The Century of the Self

4 episodes · 2002

The story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud's ideas to manipulate the masses. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn't need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires.

The programme explores how those in power in post-war America used Freud's ideas about the unconscious mind to try and control the masses.

In the 1960s, a radical group of psychotherapists challenged the influence of Freudian ideas in America. They were inspired by the ideas of Wilhelm Reich, a pupil of Freud's, who had turned against him and was hated by the Freud family. He believed that the inner self did not need to be repressed and controlled. It should be encouraged to express itself.

How both the Labour Party in Britain and the Democrats in America have sought to gain power through use of the focus group, invented by psychoanalysts to fulfil desires of the inner self.