
00:45:02,704 --> 00:45:05,577
from week to week, what the nation is thinking.
527
00:45:07,033 --> 00:45:12,284
And in New York Fortune Magazines analyst Elmo
Roper compiles for publication a continuous record
528
00:45:12,284 --> 00:45:16,415
of the nation's approval or disapproval of how the country is being run."
529
00:45:17,314 --> 00:45:22,613
Gallup and Roper rejected Bernays' view that human beings were at the mercy of unconscious forces
530
00:45:22,861 --> 00:45:25,676
and so needed to be controlled.
531
00:45:25,915 --> 00:45:29,114
Their system of opinion polling was based on the idea that people
532
00:45:29,454 --> 00:45:32,361
could be trusted to know what they wanted.
533
00:45:32,725 --> 00:45:36,977
They argued that one could measure and
predict the opinions and behavior of the public
534
00:45:37,197 --> 00:45:41,960
if one asked strictly factual questions and avoided manipulating their emotions.
535
00:45:45,197 --> 00:45:48,960
Well, how about this one? Do you think Franklin D. Roosevelt's new deal
536
00:45:49,497 --> 00:45:50,960
has been bad for the nation in general?
537
00:45:52,497 --> 00:45:55,460
No, that question is loaded.. It automatically suggests an answer..
538
00:45:55,997 --> 00:46:01,960
Well, how 'bout this? Is your present feeling towards president Roosevelt, one of general approval,
539
00:46:02,997 --> 00:46:04,960
or general disapproval?
540
00:46:05,997 --> 00:46:07,960
That's better!...
541
00:46:09,021 --> 00:46:13,741
George Gallup Jr. - Son of George Gallup:
Prior to scientific polling the view of many people
542
00:46:14,022 --> 00:46:17,397
was that you couldn't trust public opinion, that it was irrational;
543
00:46:18,084 --> 00:46:22,149
that it was ill-informed, that it was chaotic, unruly and so forth;
544
00:46:22,459 --> 00:46:25,210
and so that opinion should be dismissed.
545
00:46:25,458 --> 00:46:32,400
But with scientific polling I think it established very clearly that people are rational,
546
00:46:32,712 --> 00:46:34,588
that they do make good decisions,
547
00:46:34,797 --> 00:46:39,462
and this offers democracy a chance to be truly informed by the public
548
00:46:39,734 --> 00:46:43,648
giving everybody a voice in the way the country is run.
549
00:46:44,167 --> 00:46:47,771
I know my father wouldn't necessarily say that the voice of the public is the voice of God,
550
00:46:47,992 --> 00:46:54,008
but he did feel very much that the voice of the people is a rational voice and should be heard.
551
00:46:55,773 --> 00:47:00,486
What Roosevelt was doing was forging a new
connection between the masses and politicians.
552
00:47:01,338 --> 00:47:05,777
No longer were they irrational consumers who were managed by sating their desires,
553
00:47:05,984 --> 00:47:10,683
instead, they were sensible citizens who could take part in the governing of the country.
554
00:47:11,454 --> 00:47:17,278
In 1936 Roosevelt stood for re-election. He promised further control over big business.
555
00:47:17,561 --> 00:47:20,528
To the corporations it was the beginning of a dictatorship.
556
00:47:25,317 --> 00:47:29,184
Big business leader speaking in an interview:
"Roosevelt interferes with private enterprise
557
00:47:29,691 --> 00:47:32,871
and he's running the country into debt for generations to come.
558
00:47:32,871 --> 00:47:36,442
The way to get recovery is to let business alone."
559
00:47:36,748 --> 00:47:39,269
But Roosevelt was triumphantly re-elected.
560
00:47:39,448 --> 00:47:44,069
"It looks , my friends, like a real land-slide, this time..
561
00:47:45,048 --> 00:47:52,269
So, please let me thank you again, and tell you that I hope to see you all very soon,
562
00:47:53,148 --> 00:47:54,769
and wish you an affectionate good night!
563
00:47:56,236 --> 00:48:01,717
Faced with this, business now decided to fight back, to regain power in America.
564
00:48:02,437 --> 00:48:06,502
At the heart of the battle would be Edward Bernays and the profession he had invented,
565
00:48:06,837 --> 00:48:09,186
public relations.
566
00:48:10,643 --> 00:48:13,239
Stewart Ewen - Historian of Public Relations:
Following that lecture,
567
00:48:13,239 --> 00:48:18,969
business people start to get together and start to carry on discussions,
568
00:48:18,969 --> 00:48:24,265
primarily in private and they start talking to each other about the need to sort of carry on
569
00:48:24,502 --> 00:48:28,377
ideological warfare against the New Deal.
570
00:48:28,711 --> 00:48:34,815
And to sort of reassert the sort of connectedness between the idea of democracy on the one hand
571
00:48:35,025 --> 00:48:38,266
and the idea of privately owned business on the other.
572
00:48:38,628 --> 00:48:42,693
And so, under the umbrella of an organization that still exists
573
00:48:42,693 --> 00:48:45,970
which is called The National Association of Manufacturers
574
00:48:46,317 --> 00:48:51,268
and whose membership included all of the major corporations of the United States
575
00:48:52,001 --> 00:48:58,722
a campaign is launched explicitly designed to create emotional attachments
576
00:48:58,948 --> 00:49:01,767
between the public and big business;
577
00:49:02,180 --> 00:49:06,661
it's Bernays' techniques being used on a grand scale. I mean totally.
578
00:49:07,180 --> 00:49:10,661
A film story of the "General Motors Parade of Progress"
579
00:49:25,975 --> 00:49:29,993
The campaign set out to show dramatically that it was business not politicians
580
00:49:29,993 --> 00:49:32,161
who have created modern America.
581
00:49:37,880 --> 00:49:41,722
Bernays was an advisor to General Motors but he was no longer alone.
582
00:49:42,320 --> 00:49:44,320
The industry he had founded now flourished
583
00:49:44,538 --> 00:49:48,882
as hundreds of public relations advisors organized a vast campaign.
584
00:49:49,532 --> 00:49:53,350
They not only used advertisements and billboards but managed to insinuate their message
585
00:49:53,350 --> 00:49:56,371
into the editorial pages of the newspapers.
586
00:49:59,122 --> 00:50:01,039
It became a bitter fight.
587
00:50:01,287 --> 00:50:05,899
In response to the campaign the government made films to warn about the unscrupulous manipulation
588
00:50:05,899 --> 00:50:08,713
of the press by big business
589
00:50:08,931 --> 00:50:13,227
and the central villain was the new figure of the public relations man.
590
00:50:15,729 --> 00:50:19,259
"They try to achieve their ends by working entirely behind the scenes
591
00:50:19,462 --> 00:50:21,979
corrupting and deceiving the public.
592
00:50:22,326 --> 00:50:26,979
The aims of such groups may be either good or bad so far as the public interest is concerned,
593
00:50:27,304 --> 00:50:31,886
but their methods are a grave danger to democratic institutions."
594
00:50:32,821 --> 00:50:37,605
The films also showed how the responsible citizens could monitor the press themselves.
595
00:50:38,314 --> 00:50:42,884
They could create a chart that analyzed the reporting for signs of hidden bias.
596
00:50:45,071 --> 00:50:51,356
But such earnest instruction was to be no match for the powerful imagination of Edward Bernays.
597
00:50:54,687 --> 00:50:58,888
He was about to help create a vision of the utopia that free market capitalism
598
00:50:59,245 --> 00:51:02,700
would build in America if it was unleashed.
599
00:51:11,911 --> 00:51:18,128
In 1939 New York hosted the World's Fair.
Edward Bernays was a central adviser.
600
00:51:18,714 --> 00:51:24,219
He insisted that the theme be the link between democracy and American business.
601
00:51:30,533 --> 00:51:36,565
At the heart of the fair was a giant white dome that Bernays named "Democra-City"
602
00:51:39,378 --> 00:51:43,321
and the central exhibit was a vast working model of America's future
603
00:51:43,610 --> 00:51:46,639
constructed by the General Motors corporation.
604
00:51:47,640 --> 00:51:50,267
Ann Bernays - Daughter of Edward Bernays:
To my father, the World's Fair,
605
00:51:50,470 --> 00:51:54,104
was an opportunity to keep the status quo.
606
00:51:54,211 --> 00:52:01,221
That is, capitalism in a democracy, democracy and capitalism and that marriage.
607
00:52:06,990 --> 00:52:12,590
He did that by manipulating people and getting them to think that
608
00:52:13,090 --> 00:52:17,246
you couldn't have real democracy in anything but a capitalist society
609
00:52:18,382 --> 00:52:24,788
which was capable of doing anything; of creating these wonderful highways,
610
00:52:25,121 --> 00:52:30,039
of making moving pictures inside everybody's house,
611
00:52:31,507 --> 00:52:35,772
of telephones that didn't need chords, of sleek roadsters.
612
00:52:37,933 --> 00:52:43,365
It was consumerist but at the same time you inferred that
613
00:52:43,841 --> 00:52:47,328
in a funny way that democracy and capitalism went together.
614
00:52:48,901 --> 00:52:53,793
The World's Fair was an extraordinary success and captured America's imagination.
615
00:52:54,512 --> 00:52:57,966
The vision it portrayed was of a new form of democracy
616
00:52:58,339 --> 00:53:04,744
in which business responded to people's innermost desires in a way politicians could never do.
617
00:53:06,169 --> 00:53:10,518
But it was a form of democracy that depended on treating people not as active citizens,
618
00:53:10,824 --> 00:53:16,233
like Roosevelt did, but as passive consumers. Because this Bernays believed,
619
00:53:16,526 --> 00:53:20,090
was the key to control in a mass democracy.
620
00:53:20,996 --> 00:53:23,277
Stewart Ewen - Historian of Public Relations:
It's not that the people are in charge
621
00:53:23,590 --> 00:53:27,090
but that the people's desires are in charge.
622
00:53:27,332 --> 00:53:32,842
The people are not in charge, the people exercise no decision making power within this environment.
623
00:53:33,274 --> 00:53:39,131
So democracy is reduced from something which assumes an active citizenry
624
00:53:39,505 --> 00:53:42,785
to the idea of the public as passive consumers
625
00:53:46,480 --> 00:53:50,304
driven primarily by instinctual or unconscious desires
626
00:53:50,694 --> 00:53:55,714
and that if you can in fact trigger those needs and desires, you can get what you want from them.
627
00:53:58,754 --> 00:54:04,475
But this struggle between the two views of human beings as to whether they were rational or irrational
628
00:54:04,881 --> 00:54:08,371
was about to be dramatically affected by events in Europe.
629
00:54:09,129 --> 00:54:12,848
Events that would also change the fortunes of the Freud family.
630
00:54:16,257 --> 00:54:21,871
In March 1938 the Nazis annexed Austria. It was called the Anschluss.
631
00:54:22,132 --> 00:54:26,038
Hitler arrived in Vienna to an extraordinary outpouring of mass adulation
632
00:54:26,762 --> 00:54:31,556
but even as he drove through the city behind the scenes the Nazis were systematically whipping up
633
00:54:31,882 --> 00:54:37,385
and unleashing the hatred of the crowd against the enemies of the new greater Germany.
634
00:54:39,185 --> 00:54:42,383
Marcel Faust - Resident of Vienna 1930's:
The Anschluss was a kind of an explosion
635
00:54:42,602 --> 00:54:45,821
of terrible hatred of against enemies, so called enemies
636
00:54:46,168 --> 00:54:52,227
or whatever they considered as enemies, against the Jews totally
637
00:54:53,203 --> 00:55:00,350
and also against a lot of Austrians who opposed the Nazis in Austria.
638
00:55:01,442 --> 00:55:05,454
They said it's legitimate now, you can do what you want, so they did it...
639
00:55:05,855 --> 00:55:09,589
Stealing and robbing and killing, I can't stay there a while;
640
00:55:09,686 --> 00:55:19,032
human depravity was always near to normal behavior, it can change very quickly...
641
00:55:28,336 --> 00:55:33,783
As the violence and assassinations raged in Vienna, Freud decided he had to leave.
642
00:55:34,286 --> 00:55:37,472
His aim was to go to Britain, but he knew Britain like many countries
643
00:55:37,754 --> 00:55:40,461
was refusing entrance to most Jewish refugees.
644
00:55:43,315 --> 00:55:46,875
But help came from the leading
psychoanalyst in Britain, Ernest Jones.
645
00:55:47,847 --> 00:55:51,473
He was in the same ice skating club as the Home Secretary - Sir Samuel Hall,
646
00:55:52,149 --> 00:55:55,973
and Jones persuaded Hall to issue Freud a British work permit
647
00:55:59,244 --> 00:56:05,944
and in May 1938 Freud, his daughter Anna and
other members of his family set off for London.
648
00:56:13,036 --> 00:56:17,598
Freud arrived in London as Britain was preparing for war and he settled with his daughter Anna
649
00:56:17,964 --> 00:56:20,050
in a house in Hampstead.
650
00:56:21,143 --> 00:56:25,365
But Freud's cancer was now far advanced and in September 1939,
651
00:56:25,600 --> 00:56:29,722
just 3 weeks after the outbreak of war, he died.
652
00:56:34,848 --> 00:56:39,009
The second world war would utterly transform the way government saw democracy
653
00:56:39,508 --> 00:56:41,592
and the people they governed.
654
00:56:43,613 --> 00:56:47,477
Next week's program will show how the
American government, as a result of the war
655
00:56:47,757 --> 00:56:53,089
became convinced there were savage dangerous forces hidden inside all human beings.
656
00:56:53,698 --> 00:56:55,821
Forces that needed to be controlled.
657
00:56:57,539 --> 00:57:01,101
The terrible evidence from the death camps seemed to show what happened
658
00:57:01,351 --> 00:57:03,807
when these forces were unleashed.
659
00:57:04,157 --> 00:57:06,900
And politicians and planners in post war America
660
00:57:06,900 --> 00:57:10,157
would come to believe that hidden under the surface of their own population
661
00:57:10,157 --> 00:57:13,135
were the same dangerous forces.
662
00:57:15,760 --> 00:57:20,987
And they would turn to the Freud family to help control this enemy within.
663
00:57:26,174 --> 00:57:31,636
And ever adaptable Edward Bernays would work
not just for the American government but the CIA
664
00:57:35,073 --> 00:57:39,657
and Sigmund Freud's daughter Anna,
would also become powerful in the United States
665
00:57:39,982 --> 00:57:44,730
because she believed that people could be taught to control the irrational forces within them.
666
00:57:45,450 --> 00:57:51,903
Out of this, would come vast government programs to manage the inner psychological life of the masses.
667
00:58:10,000 --> 00:58:20,000
Time synch (-9.846s), spellcheck, and (some) edits by coyote 26December2011
668
00:58:21,000 --> 00:58:31,000
from version uploaded to Subscene.com 18October2010 by subsred
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