Title: The Century of the Self
Country: United Kingdom
Language: English
Year: 2002
Episode: 04
Cast:
- Adam Curtis
- Alfred Pritz
- Erzie Karolyi
- Ernest Jones
- Edward Bernays
- Pat Jackson
- Peter Strauss
- Peter Solomon
- Stuart Ewen
- Ernest Federn
- Ann Bernays
- Leopold Löwenthal
- George Gallup Jr.
- Marcel Faust
- Martin Bergmann
- Ellen Herman
- Anton Freud
- Michael Burlingham
- Robert Wallerstein
- Harold Blum
- Neil Smelser
- Fritz Gehagen
- Ernest Dichter
- Hedy Dichter
- Larry Tye
- Howard Hunt
- John Gittinger
- Heinz Lehmann
- Laughlin Taylor
- Linda MacDonald
- Celeste Holm
- Leo Rangell
- Arthur Miller
- Herbert Marcuse
- Alexander Lowen
- Morton Herskowitz
- Lore Reich Rubin
- Robert Pardun
- Stew Albert
- Michael Murphy
- George Leonard
- William Coulson
- Daniel Yankelovich
- Werner Erhard
- Jesse Kornbluth
- Jay Ogilvy
- Amina Marie Spengler
- Jeffrey Bell
- Christine MacNulty
- Renee M. Love
- Robert Reich
- Matthew Wright
- Ruport Murdoch
- Mario Cuomo
- Philip Gould
- Dick Morris
- Mark Penn
- Doug Schoen
- James Bennet
- Derek Draper
SYNOPSIS
The Century of the Self is a documentary composed of four parts: (1) Happiness Machines, (2) The Engineering of Consent, (3) There Is A Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed, and (4) Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering.
A hundred 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 which are not controlled led individuals and societies to chaos and destruction.
Happiness Machines
This series is about how those in power have used Sigmund Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy. At the heart of the story is not just Sigmund Freud, but other members of the Freud family.
This episode is about Freud's American nephew Edward Bernays. Bernays is almost completely unknown today but his influence on the 20th century was nearly as great as his uncle's, because Bernays was the first person to take Freud's ideas about 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 the new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying people's 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.
The Engineering of Consent
This is a story about how Sigmund Freud's ideas about the unconscious mind were used by those in power in post-war America to try and control the masses.
Politicians and planners came to believe that Freud was right to suggest that hidden deep within all human beings were dangerous and irrational desires and fears. They were convinced that it was the unleashing of these instincts that lead to the barbarous Nazi Germany. To stop it ever happening again, they set out to find ways to control this hidden enemy within the human mind.
At the heart of the story are Sigmund Freud's daughter Anna and his nephew Edward Bernays, who had invented the profession of public relations. Their ideas were used by the US government, big business, and the CIA to develop techniques to manage and control the minds of the American people.
Those in power believed that the only way to make democracy work and create a stable society was to repress the savage barbarism that lurk just under the surface of normal American life.
There Is A Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed
This is a series about how Sigmund Freud's ideas about the unconscious mind has been used by those in power to control the masses in an age of democracy.
Last week's episode showed how Freud's ideas spread throughout America in the 1950s. They were promoted by his daughter Anna and by Freud's nephew Edward Bernays, who invented public relations. He brought Freud's theories into the heart of advertising and marketing. What they both believed is that underneath all human beings was a hidden irrational self, which needed to be controlled both for the good of the individuals and the stability of society.
But the Freuds were about to be toppled from power by opponents who said they were wrong about human nature. The inner self did not need to be repressed or controlled, and should be encouraged to express itself. Out of this would come a new type of strong human being and a better society.
But what, in fact, emerged from this revolution was the very opposite: an isolated, vulnerable, and above all, greedy self; far more open to manipulation by both business and politics than anything that have gone before. Those in power would now control the self, not by repressing it, but by feeding its infinite desires.
Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering
This is the story of the rise of the idea that has come to dominate our society, it is the belief that the satisfaction of individual feelings and desires is our highest priority.
Previous episodes have shown how this rise of the self was fostered and promoted by business. They had used the ideas of Sigmund Freud to develop techniques to read the inner desires of individuals, and then fulfill them with products.
This final episode is about how that idea took over politics. It tells the story about how politicians on the left in both America and Britain turn to these techniques to regain power. They believed that they were creating a new and better form of democracy, one that truly responded to the inner feelings of individuals.
But what the politicians didn't realize was that the aim of those who had originally created these techniques had not been to liberate the people, but to develop a new way of controlling them in an age of mass democracy.
REVIEW
The Century of the Self is an interesting documentary about Sigmund Freud's ideas about the unconscious, and how key individuals have utilized these concepts in business, particularly in marketing and advertising, and in politics.
It is a well-researched film about how Sigmund Freud's ideas about the self, as promoted by his daughter Anna and his nephew Edward Bernays, changed the way of doing business and politics in the US and then the rest of the world.
The whole documentary series can be viewed online at ThoughtMaybe - The Century of the Self, with some information from its writer and director Adam Curtis.
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The Century of the Self
