The Century of the Self (Full Adam Curtis Documentary)

《自我世纪》（亚当·柯蒂斯纪录片） 西格蒙德·弗洛伊德提出了潜意识与原始本能冲动支配人类行为的革命性理论，而其外甥爱德华·伯内斯则将这一发现转化为现代公共关系与大众控制的工具。伯内斯向美国企业界证明，通过将工业量产商品与大众隐藏的情感及非理性欲望挂钩，可以成功诱导大众消费不必要的产品，从而推动社会由“需求驱动”全面转向“欲望驱动”。这一机制随后被政界精英采纳，演变为通过满足个体浅层欲望来安抚、分化并操控大众的“制造共识”治理模式，进而奠定了现代消费主义文化的基石。 弗洛伊德指出人类内心深处隐藏着危险且不可控的攻击与性冲动，第一次世界大战的爆发更印证了理性外表下原始破坏力的存在，彻底动摇了大众民主关于公民具备理性判断的假设。 爱德华·伯内斯将心理分析概念引入商业领域，开创了公共关系行业，通过“自由火炬”游行等案例将商品塑造为身份与情感的象征，成功促使美国经济向欲望型消费主义转型。 政界与商界精英广泛接纳伯内斯的“制造共识”理念，将大众视作由本能驱动的群体，主张利用心理工程手段满足其欲望以维持社会顺从与秩序稳定。

Adam Curtis's documentary argues that twentieth-century political and corporate elites co-opted Sigmund Freud's theories of unconscious, irrational drives to manage mass democracy. By substituting engineered consumer desires for rational citizenship, elites turned the public into self-absorbed, docile consumers whose private impulses could be harnessed for political stability and corporate profit. Engineering Consumer Desires from Unconscious Drives (14:52) Sigmund Freud posited that human nature is dominated by dangerous, repressed sexual and aggressive instincts—a pessimistic view that imperial rulers and Western elites saw confirmed by the mechanized slaughter of World War I. Freud's American nephew, Edward Bernays, operationalized these concepts for commerce and public control. In the late 1920s, facing industrial overproduction where factories produced goods faster than practical needs required, corporate leaders sought to re-engineer the American mindset. As Lehman Brothers banker Paul Mazur argued, business had to shift culture from needs to desires, training citizens to want new items before old ones were worn out. Bernays demonstrated this technique by tethering products to unconscious emotional urges. For the American Tobacco Company, psychoanalyst Abraham Arden Brill advised Bernays that cigarettes symbolized masculine dominance; Bernays subsequently orchestrated the 1929 Easter Parade "Torches of Freedom" demonstration, reframing female smoking as an emotional assertion of independence. Bernays viewed the public as an irrational, easily manipulated mass, pioneering a governing model where gratifying latent personal cravings kept crowds distracted, passive, and profitable. Postwar Social Engineering and Therapeutic Conformity (56:23) Following World War II and the revelation of Nazi atrocities—which Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels admitted were influenced in part by Bernays's techniques—the American establishment concluded that unchecked mass irrationality threatened democratic survival. The state enlisted Freud's daughter, Anna Freud, whose ego-psychology asserted that individuals could be conditioned to repress volatile instincts and conform to societal norms. In 1946, President Harry S. Truman signed the National Mental Health Act, prompting psychiatric clinics run by figures like Karl and Will Menninger to systematically train counselors to foster social adjustment. Simultaneously, psychoanalyst Ernest Dichter introduced "motivation research" to corporate marketing, utilizing group therapy dynamics to create focus groups that extracted consumers' hidden anxieties and status drives. However, this therapeutic conformity provoked severe backlash. Critics like playwright Arthur Miller accused psychoanalysis of domesticating human beings into an artificial, lobotomized tranquility, while Vance Packard documented advertiser manipulation in *The Hidden Persuaders*. Civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. actively inverted the psychological orthodoxy, urging citizens to remain proudly "maladjusted" to unjust social systems like racial segregation. From Countercultural Liberation to Lifestyle Commodification During the 1960s and 1970s, an anti-Freudian counter-revolution drew inspiration from Wilhelm Reich, Herbert Marcuse, and the human potential movement at the Esalen Institute. Activists sought to eradicate the "policeman inside our heads" and liberate the authentic self. Seminars like Werner Erhard's est deconstructed social duties, asserting that individuals possessed sovereign authority to construct their own identities. Demographer Daniel Yankelovich tracked this inward shift: while expressive individuals seeking self-actualization constituted an estimated 3 to 5 percent of Americans in 1970, that demographic surged to roughly 80 percent by 1980. Rather than undermining capitalism, this quest for personal authenticity presented a massive commercial opportunity. Using the Stanford Research Institute's VALS (Values and Lifestyles) system, marketers segmented consumers by emotional values and self-image rather than simple income demographics. Combined with computerized flexible factory production that eliminated the risk of overproduction, corporations manufactured identity-affirming goods in targeted batches. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher politically canonized this market individualism, repudiating post-war collectivism in favor of an unregulated economic order driven by personal consumer choice. Focus Groups and Politics as Market Research (211:02) By the 1990s, political governance completely adopted commercial marketing mechanics. In the United States, Bill Clinton's advisor Dick Morris and pollster Mark Penn deployed "neuro-personality polls" and intensive focus groups to capture swing voters in the suburban middle class. Rather than attempting to persuade the electorate with a broader ideological mandate, the administration tailored policies to psychological profiles, introducing micro-targeted initiatives such as television V-chips and mobile phones on school buses. Administration liberals, including Labor Secretary Robert Reich, protested that reducing presidential leadership to consumer-tested initiatives hollowed out governing purpose. A parallel shift reshaped Britain under Tony Blair's New Labour. Modernizers Philip Gould and Peter Mandelson utilized nightly focus groups with swing voters to dictate party policy, leading Blair to scrap traditional socialist commitments like Clause IV and freeze income tax rates. Both administrations embraced a consumer democracy originally previewed in Bernays's 1939 "Democracity" exhibit, where governments operate like responsive businesses servicing the immediate private desires of the electorate. The documentary concludes that modern political leaders have become trapped within the consumerist framework they engineered. By treating citizens strictly as bundles of short-term, self-interested appetites, governments forfeit the ability to summon collective action for structural problems such as systemic inequality and social fragmentation, leaving both politicians and the public captive to an impoverished, purely commercial view of human nature.

纪录片导演亚当·柯蒂斯（Adam Curtis）指出，20世纪的政商精英系统性地运用了西格蒙德·弗洛伊德关于潜意识与非理性欲望的理论，通过现代公共关系与市场调研手段将大众重塑为受欲望驱动的被动消费者，以此维持社会秩序并最终使民主政治全面商业化。 潜意识操控与消费主义文化的奠基 (0:00) 西格蒙德·弗洛伊德（Sigmund Freud）提出人类深层潜意识中隐藏着危险的性与攻击本能，第一次世界大战的机械化屠杀更在其眼中印证了文明外衣的脆弱与大众的非理性本质。弗洛伊德的美国外甥爱德华·伯内斯（Edward Bernays）率先将这一心理学理论转化为社会控制机制。为打破女性在公共场合吸烟的禁忌，伯内斯在精神分析师亚伯拉罕·布里尔（Abraham Arden Brill）建议下，于纽约复活节游行中将香烟设计为象征挑战男权统治的“自由火炬”，成功激发了女性潜意识中争取独立的情感认同。 一战后美国工业面临生产过剩的系统性危机，雷曼兄弟银行家保罗·马祖尔（Paul Mazur）明确提出，企业必须推动美国文化从“需求”转向“欲望”，使人们在旧物品尚未损耗前就渴望新品。伯内斯通过公关手段将大规模制造的商品与消费者的潜意识欲望相绑定，逐步消解了注重耐用与节俭的传统伦理。到1927年，观察家指出公民的首要身份已被重塑为消费者；伯内斯将大众视作可以精确计算和操纵的集合体，开创了通过满足个人自私欲望来维持大众顺从与社会稳定的现代治理逻辑。 战后心理规训与社会工程的扩张 (56:23) 第二次世界大战的创伤及纳粹集中营惨剧，加深了美英统治精英对公众内心非理性冲动的戒备。美军应征体检暴露出数百万士兵存在此前未察觉的情感障碍与神经症，推动哈里·S·杜鲁门（Harry S. Truman）于1946年签署《国家心理健康法案》（National Mental Health Act）。在安娜·弗洛伊德（Anna Freud）的自我心理学与门宁格（Menninger）兄弟的推广下，精神分析成为指导公众克制内在冲动、适应战后郊区家庭秩序的大规模社会工程；与此同时，欧内斯特·迪希特（Ernest Dichter）开创了结合心理分析的“动机研究”与产品焦点小组，利用潜意识焦虑和性冲动直接刺激商业消费。 这种心理学工具迅速渗透至冷战国家安全领域：伯内斯受雇于联合果品公司（United Fruit Company），将危地马拉阿本斯（Jacobo Árbenz）政府的土地再分配改革包装为苏联对美洲的紧迫威胁，成功制造舆论支持政权更迭；中央情报局（CIA）亦启动项目试图解构并重组人类人格，将个体视为可编程的自动化机器。然而，这一调控范式遭到剧作家阿瑟·米勒（Arthur Miller）与万斯·帕卡德（Vance Packard）等知识分子的批评，马丁·路德·金（Martin Luther King Jr.）更公开宣称，拒绝顺从不公正的社会体制、“保持不适应（maladjusted）”才是公民真正的道德责任。 反叛精神的商业吸纳与无限欲望 (116:11) 20世纪60年代，新左翼运动与反文化思潮发起反弗洛伊德反叛，威尔海姆·赖希（Wilhelm Reich）提倡释放内在能量的思想重获新生，埃萨兰研究所（Esalen Institute）及维尔纳·埃哈德（Werner Erhard）的est培训试图剥离一切社会规训与内在约束。激进分子一度提出“摧毁脑中警察”的口号，但在国家暴力与政治挫折面前，运动迅速从激进社会变革退缩为向内的个人心灵探索。民调专家丹尼尔·扬克洛维奇（Daniel Yankelovich）指出，注重内在自我表达的人群比例在1970年至1980年间从总人口的3%至5%急剧攀升至近80%，“自我十年（Me Decade）”由此成形。 商业界迅速将这种文化转变转化为巨大的商业前沿。斯坦福研究所（SRI）开发出VALS（价值观与生活方式）测评系统，仅凭30个关键问题便能将消费者按核心价值观精准分类，预测其身份表达偏好。与此同时，工厂车间引入计算机化柔性生产技术，以低成本小批量制造替代了刚性流水线。由于消费者购买商品是为了不断构建和重塑个性，市场需求摆脱了物理饱和的限制而变得无穷无尽；个人看似摆脱了传统权威，实则被吸纳进以自恋和即时满足为驱动的新经济增长机器中。 政治的市场化与焦点小组统治 (211:02) 20世纪末，英美两国政治体系彻底采纳了商业营销模式。在英国，玛格丽特·撒切尔（Margaret Thatcher）的自由市场意识形态与鲁珀特·默多克（Rupert Murdoch）的大众媒体击碎了传统的阶级家长制，迫使屡遭败绩的工党进行彻底转型；战略顾问菲利普·古尔德（Philip Gould）与彼得·曼德尔森（Peter Mandelson）将郊区摇摆选民的焦点小组反馈作为政策制定的最高准则。在美国，比尔·克林顿（Bill Clinton）在战略家迪克·莫里斯（Dick Morris）与民调专家马克·佩恩（Mark Penn）协助下，运用“神经人格民调”深入挖掘郊区中产阶级的微观心理诉求，推出了车载电话、防色情芯片（V-chip）等高度定制化的微观政策。 柯蒂斯强调，这种以消费者为导向的治理模式直接呼应了伯内斯在1939年纽约世博会上勾勒的“民主城（Democracity）”蓝图——将自由市场对个体欲望的满足等同于民主的最高形式。罗伯特·赖克（Robert Reich）等内阁成员批评此举抽空了政治的崇高使命，将国家领导人降格为推销肥皂式的公关代理人。政治家不再试图说服大众参与公共事业，而是完全顺从焦点小组测出的自私本能，放弃了动员公民共同承担税收与社会福利的传统集体承诺。 纪录片指出，当代社会陷入了一种不可调和的矛盾：现代消费者虽自认高度自由且摆脱了旧有权威，却深陷由短期欲望主导的心理回路中无法自拔。当新工党等政治力量试图应对深刻的经济不平等与社会解体危机时，却发现自己早已受制于将大众视为自私消费者的理论前提。如何超越弗洛伊德式将人还原为非理性欲望集合体的狭隘模型，重建具备集体责任感与理性自决能力的真正公民民主，成为现代政治尚未解决的核心困境。

[0:00] a new theory about human nature was put [0:02] forward by Sigman [0:03] Freud he had discovered he said [0:06] primitive sexual and aggressive forces [0:08] hidden deep inside the minds of all [0:10] human beings forces which have not [0:13] controlled LED individuals and societies [0:15] to chaos and [0:17] [Music] [0:19] destruction this series is about how [0:21] those in power have used Freud's [0:23] theories to try and control the [0:25] dangerous crowd in an age of mass [0:28] democracy [0:32] at the heart of the story is not just [0:34] Sigman Freud but other members of the [0:36] Freud [0:37] [Music] [0:41] family call this episode is about [0:44] Freud's American nephew Edward [0:47] bernes bernes is almost completely [0:49] unknown today but his influence on the [0:51] 20th century was nearly as great as his [0:54] uncles I turned because bernes was the [0:57] first person to take Freud's ideas about [1:00] human beings and use them to manipulate [1:02] the [1:08] masses he showed American corporations [1:10] for the first time how they could make [1:12] people want things they didn't need by [1:15] linking Mass produce Goods to their [1:16] unconscious [1:19] desires out of this would come a new [1:21] political idea of how to control the [1:25] masses by satisfying people's inner [1:28] selfish desires when made them happy and [1:31] thus [1:32] docile it was the start of the all [1:34] consuming self which has come to [1:37] dominate our world [1:43] [Music] [1:49] [Applause] [1:50] [Music] [1:56] today Freud's ideas about how the human [1:59] mind works have now become an accepted [2:01] part of society as have [2:04] psychoanalysts every year the [2:06] psychotherapist ball is held in a grand [2:08] palace in [2:11] viena this is the Psychotherapy board [2:14] psychotherapists come some Advanced [2:17] patients come or former patients come [2:21] and many other people friends but also [2:25] um um uh people from the vienes society [2:29] who like to go to a nice elegant [2:32] comfortable [2:36] Bo but it was not always [2:39] [Music] [2:41] so 100 years ago Freud's ideas were [2:43] hated by vies Society at that time [2:47] Vienna was the center of a vast Empire [2:49] ruling Central [2:50] [Music] [2:51] Europe and to the powerful nobility at [2:54] the hapsburg court Freud's ideas were [2:56] not only embarrassing but the very idea [2:59] of examining and analyzing one's inner [3:01] feelings was a threat to their absolute [3:06] control you see at that time these [3:08] people had the power and of course you [3:11] just were not allowed to show your [3:13] bloody feelings I mean you just couldn't [3:15] you know I mean you couldn't if you were [3:17] unhappy can you imagine you for instance [3:19] you sit somewhere on the country in a [3:21] castle you are deeply unhappy you are a [3:22] woman I you couldn't go to your maid and [3:25] cry on on her shoulders or you couldn't [3:26] go into the village and and complain you [3:29] know about about your feelings I mean [3:30] you couldn't it was like selling [3:33] yourself to somebody you just [3:35] couldn't you [3:37] know because they had to respect you now [3:41] of course frud you see put that thought [3:44] very much into question because you you [3:47] see to examine yourself you would have [3:50] to to put a lot of other things into [3:52] question your [3:54] Society everything what surrounds you [3:57] and that wasn't a good thing at that [3:58] time why not because [4:02] your self-created Empire to a certain [4:05] extent would have fallen into bits much [4:07] ear already but what frightened the [4:09] rulers of the Empire even more was [4:12] Freud's idea that hidden inside all [4:14] human beings were dangerous instinctual [4:17] drives Freud had devised a method he [4:19] called [4:21] psychoanalysis by analyzing dreams and [4:23] free association he had Unearthed he [4:25] said powerful sexual and aggressive [4:27] forces which were the remnants of our [4:29] animal [4:30] past feelings we repressed because they [4:33] were too [4:34] dangerous Freud devised a method for [4:38] exploring a hidden part of the mind [4:40] which we nowadays call the [4:42] unconscious which a part that is totally [4:45] unknown to our Consciousness that there [4:48] exists a barrier in all our minds which [4:53] prevents these hidden and unwelcomed [4:56] impulses of the unconscious from [4:58] emerging [5:00] good [5:04] night in 1914 the Ostro Hungarian Empire [5:08] led Europe into [5:10] war as the horror mounted Freud saw it [5:12] as terrible evidence of the truth of his [5:15] findings the saddest thing he wrote is [5:18] that this is exactly the way we should [5:20] have expected people to behave from our [5:22] knowledge of [5:24] psychoanalysis governments had unleashed [5:26] the Primitive forces in human beings and [5:29] no one seemed to know how to stop [5:32] [Music] [5:36] them at that time Freud's young nephew [5:39] Edward bernes was working as a press [5:41] agent in [5:42] America his main client was the world [5:45] famous opera singer Caruso who was [5:47] touring the United [5:52] [Music] [5:54] States Bern's parents had immigrated to [5:57] America 20 years before but but he kept [5:59] in touch with his uncle and joined him [6:01] for holidays in the [6:03] Alps but bernes was now about to return [6:06] to Europe for a very different reason on [6:09] the night that Caruso opened in Toledo [6:11] Ohio America announced it was entering [6:14] the war against Germany and [6:17] [Music] [6:19] Austria as a part of the war effort the [6:21] US government set up a Committee on [6:23] Public Information and bernes was [6:26] employed to promote America's War AIMS [6:28] in the Press [6:29] [Music] [6:30] the President woodro Wilson had [6:32] announced that the United States would [6:34] fight not to restore the old Empires but [6:37] to bring democracy to all of [6:39] Europe bernes proved extremely skillful [6:42] in promoting this idea both at home and [6:45] abroad and at the end of the war he was [6:48] asked to accompany the president to the [6:50] Paris peace [6:53] conference then to my [6:56] surprise they asked me to go over with [6:59] with wro Wilson to the priest [7:02] conference and at the age of [7:06] 1926 I was in Paris for the entire time [7:11] of the peace [7:13] conference that was held in the suburb [7:15] of Paris and we worked to make the world [7:21] safe for democracy that was a big [7:27] slogan Wilson's reception Paris [7:30] astounded bernes and the other American [7:33] propagandists their propaganda had [7:35] portrayed Wilson as a liberator of the [7:37] people a man who would create a new [7:39] world in which the individual would be [7:42] free they had made him a hero of the [7:45] masses and as he watched the crowds [7:47] surge around Wilson bernes began to [7:50] wonder whether it would be possible to [7:52] do the same type of mass persuasion but [7:54] in peace [7:56] time when I came back to the United [8:00] States I [8:02] decided that if you could use propaganda [8:06] for war you could certainly use it for [8:10] peace and propaganda got to be a bad [8:14] word because of the Germans using it so [8:18] what I [8:20] did was to try to find some other [8:24] words so we found the word Council on [8:27] Public [8:28] Relation [8:31] bernes returned to New York and set up [8:33] as a public relations Council in a small [8:36] office off Broadway it was the first [8:38] time the term had ever been [8:41] used since the end of the 19th century [8:44] America had become a mass industrial [8:46] society with Millions clustered together [8:48] in the [8:50] cities bernes was determined to find a [8:52] way to manage and alter the way these [8:55] new crowds thought and [8:57] felt to do this he turned to the [8:59] writings of his uncle [9:01] Sigmund while in Paris bernes had sent [9:04] his uncle a gift of some Havana [9:06] cigars in return Freud has sent him a [9:10] copy of his General introduction to [9:12] psychoanalysis ber has read it and the [9:15] picture of hidden irrational forces [9:17] inside human beings fascinated him he [9:21] wondered whether he might make money by [9:23] manipulating the [9:25] unconscious what Eddie got from Freud [9:28] was in indeed this idea that there is a [9:31] lot more going on in human decision [9:33] making not only among individuals but [9:36] even more importantly among groups than [9:39] this idea that information drives [9:42] behavior and so Eddie began to formulate [9:45] this idea that you had to look at things [9:47] that would play to people's irrational [9:50] emotions and you see that moved Eddie [9:52] immediately into a different category [9:54] from other people in his field and most [9:57] government officials and managers of the [9:59] day who thought if you just hit people [10:01] with all this factual information they [10:04] would look at that and say oh of course [10:06] and Eddie knew that was not the way the [10:09] world [10:10] worked Bern set out to experiment with [10:13] the minds of the popular classes his [10:16] most dramatic experiment was to persuade [10:18] women to [10:19] smoke at that time there was a taboo [10:21] against women smoking and one of his [10:23] early clients George Hill the president [10:26] of the American Tobacco Corporation [10:28] asked G to find a way of breaking it he [10:32] said we're losing half of our Market [10:35] because men have invoked a taboo against [10:39] women smoking in [10:43] public can you do anything about that I [10:46] said let me think about [10:48] it and then I said if I your permission [10:51] to see a [10:52] psychoanalyst to find out what [10:55] cigarettes mean to women he said what [10:59] cost so I called up Dr [11:03] Brill AA Brill who is a leading psycho [11:07] analist in New York at that time how [11:10] come you didn't call your uncle why [11:12] didn't you call your uncle cuz he was in [11:15] Vienna AA Bru was one of the first [11:18] psychoanalysts in America and for a [11:21] large fee he told Bernay that cigarettes [11:24] were a symbol of the penis and of male [11:26] sexual [11:27] power he told bernes that if he could [11:30] find a way to connect cigarettes with [11:32] the idea of challenging male power then [11:35] women would smoke because then they [11:37] would have their own [11:40] [Music] [11:42] penises every year New York held an [11:45] Easter Day Parade to which thousands [11:47] came and bernes decided to Stage event [11:51] there he persuaded a group of Rich [11:53] debutants to hide cigarettes under their [11:56] clothes then they should join the par [11:58] parade and at a given signal from him [12:01] they were to light up the cigarettes [12:03] dramatically bernes then informed the [12:05] press that he had heard that a group of [12:07] suffragettes were preparing to protest [12:10] by lighting up what they called torches [12:12] of Freedom he knew this would be an [12:14] outcry and he knew that all of the [12:16] photographers would be there to capture [12:18] this moment and so he was ready with a [12:23] phrase which was torches of freedom and [12:26] so here you have a symbol women young [12:29] women debutants smoking a cigarette in [12:32] public with a phrase that means anybody [12:35] who believes in this kind of equality [12:37] pretty much has to support them in the [12:39] ensuing debate about this because [12:42] torches of [12:44] freedom I mean what's on All American [12:47] coins it's liberty she's holding up the [12:50] torch you see and so all of this is [12:53] there together there's emotion there's [12:55] memory there's a rational phrase even [12:58] though it's using a lot of emotional [12:59] elements it's a it's a phrase that works [13:01] in a rational sense all of this is [13:05] together and so the next day this was [13:08] not just in all of the New York papers [13:11] it was across the United States and [13:12] around the world and from that point [13:15] forward uh the sale of cigarettes to [13:17] women began to rise he had made them [13:20] socially acceptable with a single [13:22] symbolic [13:24] act what bernes had created was the idea [13:27] that if a woman smoked [13:29] it made her more powerful and [13:31] independent an idea that still persists [13:34] today embrace [13:38] me my sweet Andra it made him realize [13:43] that it was possible to persuade people [13:45] to behave irrationally if you link [13:47] products to their emotional desires and [13:50] feelings the idea that smoking actually [13:53] made women Freer was completely [13:55] irrational but it made them feel more [13:57] independent [14:00] it meant that irrelevant objects could [14:02] become powerful emotional symbols of how [14:05] you wanted to be seen by [14:08] others Eddie bernes saw the way to sell [14:12] product was not to sell it to your [14:14] intellect that you ought to buy an [14:17] automobile but that you will feel better [14:20] about it if you have this automobile I [14:23] think he originated that idea that they [14:25] weren't just purchasing something but [14:27] they were in engaging themselves [14:30] emotionally or personally in in the [14:32] product or service there's not you you [14:35] think you need a new piece of clothing [14:38] but you'll feel better with the piece of [14:40] clothing that was his contribution in a [14:43] very real sense we see it all over the [14:45] place today but I think he originated [14:47] the idea of the emotional connect to a [14:49] product or [14:50] [Music] [14:52] service what bernes was doing fascinated [14:55] America's [14:57] corporations they they had come out of [14:59] the war rich and Powerful but they had a [15:01] growing worry the system of mass [15:04] production had flourished during the war [15:06] and now millions of goods were pouring [15:08] off production [15:09] lines what they were frightened of was [15:12] the danger of [15:13] overproduction that there would come a [15:15] point when people had enough goods and [15:17] would simply stop [15:20] buying up until that point the majority [15:22] of products were still sold to the [15:24] masses on the basis of [15:27] need are the Rich had long been used to [15:29] luxury goods for the millions of [15:32] workingclass Americans most products [15:34] were still advertised as [15:36] Necessities Goods like shoes stockings [15:39] even cars were promoted in functional [15:42] terms for their [15:45] durability the aim of the advertisements [15:47] was simply to show people the product's [15:49] Practical virtues nothing [15:52] [Music] [15:57] more [16:00] what the corporations realized they had [16:02] to do was transform the way the majority [16:04] of Americans thought about [16:07] products one leading Wall Street Banker [16:09] Paul merer of layman Brothers was clear [16:12] about what was [16:14] necessary we must shift America he wrote [16:17] from a needs to a desires culture people [16:20] must be trained to desire to want new [16:22] things even before the old have been [16:24] entirely [16:26] consumed we must shape a new mental in [16:29] America man's desires must overshadow [16:32] his [16:34] needs prior to that time there was no [16:37] American Consumer there was the American [16:39] worker and there was American owner and [16:41] they manufactured and they saved and [16:42] they ate what they had to when the [16:45] people shopped for what they needed and [16:47] while the very rich may have bought [16:50] things they didn't need most people did [16:52] not and merer envisioned a break with [16:56] that where you would have things that [16:58] you didn't didn't actually need but you [17:01] wanted as opposed to needed and the man [17:04] who would be at the center of changing [17:06] that mentality for the corporations was [17:08] Edward bernes bernes really is the guy [17:11] within the United States more than [17:13] anybody else who sort of brings to the [17:16] table psychological theory as something [17:20] that is an essential part of how from [17:23] the corporate side of how we are going [17:26] to appeal to the masses effectively and [17:29] the whole sort of merchandising [17:31] establishment and sales and sales [17:34] establishment is ready for Sigman Frey I [17:37] mean they are ready for understanding [17:39] what motivates the human [17:42] mind and so that there's this real [17:45] openness to Bern's techniques being used [17:48] to sell products to the [17:50] masses beginning in the early 20s the [17:53] New York Banks funded the creation of [17:55] chains of department stores Across [17:56] America they were to the outlets for the [17:59] mass-- produced goods and Bern's job was [18:02] to produce the new type of [18:04] customer bernes began to create many of [18:07] the techniques of mass consumer [18:08] persuasion that we now live with he was [18:12] employed by William Randolph Hurst to [18:13] promote his new women's magazines and [18:16] bernes glamorized them by placing [18:18] articles and advertisements that link [18:20] products made by others of his clients [18:22] to famous film stars like claraa B who [18:26] was also his [18:27] client bernes also began the practice of [18:30] product placement in the [18:31] movies and he dressed the Stars at the [18:34] film's premieres with clothes and [18:36] jewelry from other firms he [18:39] represented he was he claimed the first [18:41] person to tell car companies they could [18:43] sell cars as symbols of male [18:46] sexuality he employed psychologists to [18:49] issue reports that said products were [18:51] good for you and then pretended they [18:53] were independent [18:54] studies he organized fashion shows in [18:57] the department stores and paid [18:59] celebrities to repeat the new and [19:01] essential message you bought things not [19:03] just for need but to express your inner [19:05] sense of yourself to [19:07] [Music] [19:10] others there's a psychology of dress [19:13] have you ever thought about it how it [19:15] can express your [19:17] character you all have interesting [19:19] characters but some of them are all [19:21] hidden I wonder why you all want a dress [19:24] always the same with the same hats and [19:27] the same coats [19:28] I'm sure all of you are interesting and [19:31] have wonderful things about you but [19:33] looking at you in the [19:35] street you all look so much the same and [19:39] that's why I'm talking to you about the [19:41] psychology of dress try and express [19:44] yourselves better in your [19:48] dress bring out certain things that you [19:51] think are hidden I wonder if you thought [19:54] of this angle of your [19:57] personality I'd like to ask you some [20:00] questions why do you like shortcat oh [20:03] because there's more to see more to see [20:06] he what what good does that do [20:09] you my [20:11] hands it makes you more attractive [20:15] [Music] [20:18] no in 1927 an American journalist wrote [20:22] A change has come over our democracy it [20:25] is called consumptionism the American [20:28] Citizen's first importance to his [20:29] country is now no longer that of citizen [20:33] but that of [20:35] consumer the growing wave of consumerism [20:38] helped in turn to create a stock market [20:40] boom and yet again Edward bernes became [20:44] involved promoting the novel idea that [20:46] Ordinary People should buy shares [20:49] borrowing money from Banks he also [20:52] represented and yet again Millions [20:54] followed his [20:56] advice he was uniquely knowledgeable [21:00] about how people in large numbers are [21:02] going to react to products and ideas and [21:05] so [21:06] on but in term in political terms if he [21:09] were to go out so I can't imagine that [21:11] he'd get three people stand and [21:13] listen wasn't particularly articulate [21:16] was a kind of funny looking and didn't [21:20] have any sense of reaching out for [21:22] people oneon-one none at all he didn't [21:25] talk about didn't think about people in [21:27] groups of one thought about people in [21:30] groups of [21:33] thousands so I would have nothing to [21:38] doing hello Bernay soon became famous as [21:42] the man who understood the mind of the [21:44] crowd and in 1924 the president [21:47] contacted [21:48] him president kulage was a quiet tacan [21:52] man and had become a national Jer the [21:55] Press portrayed him as a dull humorous [21:57] figure [21:58] Bern's solution was to do exactly the [22:00] same as he had done with products he [22:03] persuaded 34 famous film stars to visit [22:05] the White [22:06] House and for the first time politics [22:09] became involved with public [22:12] relations and I lined up these 34 people [22:18] and I'd say what's your name he'd say Al [22:22] Jon I'd say Mr President Al Jon next St [22:28] every newspaper in the United States had [22:32] a front page [22:34] story president coolage [22:38] entertains actors at White House and the [22:42] times had a headline which said [22:47] president nearly [22:53] laugh and everybody was [22:56] happy [22:58] [Music] [23:00] but while bernes became rich and [23:01] Powerful in America in Vienna his uncle [23:04] was facing [23:05] disaster like much of Europe Vienna was [23:07] suffering an economic crisis and massive [23:09] inflation which wiped out all of Freud's [23:13] savings facing bankruptcy he wrote to [23:15] his nephew for [23:17] help bernes responded by arranging for [23:19] Freud's Works to be published for the [23:21] first time in America and began to send [23:24] his uncle precious dollars which Freud [23:27] kept secretly in a foreign bank [23:31] account he was Freud's agent if you will [23:34] to get his books published well of [23:36] course once the books were being [23:37] published Eddie couldn't help himself [23:39] but uh promote these books see that [23:43] everybody read them make them [23:46] controversial emphasize the fact that do [23:48] you know what fright says about sex and [23:50] what he says cigarettes are a symbol of [23:52] and so on and so forth how do you [23:53] suppose all those stories got out [23:55] certainly the academics weren't [23:57] spreading these around the country Eddie [23:58] Burnes was then when Freud became [24:01] accepted well then of course to go to to [24:05] a client and say well Uncle sigy see [24:07] then that had some cache but notice [24:09] there first Eddie created uncle sigy in [24:12] the US made him acceptable secondly and [24:16] thirdly then capitalized on Uncle sigy [24:20] typical Bern's performance bernes also [24:23] suggested that Freud promote himself in [24:25] the United States he proposed his uncle [24:27] an article for cosmopolitan a magazine [24:30] that Bern is represented entitled a [24:32] woman's mental place in the home Freud [24:35] was Furious such an idea he said was [24:38] Unthinkable it was vulgar and anyway he [24:41] hated [24:43] America Freud was now becoming [24:45] increasingly pessimistic about human [24:47] beings in the mid-20s he retreated in [24:50] the Summers to the Alps sometimes [24:52] staying in an old hotel the p meritz in [24:55] beus Garden it is now our [24:59] ruin Freud began to write about group [25:02] Behavior about how easily the [25:04] unconscious aggressive forces in human [25:06] beings could be triggered when they were [25:08] in [25:10] crowds Freud believed he had [25:12] underestimated the aggressive instincts [25:14] in human beings they were far more [25:16] dangerous than he had originally [25:19] thought after World War One F was [25:24] basically a pessimist he felt that man [25:29] is an Impossible [25:31] Creature and very very sadistic and [25:36] and uh [25:38] bad [25:40] species and did not believe that man can [25:44] be improved man is a ferocious animal [25:48] the most ferocious animal the [25:52] exist they enjoy torturing and and [25:57] killing and he didn't like [26:02] men the publication of Freud's Works in [26:05] America had an extraordinary effect on [26:07] journalists and intellectuals in the [26:09] 1920s what fascinated and frightened [26:12] them was the picture fry painted of [26:14] submerged dangerous forces luring just [26:17] under the surface of modern [26:19] society forces that could erupt easily [26:22] to produce the frenzied mob which had [26:23] the power to destroy even governments it [26:26] was this they belied had happened in [26:29] Russia to many this meant that one of [26:32] the guiding principles of mass democracy [26:34] was wrong the belief that human beings [26:37] could be trusted to make decisions on a [26:39] rational [26:40] basis the leading political writer [26:42] Walter Lipman argued that if human [26:45] beings were in reality driven by [26:47] unconscious irrational forces then it [26:49] was necessary to rethink [26:52] democracy what was needed was a new [26:54] Elite who could manage what he called [26:56] the bewildered [26:58] heard this would be done through [27:00] psychological techniques that would [27:02] control the unconscious feelings of the [27:06] masses so here you have Walter Litman [27:09] probably the most influential political [27:11] thinker in the United States who is [27:14] essentially saying that the basic [27:16] mechanism of the mass mind is unreason [27:19] is irrationality is animality he [27:22] believes that the mob in the street [27:24] which is how he sees Ordinary People Are [27:27] People were driven not by their minds [27:29] but by their spinal cords the notion of [27:31] kind of animal drives unconscious [27:34] instinctual drives lurking beneath the [27:37] surface of civilization and so they [27:39] started looking towards psychological [27:42] science as a way of understanding the [27:45] mechanisms by which the popular mind [27:49] works specifically with the goal of [27:53] figuring out how to understand how to [27:55] apply those mechanism to strategies for [27:58] uh social [27:59] control Edward bernes was fascinated by [28:02] litman's arguments and also saw a way to [28:05] promote himself by using [28:08] them in the 1920s he began to write a [28:11] series of books which argued that he had [28:13] developed the very techniques Litman was [28:16] calling [28:17] for by stimulating people's inner [28:19] desires and then sating them with [28:21] consumer products he was creating a new [28:24] way to manage the irrational force of [28:26] the masses [28:28] he called it the engineering of [28:31] consent democracy to my father was a [28:34] wonderful concept but I don't think he [28:37] felt that all those publics out there [28:40] would had reliable judgment uh and that [28:44] that that they could that they very [28:46] easily might vote for the wrong man or [28:49] want the wrong thing so that they had to [28:52] be guided from above uh it's a [28:56] enlightened despotism ISM in a [28:58] sense you appeal to their desires and [29:02] their unrecognized longings that sort of [29:07] thing that you can tap into their [29:11] deepest desires or their deepest fears [29:14] and use that to your own [29:17] purposes and then in 1928 a president [29:20] came to power who agreed with [29:23] bernes President Hoover was the first [29:25] politician to articulate the idea [29:27] that consumerism would become the [29:29] central motor of American [29:31] life after his election he told a group [29:34] of advertisers and public relations men [29:38] you have taken over the job of creating [29:40] desire and have transformed people into [29:43] constantly moving happiness [29:46] machines machines which have become the [29:48] key to economic [29:52] progress what was beginning to emerge in [29:55] the 1920s was a new idea a of how to run [29:58] Mass [29:59] democracy at its heart was the consuming [30:02] self which not only made the economy [30:05] work but was happy and docile and so [30:08] created a stable [30:11] Society both ber and litman's concept of [30:15] managing the masses takes the idea of [30:19] democracy and it turns it into a [30:22] paliative it turns it into uh giving [30:26] people some kind of feel good Med [30:28] medication that will respond to an [30:30] immediate pain or an immediate yearning [30:33] but will not alter the objective [30:35] circumstances one iota I mean democracy [30:38] really the idea of democracy at its [30:41] heart was about changing the relations [30:44] of power that had governed the world for [30:46] so long and Bern's concept of democracy [30:50] was one of maintaining the relations of [30:52] power even if it meant that one needed [30:54] to sort of stimulate the psychological [30:56] life lives of the public and in fact in [31:00] his mind that was what was [31:02] necessary that if you can keep [31:05] stimulating the irrational self then [31:08] leadership can basically go on doing [31:10] what it wants to [31:12] do bernes now became one of the central [31:15] figures in a business Elite that [31:17] dominated American society and politics [31:20] in the [31:21] 1920s he also became extremely rich and [31:24] lived in a suite of rooms in one of New [31:26] York's most expensive hotels where he [31:28] gave frequent parties oh my goodness he [31:31] had a home in the corner Suite of the [31:34] Sher Netherland hotel and he here's this [31:36] wonderful Suite with all these windows [31:38] looking out on Central Park and across [31:40] at the plaza and on the Square and he [31:43] would use this place to hold a Suare the [31:47] mayor would come all the media leaders [31:49] would come the political Leaders The [31:51] Business Leaders the people in the Arts [31:53] I mean it was a who's who people wanted [31:56] to know Eddie bernes because you know he [31:59] himself became a a sort of a famous man [32:02] a sort of a magician who could make [32:04] these things happen he knows everybody [32:06] he knows the mayor and he knows the [32:08] senator and he calls politicians on the [32:12] telephone as if he did get a literally a [32:15] a high or a bang out [32:18] of doing what he did and that's fine but [32:22] it it can be a little hard on the people [32:24] around you especially when you make [32:27] other people feel stupid people who [32:30] worked for him were stupid and children [32:32] were stupid and if people did things in [32:35] a way that he didn't that he wouldn't [32:38] have done them they were stupid that was [32:41] it was a word that he used over and over [32:43] and over dope and [32:45] stupid and the masses they were [32:50] [Music] [32:53] stupid but Bern's power was about to be [32:56] destroyed dramatically and by a type of [32:59] human irrationality he could do nothing [33:01] to [33:02] control at the end of October 1929 [33:05] bernes organized a huge National event [33:07] to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the [33:10] invention of the light bulb president ho [33:13] the leaders of major corporations and [33:15] bankers like John D Rockefeller were all [33:17] summoned by bernes to celebrate the [33:19] power of American [33:21] business but even as they gathered news [33:24] came through that shares on the New York [33:26] Stock exch change were beginning to fall [33:29] [Music] [33:33] catastrophically throughout the 1920s [33:35] speculators had borrowed billions of [33:37] dollars the banks had promoted the idea [33:40] that this was a new era where Market [33:42] crashes were a thing of the [33:43] past but they were wrong what was about [33:46] to happen was the biggest stock market [33:48] crash in [33:50] history investors had panicked and begun [33:52] to sell in a blind Relentless Fury that [33:55] no reassurance by bankers or politicians [33:58] could [34:01] Halt and on the 29th of October [34:04] 1929 the market [34:07] [Music] [34:14] collapsed the effect of the crash on the [34:16] American economy was disastrous faced [34:19] with recession and unemployment millions [34:21] of American workers stopped buying goods [34:23] they didn't need the consumer boom that [34:26] burn had done so much to engineer [34:28] disappeared and he and the profession of [34:31] public relations fell from favor Bern's [34:34] brief moment of power seemed to be [34:37] [Music] [34:45] over the effect of the Wall Street Crash [34:47] on Europe was also catastrophic it [34:50] intensified the growing economic and [34:52] political crisis in the new [34:54] democracies in both Germany and Austria [34:57] there were violent streak battles [34:58] between the armed wings of different [35:00] political [35:02] [Music] [35:05] parties against this backdrop Freud who [35:08] was suffering from cancer at the jaw [35:10] retreated yet again to the [35:13] Alps he wrote a book called civilization [35:16] and its [35:17] discontents it was a powerful attack on [35:19] the idea that civilization was an [35:22] expression of human [35:24] progress instead Freud AR argued [35:27] civilization had actually been [35:29] constructed to control the dangerous [35:31] animal forces inside human [35:34] beings what was implicit in Freud's [35:37] argument was that the ideal of [35:38] individual Freedom which was at the [35:40] heart of democracy was [35:42] impossible human beings could never be [35:45] allowed to truly Express themselves [35:47] because it was too dangerous they must [35:50] always be controlled and would thus [35:53] always be [35:55] discontent [35:59] man doesn't want to be civilized and he [36:03] is [36:04] civilization brings discontent but is [36:08] necessary to survive otherwise he [36:10] couldn't survive so he must be [36:13] discontent because this would be the [36:15] only way to keep him within [36:18] limits but what did Freud think about [36:21] the idea of the equality of [36:23] man he didn't believe in it [36:28] we had 32 parties and Hitler said before [36:33] those parties don't vanish there is no [36:35] Germany that's true you can't have 32 [36:39] parties and so they felt this one person [36:43] will put an end to [36:45] this [36:47] comedy Freud was not alone in his [36:49] pessimism politicians like Adolf Hitler [36:52] emerged from a growing despair in the [36:53] 1920s about [36:55] democracy the Nazis were convinced that [36:58] democracy was dangerous because it [36:59] Unleashed a selfish individualism but [37:02] didn't have the means to control [37:04] it Hitler's party the national [37:06] socialists stood in elections promising [37:09] in their propaganda that they would [37:11] abandon democracy because of the chaos [37:13] and unemployment it led [37:15] [Music] [37:25] to [37:34] in March 1933 the national socialists [37:37] were elected to power in Germany and [37:39] they set out to create a society that [37:42] would control human beings in a [37:43] different [37:45] way one of their first acts was to take [37:47] control of business the planning of [37:50] production would in future be done by [37:51] the state the free market was too [37:54] unstable as the crash in America had [37:56] proved [37:58] workers Leisure Time was also planned by [38:00] the state through a new organization [38:02] called strength through [38:03] Joy one of its mottos was service not [38:09] [Music] [38:12] self but the Nazis did not see this as a [38:15] return to an old form of autocratic [38:18] control it was a new alternative to [38:20] democracy in which the feelings and the [38:22] desires of the masses would still be [38:25] Central but they would be channeled in [38:27] such a way as to bind the nation [38:30] together the chief exponent of this was [38:32] Joseph Geral the minister of [38:35] [Applause] [38:41] [Music] [38:51] propaganda Geral organized huge rallies [38:54] whose function he said was to forge the [38:56] mind of the nation into a Unity of [38:58] thinking feeling and [39:00] desire one of his Inspirations he told [39:03] an American journalist was the writings [39:05] of Freud's nephew Edward [39:09] bernes in his work on crowd psychology [39:12] Freud had described how the frightening [39:14] irrationality inside human beings could [39:16] emerge in such groups the Deep what he [39:19] called libidinal forces of Desire are [39:22] given up to the leader while the [39:24] aggressive instincts are Unleashed on [39:26] those outside the group Freud wrote this [39:29] as a warning but the Nazis were [39:31] deliberately encouraging these forces [39:33] because they believed they could master [39:35] and control [39:42] them [39:43] well was saying that [39:46] masses are bound by by Lial [39:51] forces they love each [39:55] and [39:57] ideas and things do the chap on [40:03] top forces well forces of [40:08] love not [40:10] ha ha ha is delegated to the other's [40:25] outside [40:30] [Music] [40:38] up I could see from afar looking up will [40:43] towards Lindon how those 100,000 of [40:47] people when they passed Hitler they just [40:51] became completely Delirious they began [40:55] to shout [40:56] please tce I will never get out of my [41:00] ears H [41:04] Zed and here I got confirmation how [41:09] those irrational forces uncontrollable [41:13] forces in Germany in the Germans had [41:16] erupted had broken out were running Riot [41:21] where the part marching marching [41:25] on [41:32] [Music] [41:40] [Music] [41:43] and in America too democracy was under [41:45] threat from the force of the angry [41:49] mob the effect of the stock market crash [41:51] had been disastrous there was growing [41:54] violence as an angry population took out [41:56] their frustration on the corporations [41:58] who were seen to have caused this [42:01] disaster then in 1932 a new president [42:05] was elected who was also going to use [42:07] the power of the state to control the [42:09] free [42:10] market but his aim was not to destroy [42:13] democracy but to strengthen it and to do [42:16] this he was going to develop a new way [42:18] of dealing with the [42:20] masses I am prepared under my [42:23] constitutional duty to recommend the [42:26] measures that a stricken nation in the [42:28] midst of a stricken world may require [42:31] but in the event that the National [42:33] Emergency is still critical I shall not [42:37] evade the clear course of Duty that will [42:40] then confront me I shall ask the [42:43] Congress for the one remaining [42:45] instrument to meet the crisis [42:48] fraad executive [42:51] [Music] [42:55] power it was the start of what would [42:57] become known as the New Deal Roosevelt [43:00] assembled a group of young technocrats [43:02] and planners in [43:04] Washington he told them that their job [43:06] was to plan and run giant new industrial [43:08] projects for the good of the [43:10] nation Rosevelt was convinced that the [43:13] stock market crash had shown that lasair [43:15] capitalism could no longer run modern [43:18] industrial economies it had become the [43:20] job of [43:22] government big business was horrified [43:25] but the new deal attracted the [43:27] admiration of the Nazis especially [43:30] Joseph [43:31] [Music] [43:39] [Laughter] [43:55] Geral [44:13] for but although Roosevelt like the [44:16] Nazis was trying to organize Society in [44:18] a different way unlike the nais he [44:21] believed that human beings were rational [44:23] and could be trusted to take an active [44:25] part in [44:27] government Roosevelt believed it was [44:29] possible to explain his policies to [44:31] ordinary Americans and take into account [44:33] their [44:34] opinions to do this he was helped by the [44:36] new ideas of an American social [44:38] scientist called George [44:41] Gallop favorite reading of New Deal [44:44] Washington the survey of US public [44:46] opinion the officers at Princeton New [44:48] Jersey are famed statistici Dr George [44:51] Gallop tells Washington from week to [44:53] week what the nation is [44:54] thinking [44:56] and in New York Fortune Magazine's [44:58] analyst Elmo roer compiles for [45:00] publication a continuous record of the [45:02] nation's approval or disapproval of how [45:04] the country is being [45:06] run gallop and rer rejected Bern's view [45:09] that human beings were at the mercy of [45:11] unconscious forces and so needed to be [45:14] controlled their system of opinion [45:17] polling was based on the idea that [45:18] people could be trusted to know what [45:20] they [45:21] wanted they argued that one could [45:23] measure and predict the opinions and [45:25] behavior of the public if one asked [45:27] strictly factual questions and avoided [45:30] manipulating their [45:34] emotions well how about this one do you [45:37] think frankon D Roosevelt's New Deal has [45:39] been bad for the nation in general no [45:42] that question is loaded it automatically [45:44] suggests an answer well how about this [45:48] is your present feeling toward President [45:51] Roosevelt one of General approval or [45:53] general [45:54] disapproval [45:56] that's [45:57] better prior to Scientific polling the [46:00] view of of of many people was that um [46:04] you couldn't trust public opinion it was [46:06] irrational that uh it was Ill informed [46:09] chaotic unruly and so forth and and so [46:13] that opinion should be dismissed but [46:15] with scientific polling um I think it [46:18] established very clearly that people do [46:21] are rational that they do make good [46:23] decisions and this offers democracy [46:26] a chance to be truly informed by the [46:29] public giving everybody a voice in the [46:32] way the country has run I know my father [46:34] wouldn't necessarily say the voice of [46:36] the public is the voice of God but he he [46:38] did feel very much that the the voice of [46:40] the of the people is is a rational voice [46:43] and should be [46:44] heard what Roosevelt was doing was [46:46] forging a new connection between the [46:48] masses and [46:50] politicians no longer were they [46:52] irrational consumers who were managed by [46:54] sating their desires instead they were [46:56] sensible citizens who could take part in [46:58] the governing of the [47:00] country in 1936 Roosevelt stood for [47:03] re-election he promised further control [47:05] over big business to the corporations it [47:08] was the beginning of a [47:14] dictatorship Roosevelt interferes with [47:16] private Enterprise and he is running the [47:19] country into debt for generations to [47:21] come the way to get recovery is to let [47:24] business alone [47:26] but Roosevelt was triumphantly [47:28] reelected it looks my friends like a [47:32] real Landslide this time so please let [47:37] me let me thank you again and tell you [47:40] that I hope to see you all very soon and [47:42] bid you an affectionate good night faced [47:46] with this business now decided to fight [47:48] back to regain power in [47:51] America at the heart of the battle would [47:53] be Edward bernes and the profession he [47:55] had invented public [47:59] relations following that [48:02] election business people start to get [48:05] together and start to carry on [48:08] discussions primarily in private and [48:10] they start talking to each other about [48:12] the need to sort of carry on uh [48:15] ideological Warfare against the New Deal [48:18] and to sort of reassert the sort of [48:20] connectedness between the idea of [48:23] democracy on the one hand and the idea [48:25] of privately owned business on the other [48:28] and so Under the Umbrella of an [48:30] organization which still exists which is [48:33] called the National Association of [48:35] Manufacturers and whose membership [48:37] included all of the major corporations [48:40] of the United States a campaign is [48:43] launched explicitly designed to create [48:46] emotional attachments between the public [48:49] and big [48:50] business it's Bern's techniques being [48:53] used on a grand scale I mean [49:00] totally the General Motors parade of [49:03] progress traveling the high roads and by [49:06] roads of America bringing to millions of [49:09] Americans in their own hometowns the [49:11] fascinating story behind modern industry [49:15] showing the campaign set out to show [49:17] dramatically that it was business not [49:19] politicians who had created modern [49:21] America better mode of living for all of [49:24] us [49:27] bernes was an adviser to General Motors [49:30] but he was no longer alone the industry [49:32] he had founded now flourished as [49:34] hundreds of public relations advisers [49:36] organized a vast [49:38] campaign they not only used [49:40] advertisements and billboards but [49:41] managed to insinuate their message into [49:43] the editorial pages of the [49:48] newspapers it became a bitter fight in [49:51] response to the campaign the government [49:52] made films that warned of the [49:54] unscrupulous manip ation of the press by [49:57] big business and the central villain was [50:00] the new figure of the public relations [50:04] man they tried to achieve their Ends by [50:07] working entirely behind the scenes [50:09] corrupting and deceiving the public the [50:12] aims of such groups may be either good [50:14] or bad so far as the public interest is [50:16] concerned but their methods are a grave [50:19] danger to democratic [50:21] institutions the films also showed how [50:24] the responsible citizen could monitor [50:25] the Press [50:27] themselves they could create a chart [50:29] that analyzed the reporting for signs of [50:31] hidden [50:32] [Music] [50:34] bias but such Earnest instruction was to [50:36] be no match for the powerful imagination [50:39] of Edward [50:41] [Music] [50:43] bernes he was about to help create a [50:46] vision of the Utopia that free market [50:48] capitalism would build in America if it [50:51] was [50:52] Unleashed some where over the [50:58] [Music] [51:00] rainbow in 1939 New York hosted the [51:03] World's Fair Edward bernes was a central [51:07] adviser he insisted that the theme be [51:10] the link between democracy and American [51:13] [Music] [51:19] Business at the heart of the fair was a [51:22] giant white Dome that bernes named de [51:28] City and the central exhibit was a vast [51:31] working model of America's future [51:33] constructed by the General Motors [51:35] Corporation to my father the World's [51:39] Fair was an [51:40] opportunity to keep the status quo that [51:44] is [51:45] capitalism in a democracy democracy and [51:49] and capitalism that [51:51] marriage right linking like just like [51:54] that [51:56] he did that by manipulating people and [51:59] getting them to think that you couldn't [52:02] have real democracy in anything but a [52:05] capitalist [52:07] society which was capable of doing [52:10] anything of creating these wonderful [52:13] highways of of making you know moving [52:18] pictures inside everybody's house of of [52:21] telephones that didn't need cords of [52:24] sleek Road I mean it was there were it [52:27] was it was it was [52:29] consumerist but at the same time you [52:32] inferred that in a funny way democracy [52:34] and capitalism went [52:37] together the World's Fair was an [52:39] extraordinary success and captured [52:42] America's [52:43] imagination the vision it portrayed was [52:45] of a new form of democracy in which [52:48] business responded to people's innermost [52:51] Desires in a way politicians could never [52:54] do [52:55] but it was a form of democracy that [52:57] depended on treating people not as [52:59] active citizens as Roosevelt did but as [53:02] passive [53:03] consumers because this bernes believed [53:06] was the key to control in a mass [53:09] democracy it's not that the people are [53:12] in charge but that the people's desires [53:14] are in [53:15] charge the people are not in charge the [53:18] people exercise no decision-making power [53:21] within this [53:22] environment so democracy is reduced from [53:26] something which assumes an active [53:28] citizenry to the idea of the public as [53:31] passive [53:32] consumers [53:35] oh driven primarily by instinctual or [53:38] unconscious desires and that if you can [53:41] in fact trigger those needs and desires [53:43] you can get what you want from [53:47] them but this struggle between the two [53:50] views of human beings as to whether they [53:52] were rational or irrational was about to [53:55] be dramatically affected by events in [53:58] Europe events that would also change the [54:00] fortunes of the Freud [54:05] family in March 1938 the Nazis annexed [54:08] Austria it was called the [54:10] anchus Hitler arrived in Vienna to an [54:13] extraordinary outpouring of mass [54:15] agulation but even as he drove through [54:17] the city behind the scenes the Nazis [54:20] were systematically whipping up and [54:22] unleashing the hatred of the crowd [54:24] against the enemies of the new greater [54:27] Germany the Angelus was a kind of [54:31] explosion of terrible hatred against the [54:34] enemies so-called enemies or whatever [54:36] they considered enemies against the Jews [54:39] in in [54:40] in totally and also against a lot of [54:45] adist aans who had opposed the Nazis in [54:50] Austria they said it's legitimate now [54:53] you can do what you want so they did [54:55] stealing robbing and killing I can't say [54:57] it otherwise and human depravity of [55:00] course is [55:02] uh always near very near to to to normal [55:06] behavior it be it can change very [55:17] quickly as the violence and [55:19] assassinations raged in Vienna Freud [55:21] decided he had to leave his aim was to [55:24] go to to Britain but he knew that [55:26] Britain like many countries was refusing [55:28] entry to most Jewish [55:32] refugees but help came from the leading [55:34] psychoanalyst in Britain Ernest Jones he [55:37] was in the same Ice Skating Club as the [55:39] Home Secretary s Samuel hore and Jones [55:42] persuaded hore to issue Freud a British [55:45] work [55:48] permit and in May 1938 Freud his [55:51] daughter Anna and other members of his [55:53] family set off for London [55:55] [Music] [56:02] Freud arrived in London as Britain Was [56:04] preparing for war and he settled with [56:06] his daughter Anna in a house in [56:10] Hamstead but Freud's cancer was now far [56:12] Advanced and in September 1939 just 3 [56:16] weeks after the outbreak of War he [56:23] died the second world war would utterly [56:26] transform the way governments saw [56:28] democracy and the people they [56:32] governed next week's program will show [56:34] how the American government as a result [56:36] of the war became convinced there were [56:39] Savage dangerous forces hidden inside [56:41] all human beings forces that needed to [56:44] be [56:46] controlled the terrible evidence from [56:48] the death camps seemed to show what [56:50] happened when these forces were [56:53] Unleashed and politicians and planners [56:55] in postwar America would come to believe [56:57] that hidden under the surface of their [56:59] own population were the same dangerous [57:04] forces and they would turn to the Freud [57:06] family to help control this enemy [57:11] [Music] [57:15] Within and ever adaptable Edward bernes [57:18] would work not just for the American [57:19] government but the [57:23] CIA and Sigman Freud's daughter Anna [57:26] would also become powerful in the United [57:28] States because she believed that people [57:31] could be taught to control the [57:32] irrational forces within [57:34] them out of this would come vast [57:37] government programs to manage the inner [57:39] psychological life of the [57:43] [Music] [57:53] masses this centry of the self continues [57:56] next Sunday night on BBC 2 same time [57:58] 8:00 tonight the final part of SAS [58:01] [Music] [58:12] [Music] [58:22] next let's say a word about three means [58:26] we all have thoughts which we never knew [58:28] we had they are too uncomfortable too [58:30] incompatible with our adult self to be [58:33] remembered yet they're often disturbing [58:36] rumbling under the surface like lava in [58:38] a [58:40] volcano the dream is the Royal Road to [58:43] these [58:44] thoughts the royal road to the [58:47] unconscious this is the story of how [58:49] Sigman Freud's ideas about the [58:51] unconscious mind were used by those in [58:54] power in postwar America to try and [58:56] control the [58:58] masses politicians and planners came to [59:00] believe that Freud was right to suggest [59:03] that hidden deep within all human beings [59:05] were dangerous and irrational desires [59:07] and [59:08] [Music] [59:11] fears they were convinced that it was [59:13] the unleashing of these instincts that [59:15] had led to the barbarism of Nazi [59:19] Germany to stop it ever happening again [59:22] they set out to find ways to control [59:24] this hidden enemy within the human [59:31] mind at the heart of the story are [59:34] Sigman Freud's daughter [59:36] Anna and his nephew Edward bernes who [59:39] had invented the profession of public [59:42] relations their ideas were used by the [59:44] US government big business and the CIA [59:48] to develop techniques to manage and [59:50] control the minds of the American [59:53] people those in power believed that the [59:55] only way to make democracy work and [59:58] create a stable Society was to repress [60:01] the Savage barbarism that lurp just [60:03] under the surface of normal American [60:05] [Music] [60:17] [Applause] [60:19] Life the Story begins in the middle of [60:21] the fierce fighting the Second World War [60:25] as the fighting intensified the American [60:27] Army was faced by an extraordinary [60:29] number of mental breakdowns among its [60:32] troops 49% of all soldiers evacuated [60:35] from combat were sent back because they [60:37] suffered from mental [60:39] problems in desperation the Army turned [60:42] to the new ideas of [60:44] psychoanalysis they made a film record [60:46] of the experiment using hidden [60:48] cameras it says here on your record that [60:51] you had HIIT and that you had crying [60:53] spell yes sir uh I believe in your [60:55] profession is called [60:57] nostalgia in other words homes yes sir [61:00] mhm it was induced when shortly before [61:03] the [61:04] War I received a picture of my [61:07] sweetheart [61:18] yes I'm sorry I can't continue that's [61:21] all [61:22] right it was the first time that anyone [61:25] had paid such attention to the feelings [61:27] and anxieties of ordinary [61:29] people at the heart of the experiment [61:32] were a number of refugee psychoanalysts [61:34] from Central Europe they worked with [61:36] American psychiatrists to guide and [61:38] shape the project when I first came to [61:41] America I worked in the psychiatric [61:44] service with soldiers trying to [61:47] rehabilitate them and I traveled in the [61:50] train from the east coast to the West [61:53] Coast I I was enormously curious what [61:57] goes on in all of those little towns [62:01] that it rain is passing after my years [62:04] in the Army I knew exactly what [62:06] everybody was doing in the little [62:09] towns because I I saw so many people who [62:13] came from there and I understood their [62:17] aspirations their disappointments and so [62:20] forth so it was as if somebody invit Ed [62:24] me to a privileged tour in the into the [62:29] inner soul of America I'm not doing this [62:32] Liber please believe I I do believe you [62:36] um a display of emotion is sometimes [62:39] very helpful I hope so sir sure it gets [62:42] it off your chest well sir to be [62:45] perfectly honest with you I'm very much [62:47] in love with my sweethe heart she has [62:50] been the one person that gave me a sense [62:54] of [62:55] importance is that through her [62:59] cooperation with me we were able to [63:02] surmount so many [63:04] obstacles take it easy now just talk to [63:07] the psychoanalyst used techniques [63:09] developed by Freud to take the men back [63:11] into their [63:12] past they became convinced that the [63:14] breakdowns were not the direct result of [63:17] fighting the stress of combat had merely [63:19] triggered old childhood [63:22] memories these were memories of the [63:24] men's own violent feelings and desires [63:27] which they had repressed because they [63:28] were too frightening think deeply let's [63:30] go back when was it to the [63:32] psychoanalysts it was overwhelming proof [63:34] of Freud's theory that underneath human [63:36] beings were driven by primitive [63:38] irrational forces you won [63:41] that World War II was a major shattering [63:46] experience because I discovered the [63:49] enormous role of the [63:52] irrational in the lives of most most [63:55] people yeah that I can say that I [63:58] learned it that the the ratio between [64:02] the irrational and the rational in [64:05] America is very much in favor of the [64:09] irrational that there's much greater [64:11] unhappiness much more suffering much [64:17] more a a sad country than one would [64:21] imagine it from from the adversity from [64:24] the advertisements that you get a much [64:26] more problematic [64:30] country victory in the second world war [64:33] was celebrated as a Triumph of [64:35] democracy but in private many policy [64:37] makers were worried about the [64:39] implications of the analysis of the [64:41] soldiers it seemed to show that [64:43] underneath every American were [64:45] irrational violent [64:48] drives what had happened in Germany [64:50] seemed to bear this out the complicity [64:53] of so many ordinary Germans in mass [64:55] killings during the war showed just how [64:57] easily these forces could break through [65:00] and overwhelm [65:03] [Music] [65:05] democracy planners and policy makers had [65:08] been convinced by their experiences [65:11] during World War II that human beings [65:13] could act very irrationally because of [65:16] this sort of teeming and raw and [65:18] unpredictable emotionality um the kind [65:22] of chaos that lived at the at the at the [65:24] base of human personality could uh in [65:28] fact infect the society social [65:31] institutions to such a point that the [65:33] society itself would become sick that's [65:36] what they believe happened in Germany in [65:39] which the irrational the anti-democratic [65:41] went [65:43] wild it was a vision of of human nature [65:46] as incredibly destructive and they were [65:49] terrified that Americans would in fact [65:53] behave [65:54] that way or were capable of Behaving [65:57] that way and they wanted to avoid a [65:58] rerun of that so what is needed is a [66:03] human being that can internalize [66:06] Democratic Values so that they are not [66:09] shaken with the [66:13] storm and psychoanalysis carried in it [66:16] the promise that it can be done it [66:18] opened up new Vistas as to how the inner [66:23] structure of the human being can be [66:25] changed so that he becomes a more [66:31] vital free supporter and maintainer of [66:36] democracy the psychoanalysts were [66:38] convinced they not only understood these [66:40] dangerous forces but they knew how to [66:42] control them too they would use their [66:45] techniques to create Democratic [66:47] individuals because democracy left to [66:49] itself failed to do [66:53] this [66:56] the source of this idea was not only [66:58] Sigman Freud but his youngest daughter [67:01] Anna she had fled with her father to [67:03] London before the outbreak of war and [67:06] after he died Anna Freud became the [67:08] acknowledged leader of the world [67:09] psychoanalytic [67:10] movement she saw her job as to fulfill [67:13] her father's dream of making his ideas [67:16] accepted throughout the [67:19] world at the center of the frud movement [67:22] stood tanaa because she managed to work [67:27] herself into that position she was [67:29] recognized as that and not just because [67:32] she was a [67:34] daughter she worked she worked on that [67:39] she was rather [67:41] forbidding he was not to me a warm [67:44] person not an aunt you could you could [67:47] kiss or put your arms [67:51] around not at all and her whole life [67:56] rotated around the spreading of [68:00] psychoanalysis Freud himself had seen [68:02] the role of psychoanalysis as allowing [68:04] people to understand their unconscious [68:07] drives but Anna Freud believed it was [68:09] possible to teach individuals how to [68:11] control these inner [68:13] forces she had come to believe this [68:15] through analyzing children above all the [68:17] children of her close friend Dorothy [68:21] Burlingham Dorothy Burlingham was an [68:23] American an arys who in the 1920s fled a [68:26] failed marriage and brought her children [68:28] to Anna Freud in [68:30] Vienna they were suffering terrible [68:32] anxieties and aggression but Anna Freud [68:35] was convinced she could free them from [68:37] this by changing the world around [68:40] them she thought that she could come in [68:42] and um into their environment [68:45] essentially because they were children [68:46] you see they didn't have independent [68:48] lives of their own she could go talk to [68:50] the parents or the mother uh she could [68:52] go to the schools she could influence [68:54] their real world the actual external [68:56] world to change their lives and to uh to [68:59] help them and to change them as people I [69:03] think that was uh part of what uh her [69:05] idea was is that she felt that she could [69:08] change [69:10] them from her analysis of the Burlingham [69:12] children Anna Freud developed a theory [69:14] of how to control the inner [69:16] drives it was simple you taught the [69:19] children to conform to the rules of [69:22] society but the this was more than just [69:24] moral [69:26] guidance Anna Freud believed that if [69:29] children like the Burlingham strictly [69:31] followed the rules of accepted social [69:33] conduct then as they grew up the [69:35] conscious part of their mind what was [69:37] called the ego would be greatly [69:39] strengthened in its struggle to control [69:41] the [69:43] unconscious but if children did not [69:46] conform their ego would be weak and they [69:49] would be prey to the dangerous forces of [69:51] the [69:52] unconscious [69:55] in my father's uh case they were [69:57] concerned that he would be a homosexual [69:59] and so a lot of their efforts went into [70:02] uh preventing or trying to stop my [70:05] father from becoming a [70:07] homosexual whether or not he would have [70:09] or did or you know is is you know it's [70:12] unknown to me why did they want to stop [70:15] him because they felt it was abnormal it [70:17] wasn't a uh it wasn't a normal uh way to [70:21] develop they wanted to have [70:24] develop along lines that Society [70:27] recognized to be normal because if they [70:29] didn't then you're going to be under the [70:31] control of forces that you don't [70:33] understand that you're not even aware of [70:36] the analysis seemed to be a great [70:37] success and in the 30s the Burlingham [70:39] children had returned to [70:41] America they settled down to happy [70:43] married lives in the [70:45] suburbs what they didn't realize was [70:47] that their experience was about to [70:49] become a template for a giant social [70:51] experiment to control the inner mental [70:53] life of the American [70:55] [Music] [70:58] population in 1946 President Truman [71:01] signed the national mental health act it [71:04] had been borne directly out of the [71:05] wartime discoveries by psychoanalysts [71:08] that millions of Americans who had been [71:09] drafted suffered hidden anxieties and [71:13] fears the aim of the Act was to deal [71:16] with this invisible threat to [71:20] society shocked by the appalling [71:22] percentage of the emotion Ally unstable [71:24] revealed by the World War II draft [71:26] figures Congress in 1946 passed the [71:29] national mental health act which [71:31] recognized for the first time that [71:33] mental illness was a national [71:36] problem keenly aware of the tremendous [71:39] problems ahead is Dr Robert H Felix [71:42] director of the vast new project a [71:44] primary objective of the national mental [71:46] health program is to increase our fund [71:49] of scientific knowledge about mental [71:51] health and about mental illness we're [71:54] not doing this why because there are all [71:57] too few skilled mental health workers [72:01] two of the principal architects of the [72:03] ACT were the meninger brothers Carl and [72:06] will will had run the wartime [72:08] Psychotherapy experiments and now he and [72:10] his brother began to train hundreds of [72:12] new [72:14] psychiatrists the menas were convinced [72:16] that it would be possible to apply Anna [72:18] Freud's ideas on a wide scale and to [72:22] adults as well as children [72:24] the psychiatrist job would be to teach [72:26] ordinary Americans how to control their [72:28] unconscious drives psychoanalysis could [72:32] be used to make a better [72:34] Society they said psychoanalytic [72:36] thinking could make for the betterment [72:38] of society because you could change the [72:40] way the mind [72:42] functioned and you could take the ways [72:46] in which [72:47] people did hurtful things to themselves [72:50] and others and alter them by enlarging [72:53] ing their understanding and this was the [72:56] vision psychoanalysis brought that you [72:58] could really change people that you [73:00] could really change [73:02] people and we could change them almost [73:05] in Limitless [73:08] ways in the late' 40s a vast project [73:11] began in America to apply the ideas of [73:13] psychoanalysis to the [73:16] masses psychological guidance centers [73:18] were set up in hundreds of [73:20] towns they were staffed by psychiatrists [73:23] who believed it was their job to control [73:25] the hidden forces inside the minds of [73:27] millions of ordinary [73:32] Americans yes I I need something done I [73:36] I need some help [73:39] I mhm did you have any particular [73:42] teachers that you'd like sort I liked [73:45] all my teachers except one I remember [73:48] what was the trouble with this one I [73:50] don't know she just scared me most of [73:52] the time H her at me and I'd run outside [73:54] and [73:56] vomit I hate my brother loathing [74:02] despise at the same time thousands of [74:04] counselors were trained to apply [74:06] psychoanalysis to marriage [74:08] guidance and social workers were sent [74:11] out to visit people's homes and advise [74:13] on the psychological structure of family [74:16] life behind all this was the fundamental [74:19] idea of Anna freuds that if people were [74:22] encouraged to conform to the accepted [74:24] patterns of family and social life then [74:26] their ego would be strengthened they [74:29] would be able to control the dangerous [74:30] forces within [74:35] them when your emotions control your [74:38] actions it affects not only yourself but [74:41] the people around you and if this sort [74:43] of flare up is repeated often it might [74:46] lead to a permanently walked [74:49] personality you can control the fire of [74:52] your emotions so that your personality [74:54] becomes more [74:57] pleasant so we expect that someone who's [75:00] been through that experience to be much [75:01] more insightful much more understanding [75:04] and a much better regulated person and [75:07] what happens to the and regulation [75:08] includes being able to let go as it were [75:10] to enjoy a football game or a soccer [75:13] [Music] [75:17] game a more understanding yes rational [75:21] but also appropriately emotional person [75:24] the regulatory aspects of the human mind [75:27] would really be in charge instead of [75:30] instead of being overwhelmed by our [75:32] passions and by our darker [75:35] impulses that one would be master or [75:37] Mistress of One's Own [75:40] passions they just felt that the road to [75:43] happiness was in adapting to the [75:46] external World in which they lived that [75:49] people could be uncried from their own [75:52] neurotic conflicts and impulses that [75:55] they would not engage in [75:56] self-destructive behavior that they [75:57] would in fact adapt to the reality about [75:59] them they never questioned the [76:03] reality they never questioned that it [76:05] might itself be a source of evil or [76:08] something to which you could not adapt [76:10] without uh without compromise or without [76:13] suffering or without exploiting yourself [76:15] in some way so there was this fit with [76:18] the politics of the day and a balance of [76:22] emotions is [76:25] important to a well-rounded [76:29] personality but it was only the [76:31] beginning of the rise to power of [76:32] psychoanalysis in America psychoanalysts [76:36] were about to move into big business and [76:38] use their techniques not just to create [76:40] model citizens but model [76:42] [Music] [76:44] consumers last week's episode showed how [76:46] Freud's American nephew Edward bernes [76:49] had been the first to convince American [76:51] corporations that they could sell [76:52] products s by connecting them with [76:54] people's unconscious [76:56] feelings but now a group of [76:58] psychoanalysts were going to take what [77:00] bernes had begun and invent a whole [77:02] range of techniques to get inside and [77:05] manage the unconscious mind of the [77:08] consumer they were led by Ernest dictor [77:11] dictor had practi his next door to Freud [77:13] in Vienna but he had come to America and [77:15] set up the institute for motivational [77:17] research in an old mansion north of New [77:21] York this is The Institute for [77:24] motivational research a place devoted to [77:27] the Intriguing business of finding out [77:29] why people behave as they do why they [77:33] buy as they do why they respond to [77:36] advertising as they do and this is Dr [77:39] Ernest dictor we don't go out and ask [77:43] directly uh why do you buy why don't you [77:46] what we try to do instead is to [77:48] understand the total personality the [77:50] self-image of the customer we use all [77:52] the res sources of modern social [77:54] sciences it opens up some stimulating [77:57] psychological techniques for selling any [77:58] new product like the other [78:01] psychoanalysts dictor believed that [78:03] American citizens were fundamentally [78:05] irrational beings they could not be [78:07] trusted their real reasons for buying [78:10] products were rooted in unconscious [78:11] desires and [78:13] feelings and dictor wanted to find ways [78:15] to uncover what he called the secret [78:17] self of the American [78:21] Consumer he was trying to get out of [78:23] people's mind the unconscious [78:26] motivations that they had for purchasing [78:29] uh these could be sexual they could be [78:31] psychological they could be sociological [78:34] they could be a demand for status a [78:36] demand for recognition there were things [78:38] that people couldn't verbalize or [78:40] wouldn't verbalize because they were too [78:42] secret to them they were too much a part [78:44] of their nature and they would they [78:46] would be embarrassed they would be [78:48] embarrassed if they came out and said [78:49] things like this he would inter view [78:53] people but not ask them direct questions [78:58] but let them talk freely like you do in [79:05] psychoanalysis and that was his [79:08] background and so he said why can't we [79:11] have a group therapy session about [79:13] products all right and so dictor built [79:18] this room up above his garage and he [79:21] said we can have psycho analysis [79:23] products they can actually act out and [79:24] verbalize their wants and needs what [79:27] we're going to do is try a couple of [79:29] these uh salad dressings so let's see [79:33] what happens there is our typical [79:36] housewife she doesn't follow the [79:38] instruction and they could be observed [79:41] and watched and other people could [79:43] comment and they could talk about it and [79:45] everybody could join in he was the first [79:48] to do this this was absolutely the first [79:50] thing that was ever done and he had a [79:52] movie Project ctor up there where you [79:54] could show advertisements and things [79:56] like that and people could react to them [79:58] and he invented the whole technique for [80:00] mining the unconscious about the hidden [80:02] psychological wants that people had [80:04] about [80:05] products this became the focus group it [80:11] worked dictor's breakthrough came with a [80:13] focus group study he did for Betty [80:15] Crocker [80:16] foods like many food manufacturers in [80:19] the early 50s they had invented a new [80:21] range of instant convenience [80:23] foods but although consumers had told [80:26] Market researchers they would welcome [80:27] the idea in fact they were refusing to [80:30] buy them the worst problem was the Betty [80:33] Crocker cake mix dictor did a series of [80:36] focus groups where housewives free [80:38] Associated about the cake [80:40] mix he concluded that they felt [80:43] unconscious guilt of the new image being [80:45] promoted of ease and [80:48] convenience in other words he understood [80:51] that the barrier to the consumption of [80:53] the product was the housewives feeling [80:55] of guilt about using it they basically [80:58] on one hand wanted to make it easy for [81:00] themselves but they felt guilty about it [81:02] so what you've got to do in those [81:04] circumstances is remove the barrier the [81:06] barrier being guilt the way you do that [81:09] is to give the housewife a greater sense [81:11] of [81:12] participation and how did you do that by [81:15] adding an [81:18] egg simple as that as simple as that [81:21] dictor told Betty Crocker to put an [81:23] instruction on the packet that the [81:25] housewife should add an egg it would be [81:27] an unconscious symbol he said of the [81:30] housewife mixing in her own eggs as a [81:32] gift to her husband and so would lessen [81:34] the guilt Betty Crocker did it and the [81:37] sales soared my cake is [81:41] ready the consumer may have basic needs [81:44] that the consumer himself or herself [81:47] doesn't fully understand you have to [81:49] know what those needs are in order to [81:52] fully exploit the [81:54] [Applause] [81:57] consumer is it [81:59] wrong to give people what they [82:02] want by taking away their [82:06] defenses [82:08] helping remove their [82:11] defenses it seems so much longer than [82:13] last year it is nearly 4 in longer in [82:16] some [82:17] models [82:21] oh dictor's success led to a rush by [82:24] corporations and advertising agencies to [82:27] employ [82:28] psychoanalysts they became known as the [82:30] depth boys and they promised to show [82:32] companies how to make millions by [82:34] connecting their products with people's [82:36] hidden desires dictor himself became a [82:39] millionaire famous for inventing slogans [82:41] like a tiger in your [82:43] tank even the marketing of the Barbie [82:46] Doll came from a children's focus group [82:49] and so it [82:50] goes but dictor was convinced that this [82:53] was far more than just [82:54] selling like Anna Freud he believed that [82:57] the environment could be used to [82:58] strengthen the human [83:00] personality and products have the power [83:03] both to State inner desires and give [83:05] people a feeling of common identity with [83:07] those around [83:08] them it was a strategy for creating a [83:11] stable society dictor called it the [83:14] strategy of [83:17] desire to understand a stable citizen [83:20] you have to know that Modern Man quite [83:22] often tries to work off his frustrations [83:24] by spending on self gratification modern [83:27] man is eternally ready to fill out his [83:29] self-image but purchasing products which [83:31] complement it if you identify yourself [83:35] with a product it can have a [83:40] therapeutic value it improves your [83:45] self-image and you become a more secure [83:49] person and you have suddenly this [83:53] confidence of going out in the world and [83:56] doing what you want [84:00] successfully hernet believed that that [84:03] would then improve the whole of our [84:07] society and become the best Society on [84:11] this [84:12] [Music] [84:18] planet by the early 50s the ideas of [84:20] psychoanalysis had penetrated deep into [84:23] American [84:24] Life the psychoanalysts themselves [84:27] became rich and Powerful many had [84:29] Consulting rooms overlooking Central [84:31] Park in New [84:33] York politicians and famous writers like [84:36] Arthur Miller and Tennesse Williams [84:37] became their [84:39] patience they were seeking not just help [84:42] but to understand the hidden roots of [84:44] human [84:45] behavior we were sought after Washington [84:48] was interested in what we think you know [84:51] they they important important writers [84:55] important politicians were undergoing [84:59] psychoanalysis it was we had we had [85:02] waiting list because there were so many [85:04] patients that wanted to be [85:07] analyzed so it it gave us a little bit [85:11] of a [85:12] swellhead and as the psychoanalyst ideas [85:15] took hold in America a new Elite began [85:17] to emerge in politics social planning [85:20] and in business [85:22] what linked this Elite was the [85:24] assumption that the masses were [85:25] fundamentally [85:27] irrational to make a free market [85:29] democracy like America work when had to [85:31] use psychological techniques to control [85:34] Mass [85:36] irrationality they actually believed [85:38] that this Elite was necessary because [85:40] individual citizens were not capable if [85:43] left alone of being Democratic citizens [85:47] the elite was necessary in order to [85:49] create the conditions that would produce [85:51] individuals cap capable of behaving as a [85:55] a good consumer and also behaving as a [85:57] democratic citizen they didn't see their [86:00] activities as anti-democratic as [86:02] undermining the capacity of individual [86:05] citizens for democracy quite the [86:07] opposite they understood that they were [86:10] creating uh the conditions for uh [86:12] democracy's survival and [86:15] future the rise of psychoanalysis to [86:17] power in America was an extraordinary [86:20] Triumph for Anna Freud and her to [86:22] promotion of her [86:24] ideas she remained in England living [86:26] with Dorothy [86:27] Burlingham on the surface it was an [86:29] idilic life she and Dorothy had brought [86:32] a weekend Cottage on the suffk coast and [86:35] in the Summers Dorothy's children came [86:37] from America to visit with the [86:40] grandchildren but underneath things were [86:42] going badly wrong both Bob and mby [86:45] Burlingham who Anna Frey had analyzed in [86:47] the 1930s had suffered personal [86:49] breakdowns and their marriages were [86:51] collapsing [86:52] Bob was drinking heavily and mie [86:54] suffered terrible [86:56] anxieties the real reasons for the [86:58] visits to England were yet more analysis [87:00] with Anna [87:02] [Music] [87:04] Freud well the problem was that it [87:06] didn't look very good did it because [87:08] here you have somebody who's having [87:09] nervous breakdowns and uh is is uh [87:12] having alcoholic binges and uh this is [87:15] not exactly doesn't really sit well um [87:19] oh you know from a Humane standpoint OB [87:22] viously this is not desirable you know [87:23] you want to help these people but it [87:25] also had the wider ramifications of [87:28] everybody in in an analysis in analytic [87:30] circles knew that Bob and mby were [87:33] guinea pigs they were the living proof [87:35] that this was a wonderful [87:38] process it was very much swept under the [87:40] rug it really didn't get out I mean [87:43] these people had [87:45] such uh their their power and influence [87:48] was [87:49] such uh that you know you were very [87:53] careful Anna Freud was a very powerful [87:55] person and um you were the [87:58] grandchildren and uh she knew a great [88:00] deal more than you did about what went [88:02] on in your parents' lives and so forth [88:04] it was not something you were going to [88:06] tangle with and you were a product of [88:07] the whole [88:09] situation uh but at the same time we all [88:11] knew that something was really out of [88:18] whack as she Grew Older she became more [88:21] and more important didn't she [88:23] politically and scientifically but she [88:25] didn't know when to stop she was a bit [88:28] too [88:31] righteous what she did was always the [88:35] thing and she would never to my my [88:39] knowledge [88:40] acknowledge that she could make a [88:42] mistake or be [88:45] wrong that is my [88:48] feeling but the power and influence of [88:51] the Freud family in America was about to [88:53] grow even [88:55] more politicians were about to turn to [88:58] Anna Freud's cousin Edward bernes for [89:01] help in a time of [89:03] Crisis he was going to manipulate the [89:05] inner feelings and fears of the masses [89:07] to help America's politicians fight the [89:09] Cold War I don't mean to say and no one [89:12] can say to you that there are no dangers [89:16] of course there are risks if we are not [89:17] Vigilant but we do not have to be [89:20] hysterical in 1953 the Soviet Union [89:23] exploded its first Hydrogen Bomb and the [89:26] fear of nuclear war and communism [89:28] gripped the United [89:30] States those in power became concerned [89:32] about how to reassure the [89:34] population committees were set up and [89:36] public information films made appealing [89:39] for calm in the face of new threats like [89:41] nuclear [89:44] fallout it's the fallacy of devoting 85% [89:47] of one's worrying capacity to an agent [89:49] that constitutes only about 15 % of an [89:53] atomic bomb's destroying potential at [89:55] this point Edward bernes was living in [89:57] New [89:58] York in the 1920s he had invented the [90:01] profession of public relations and was [90:04] now one of the most powerful PR men in [90:06] America he worked for most of the major [90:08] corporations and advised politicians [90:11] including President [90:13] Eisenhower like his Uncle Sigman bernes [90:16] was convinced that human beings were [90:18] driven by irrational [90:20] forces the only way to deal with the [90:22] public was to connect with their [90:24] unconscious desires and [90:27] fears bernes argued that instead of [90:30] trying to reduce people's fear of [90:32] Communism one should actually encourage [90:34] and manipulate the fear but in such a [90:37] way as it became a weapon in the Cold [90:39] War rational argument was [90:42] fruitless what my father understood [90:45] about groups is that they are manipul [90:49] they're [90:50] malleable and that that you can tap into [90:54] their deepest desires or their deepest [90:57] fears and use that to your own [91:02] purposes I don't think he felt that all [91:04] those public out there had reliable [91:07] judgment that they very easily might [91:10] vote for the wrong man or want the wrong [91:12] thing so that they had to be guided from [91:16] above one of Bern's main clients was the [91:19] giant United Fruit Company they own vast [91:22] banana plantations in Guatemala in [91:24] Central America for decades United Fruit [91:27] had controlled the country through [91:28] pliable dictators it was known as a [91:31] Banana [91:33] Republic but in 1950 A young Officer [91:36] Colonel arens was elected [91:38] president he promised to remove United [91:40] fruits control over the country and in [91:43] 1953 he announced the government would [91:45] take over much of their land it was a [91:48] massively popular move but a disaster [91:51] for United fruit and they turned to [91:53] bernes to help get rid of our Ben United [91:56] Fruit brings in bernes and he basically [91:58] understood that what United Fruit [91:59] Company had to do was change this from [92:02] being a popular elected government that [92:04] was doing some things that were good for [92:05] the people there into this being very [92:08] close to the American Shore a threat to [92:11] American democracy that it being at a [92:13] time in the Cold War when Americans [92:15] responded to issues of the Red Scare and [92:17] what communism might do he was trying to [92:20] transform this and brilliantly transform [92:22] it into an issue of a communist threat [92:24] very close to our Shores taking United [92:26] Fruit again as a commercial client out [92:29] of the picture in making it look like a [92:31] question of American democracy American [92:33] values being [92:35] threatened in reality arbenz was a [92:38] Democratic Socialist with no links to [92:40] Moscow but bernes set out to turn him [92:43] into a communist threat to [92:46] America he organized a trip to Guatemala [92:49] for influential American journalists few [92:52] of them knew anything about the country [92:53] or its [92:56] politics bernes arranged for them to be [92:58] entertained and to meet selected [93:00] Guatemalan politicians who told them [93:03] that arens was a communist controlled by [93:06] Moscow during the trip there was also a [93:09] violent anti-American demonstration in [93:11] the [93:12] capital many of those who worked for [93:14] United Fruit were convinced it had been [93:16] organized by bernes [93:20] himself he also created a fake [93:22] Independent News Agency in America [93:25] called the middle American information [93:27] Bureau it bombarded the American Media [93:30] with press releases saying that Moscow [93:32] was planning to use Guatemala as a beach [93:34] head to attack America all of this had [93:37] the desire effect in Guatemala the Jacob [93:40] arb's regime became increasingly [93:42] communistic after its Inauguration in [93:45] 1951 Communists in the Congress and high [93:47] governmental positions controlled major [93:49] committees labor and Farm arm groups and [93:52] propaganda facilities they agitated and [93:55] led in demonstrations against [93:56] neighboring countries and the United [93:58] [Music] [94:00] States what was profoundly new in terms [94:02] of what bernes did is he took this [94:04] menace to our backyard in Guatemala for [94:07] the first time we saw Reds a couple [94:11] hundred miles from uh New Orleans who [94:14] Eddie bernes had us believing were a [94:16] true threat to us that it was going to [94:17] be a Soviet Outpost in our [94:20] backyard but what bernes was doing was [94:22] not just trying to blacken the aren's [94:24] regime he was part of a secret [94:27] plot President Eisenhower had agreed [94:29] that America should topple the aren's [94:31] government but secretly the CIA were [94:35] instructed to organize a [94:37] coup working with the United Fruit [94:40] Company the CIA trained and armed a [94:42] rebel Army and found a new leader for [94:44] the country called Colonel [94:46] armas the CIA agent in charge was Howard [94:49] hunt later one of the Watergate Bur [94:52] what we wanted to do was have a terror [94:55] campaign uh to terrify our bench [94:58] particularly and terrify his his troops [95:01] much as the German Shuka bombers [95:04] terrified the population of of Holland [95:07] Belgium and and Poland at the onset of [95:10] World War II and just rendered everybody [95:14] paralyzed as planes flown by CIA Pilots [95:17] Dro bombs on Guatemala City Edward [95:20] bernes carried on his propaganda [95:22] campaign in the American Press he was [95:24] preparing the American population to see [95:27] this as the liberation of Guatemala by [95:29] Freedom Fighters for [95:33] democracy he totally understood that the [95:36] CP would happen when the public in the [95:38] Press when conditions in the public and [95:41] the Press allowed for CP to happen and [95:42] he created those conditions he was [95:44] totally Savvy in terms of just what he [95:47] was helping create there in terms of [95:48] this overthrow But ultimately he was [95:50] reshaping reality reshaping public [95:52] opinion in a way that's undemocratic and [95:57] manipulative on June the 27th 1954 [96:00] Colonel arens fled the country and armas [96:03] arrived as the new [96:05] leader within months Vice President [96:07] Nixon visited [96:09] Guatemala in an event staged by United [96:11] fruits PR department he was shown piles [96:14] of marxist literature that had been [96:16] found it was said in the presidential [96:20] Palace [96:22] this is the first time in the history of [96:24] the world that the communist government [96:26] has been overthrown by the people and [96:29] for that we congratulate you and the [96:31] people of Guatemala for the support they [96:33] have given and we are sure that under [96:36] your leadership supported by the people [96:38] whom I have met by the hundreds on my [96:40] visit to Guatemala that Guatemala is [96:44] going to enter a new era in which there [96:47] will be prosperity for the people [96:50] together with Liberty for the people [96:53] thank you very much for allowing us to [96:55] see this exhibit of Communism in [96:59] Guatemala good welome and for dinner see [97:02] what mother has for dessert banana [97:04] gingerbread Shortcake just another of [97:06] the many tempting ways in which this [97:08] nutritious fruit can be prepared so now [97:11] that you've seen where bananas come from [97:13] before they reach your table our journey [97:16] to Banana land is ended we hope you [97:18] enjoyed the trip we know you like the [97:22] Banas bernes had manipulated the [97:25] American people but he had done so [97:27] because he like many others at the time [97:30] beli that the interests of business and [97:32] the interests of America were [97:33] indivisible especially when faced with [97:36] the threat of [97:37] Communism but bernes was convinced that [97:40] to explain this rationally to the [97:41] American people was impossible because [97:44] they were not rational instead one had [97:46] to touch on their inner fears and [97:48] manipulate them in the interests of a [97:50] higher Troop truth he called it the [97:53] engineering of [97:55] consent he was doing it for uh the [97:59] American way of life and to which he was [98:02] devoted uh this sincerely devoted and [98:06] yet he felt the people were really [98:09] pretty stupid and that's the Paradox if [98:13] you don't leave it up to the people [98:16] themselves but force them to choose what [98:20] you want them to choose [98:22] however subtly uh then it's not [98:24] democracy [98:28] anymore it's something else it's being [98:31] told what to do it's being it's it's [98:34] it's that old authoritarian [98:38] thing but the idea that it was necessary [98:41] to manipulate the inner feelings of the [98:42] American population in the interests of [98:45] fighting the Cold War now began to take [98:47] root in [98:48] Washington above all in the CIA who were [98:51] going to take it much [98:54] further they were concerned that the [98:56] Soviets were experimenting with [98:57] psychological methods to actually alter [99:00] the memories and feelings of people the [99:02] aim being to produce more controllable [99:04] citizens it was known as [99:10] brainwashing psychologists in the CIA [99:12] were convinced that this really might be [99:14] possible and that they should try to do [99:17] it [99:20] themselves the image of the human being [99:22] that was being built up at that [99:24] particular time was that there was a [99:27] great deal of vulnerability in every [99:30] human being and that that vulnerability [99:33] could be manipulated to program somebody [99:37] to be something that I wanted them to be [99:41] and they didn't want to [99:45] be that you could manipulate people in [99:48] such a way that they could be automatons [99:52] if you will for whatever your own [99:53] purposes [99:54] were this was the image that people [99:57] thought was [99:58] possible in the late 50s the CIA poured [100:01] millions of dollars into the psychology [100:03] Departments of universities Across [100:06] America they were secretly funding [100:08] experiments on how to alter and control [100:11] the inner drives of human [100:13] beings the most notorious of these [100:15] experiments was run by the head of the [100:17] American Psychiatric association Dr Yuan [100:20] Cameron [100:21] like many psychiatrists at that time [100:24] Cameron was convinced that inside human [100:26] beings were dangerous forces which [100:28] threatened [100:29] Society but he believed that it was [100:31] possible not just to control these [100:33] forces but actually remove them he [100:36] thought that Psychiatry should not just [100:39] concentrate on sick people mentally ill [100:41] but should actually go into government [100:44] that politicians should listen to [100:47] psychiatrist psychiatrist should be in [100:49] every Parliament and should direct and [100:52] monitor political activities because [100:55] they knew in IR rational scientific way [101:00] what was good for people Cameron had set [101:03] up a clinic in a hospital in Montreal [101:05] called the Alan Memorial it is now long [101:08] since closed [101:10] down Cameron took patients who suffered [101:12] a wide range of mental problems his [101:15] theory was that these resulted from [101:17] forgotten or oppressed memories but he [101:19] was impatient with the idea of using [101:21] Psychotherapy to uncover them instead he [101:24] would simply wipe them Cameron used [101:27] drugs including LSD and the technique of [101:30] ECT electroconvulsive therapy it was [101:34] conventionally used at that time to [101:35] relieve depression but Cameron was going [101:38] to use it in a new way to produce new [101:42] people he was really using it to try and [101:47] um change the fundamental fun function [101:51] of the individual to um [101:56] alter their past memories their past [101:59] ways of [102:01] Behaving uh and as as I think he he said [102:04] at one point is to just sort of erase [102:08] everything from their past so that you [102:10] then had a slate in which you could [102:13] record new ways of [102:16] Behavior Uh and so he used massive doses [102:21] of shock people receiving several shocks [102:25] a day uh and over a course of course of [102:29] time hundreds of ECT uh treatments so [102:32] that they were just reduced [102:34] to a sort of a very primitive vegetable [102:40] State I don't remember what happened to [102:42] me um I was introduced to Dr Cameron and [102:45] I don't remember Dr Cameron at all I [102:48] don't remember any of that they shipped [102:50] me up to what they call the Sleep room [102:53] and they gave me all of these electro [102:56] convulsive shock treatments and mega [102:58] doses of drugs and LSD and all of that [103:02] and I have no memory of any of that [103:04] nothing in the in of of that time in the [103:07] Ala Memorial or any of my life previous [103:11] to that all gone [103:13] white and then having dep patterned [103:17] somebody or brought them down to where [103:19] basically uh nothing but the essential [103:23] functions of of the body were going on [103:26] in terms of breathing and things of this [103:28] nature then he would begin to feed [103:30] material into these individuals positive [103:33] material such that the brain would be [103:36] programmed in a positive way so that the [103:39] individual would be completely altered [103:41] then he put these tapes under our [103:43] pillows called psychic driving he would [103:46] he would then put back into this empty [103:49] brain um a [103:51] program of whatever sort he decided upon [103:55] uh and the people like myself would wake [103:59] up another person I [104:02] guess in fact Cameron's experiments were [104:05] a complete [104:07] disaster all he managed to produce were [104:09] dozens of individuals with memory loss [104:12] and the ability to repeat the phrase I [104:15] am at ease with [104:17] myself and it was not an isolated case [104:20] almost all the experiments the CIA [104:22] funded were equally [104:25] unsuccessful despite their Ambitions [104:27] American psychologists were beginning to [104:29] find out how difficult it was to [104:31] understand and control the inner [104:33] workings of the human [104:36] mind we had been really chasing a [104:41] phantom if you will an illusion that the [104:44] human mind was more capable of [104:47] manipulation from the [104:49] outside [104:51] by outside factors than it [104:54] is we found out that the human being is [104:58] an extremely complex [105:00] thing there were no Simple [105:06] Solutions but you've just got to bear in [105:09] mind that these were very strange [105:13] times the psychoanalysts had come to [105:15] power in America because of their theory [105:17] that they knew how to control the [105:19] dangerous forces inside human [105:22] beings but now the psychoanalysts were [105:25] about to face a high-profile failure [105:27] that would lead people to begin [105:29] questioning the very basis of their [105:32] ideas it began in [105:36] Hollywood the film industry had become [105:38] fascinated by [105:39] psychoanalysis and Anna Freud was a [105:42] powerful influence on dozens of analysts [105:43] in Los [105:45] Angeles they treated film stars [105:47] directors and Studio [105:49] bosses Anna Freud's closest friend was [105:52] the most sought after of all Ralph [105:58] greenson and in 1960 the most famous [106:01] star in the world turned to greenson for [106:03] help Marilyn Monroe was suffering from [106:06] Despair and had become addicted to [106:08] alcohol and [106:10] drugs well when I walked in to dinner [106:13] here was Marilyn mono I made a picture [106:15] with her got All About Eve this is [106:17] dinner at Ralph greens yes and [106:21] the only thing was [106:22] that Ralph was trying to show her Romy I [106:27] never called him Ralph in my life Romy [106:29] was trying to show [106:31] her that [106:34] uh the way of family life ought really [106:36] to [106:37] be so we were walking the dog after us I [106:40] said what the hell are you doing here I [106:42] said you never asked me to [106:44] dinner and he said you weren't that [106:48] sick and I said oh no he said the point [106:52] is just this child has no no frame of [106:57] reference she in other words she doesn't [106:59] know where she what the goal is what [107:02] greenson did was follow Anna Freud's [107:04] theory if marily Monroe could be taught [107:07] to conform to what Society considered a [107:09] normal pattern of life that would help [107:12] her ego control her inner destructive [107:15] urges but greenson pushed it to an [107:17] extreme he persuaded Monroe to move into [107:20] a house nearby that was decorated like [107:22] his own he then took her into his own [107:25] family life and he his wife and his [107:28] daughter played it being Monroe's own [107:31] family greensen himself would become the [107:34] model of Conformity and so this someone [107:38] whom she regarded as important and uh [107:42] how she [107:43] idealized if he turned out to be a very [107:47] gratifying father figure she her ego [107:50] would benefit from that that was the [107:54] theory his wife and children everyone [107:56] was involved in they were strengthening [107:58] the person they were strengthening the [108:00] mind they were strengthening the agent [108:03] that controls inner life against [108:05] adversity against insufficiency against [108:09] too much [108:12] frustration so that Malo with no longer [108:14] be a helpless person looking for love [108:17] she'd have enough [108:19] love the despite all his efforts [108:21] greenson was unable to help Marilyn [108:24] Monroe on August the 5th 1962 she [108:27] committed suicide in her [108:29] [Music] [108:31] house the suicide shocked many in the [108:34] analytic Community including Anna [108:36] Freud and high-profile figures in [108:39] American Life who had previously been [108:41] enthusiasts for psycho analysis now [108:43] began to question why psychoanalysis had [108:45] become so powerful in [108:47] America was it really because it benefit [108:50] effed [108:51] individuals or had it in fact become a [108:53] form of constraint in the interests of [108:55] social [108:56] order the critics included Monroe's [108:59] ex-husband Arthur [109:01] Miller my argument with so much [109:03] psychoanalysis is the preconception that [109:06] suffering is a mistake or a sign of [109:09] weakness or a sign even of illness when [109:11] in [109:12] fact possibly the greatest truths we [109:15] know have come out of people's suffering [109:18] that the problem is not to un do [109:20] suffering or to wipe it off the face of [109:22] the Earth but to make it inform Our [109:24] Lives instead of trying to cure [109:26] ourselves of it constantly and avoid it [109:29] and avoid anything but that lobotomized [109:32] sense of what they call happiness [109:35] there's too much of a an attempt that [109:36] seems to me to think in terms of [109:38] controlling man rather than freeing him [109:41] of of uh defining him rather than than [109:44] than uh letting him go and uh it's part [109:48] of the whole ideology of this age which [109:50] is power [109:53] mad hey have you heard about the crazy [109:57] new way to send the message today it [110:01] flashed on a screen too quick to see but [110:05] still you get it [110:07] subliminally at the same time an [110:09] onslaught was launched on the way [110:11] psychoanalysis was being used by [110:12] business to control [110:14] people the first blow came with the best [110:17] seller the hidden persuaders written by [110:19] Vance Packard [110:21] it accused psychoanalysts of reducing [110:23] the American people to emotional puppets [110:25] whose only function was to keep the mass [110:27] production lines [110:29] running they did this by manipulating [110:32] people's unconscious desires to create [110:34] longings for ever new brands and [110:37] models they had turned the population [110:39] into unwitting participants in the [110:41] system of planned [110:44] obsolescence the second blow came from [110:46] an influential philosopher and social [110:48] critic Herbert Maru user he had been [110:51] trained in [110:54] psychoanalysis this is a childish uh [110:58] application of [110:59] psychoanalysis which does not take at [111:01] all in consider to consideration the [111:04] very real uh political systematic waste [111:08] of resources of technology and of the [111:11] productive process for example plant [111:14] obsolesence for example the production [111:17] of innumerable Brands and gadgets who [111:20] are uh in the last analysis all the same [111:24] the uh production of uh innumerable [111:28] different marks of automobiles and this [111:32] Prosperity at the same time consciously [111:35] or [111:36] unconsciously leads to a kind of [111:39] schizophrenic [111:42] existence I believe that in this Society [111:44] an incredible Quantum of aggressiveness [111:48] and destructiveness is accumula ated [111:51] precisely because of the empty [111:54] Prosperity which then [111:57] U simply [112:06] erupts you're dead maru's argument was [112:09] not simply that psychoanalysis had been [112:11] used for corrupt purposes it was more [112:14] fundamental maruza said that the very [112:17] idea that you needed to control people [112:19] was wrong [112:21] human beings did have inner emotional [112:23] drives but they were not inherently [112:25] violent or evil it was society that made [112:28] these drives Dangerous by repressing and [112:30] distorting [112:32] them Anna Freud and her followers had [112:34] increased that repression by trying to [112:36] make people conform to [112:38] society in so doing they made people [112:41] more dangerous not [112:43] less maruza challenged that social world [112:47] and he said that's a world that should [112:48] not be adapted to and in fact what the [112:52] individual was adapting to was [112:55] corrupt and evil and corrupting other [112:59] words he switched he switched the source [113:01] of evil from inward [113:05] conflict to the society itself that the [113:08] sickness of society lay at the society [113:11] level not at the sickness of human [113:12] beings in it and if people did not [113:15] challenge that then they were in fact [113:19] submitting [113:20] to [113:22] evil modern psychology has a word that [113:25] is probably used more than any other [113:27] word in [113:28] Psychology it is a word [113:32] maladjusted it is the ringing Cry of [113:34] modern child [113:36] psychology maladjusted now of course we [113:39] all want to live the well adjusted life [113:41] in order to avoid neurotic and [113:44] schizophrenic [113:46] personalities but as I move toward my [113:48] conclusion I would like to say to you [113:51] today in a very honest manner that there [113:55] are some things in our society and some [113:58] things in our [113:59] world which I'm proud to be [114:02] maladjusted and I call upon all men of [114:05] Good Will to be maladjusted to these [114:07] things until the good Society is [114:10] realized I must honestly say to you that [114:13] I never intend to adjust myself through [114:16] racial segregation and discrimination [114:20] I never intend to adjust myself to [114:24] religious [114:25] bigotry I never intend to adjust myself [114:28] to economic conditions that will take [114:31] Necessities from the many to give [114:33] luxuries to the few and leave millions [114:36] of God's children smothering in an [114:38] airtight cage of poverty in the midst of [114:41] an affluent [114:45] society the political influence of the [114:47] Freudian psychoanalyst was over [114:50] instead they were now accused of having [114:52] helped to create a repressive form of [114:55] social [114:58] control Anna Freud and darthy Burlingham [115:01] lived on in Sigman Freud's old house in [115:03] London in 1970 darth's son Bob died of [115:08] alcoholism and in [115:10] 1973 his sister maby returned for yet [115:13] more analysis with Anna [115:15] Freud she went back for more analysis [115:18] she was living in uh in at 20 marville [115:21] Gardens in the Freud house as I guess [115:23] she did when she wasn't with her husband [115:25] and [115:26] uh she committed suicide she took an [115:29] overdose of sleeping [115:31] pills in Freud's own house in Freud's [115:34] own house [115:40] right so I mean OB you know the obvious [115:43] uh there are a lot of implications that [115:45] one can draw from that and I just think [115:47] she she happened to reach the end of the [115:48] Rope there [115:50] although uh it would seem to be a very [115:52] pointed um uh act obviously suicide is a [115:56] very politicized act and to do it uh in [115:59] Sigman fory its own house is uh is um [116:03] certainly different from doing it in [116:05] Riverdale back in New [116:11] York next week's episode will tell the [116:13] story of the rise to power of the [116:15] enemies of the Freud [116:16] family they believe that the way to [116:18] build a better Society was to let the [116:20] self [116:22] free but what they didn't realize was [116:24] that this idea of Liberation would [116:26] provide business and politics with yet [116:29] another way to control the self by [116:31] feeding its infinite [116:35] desires you know not what it means to be [116:41] blue someday you [116:43] realize and pay for all those lies then [116:47] you'll know what it means [116:52] [Applause] [116:54] [Music] [117:09] baby don't settle for anything less than [117:12] you can be make your life a [117:15] masterpiece this is a series about how [117:18] Sigman Freud's ideas about the [117:20] unconscious mind have been used by those [117:22] in power to control the masses in an age [117:25] of [117:27] democracy last week's episode showed how [117:30] Freud's ideas spread throughout America [117:32] in the [117:33] 1950s they were promoted by his daughter [117:35] Anna and by Freud's nephew Edward bernes [117:39] who invented public relations he brought [117:42] Freud's theories Into the Heart of [117:44] advertising and marketing a man like you [117:48] I mean would Ur like [117:51] this what they both believed was that [117:54] underneath all human beings was a hidden [117:57] irrational [117:59] self which needed to be controlled both [118:02] for the good of individuals and the [118:04] stability of [118:08] society but the freuds were about to be [118:10] toppled from Power by opponents who said [118:13] they were wrong about human [118:17] nature the inner self did not need to be [118:20] repressed and controlled it should be [118:22] encouraged to express [118:24] [Music] [118:28] itself out of this would come a new type [118:30] of strong human being and a better [118:33] [Music] [118:37] Society but what in fact emerged from [118:39] this Revolution was the very opposite an [118:42] isolated vulnerable and above all greedy [118:45] self far more open to manipulation by [118:48] both business and politics than anything [118:51] that had gone [118:53] before those in power would now control [118:56] the self not by repressing it but by [118:59] feeding its infinite [119:02] [Music] [119:04] [Applause] [119:17] desires what goes on here is the [119:20] liberation of feeling in other words [119:22] feelings not just memories that have [119:25] been suppressed for example screaming [119:28] crying anger you get a person really [119:31] angry and they're going to let it out no [119:35] no I could kill [119:37] you that's I'm I'm an old man listen I [119:41] can't get all the strength into this [119:42] that young people would get if they have [119:44] those [119:45] feelings that wasn't bad in the 1950s a [119:49] small group of renegade psychoanalysts [119:51] began a new form of therapy they worked [119:54] in small rooms in New York City and [119:56] encouraged their patients to express [119:57] their feelings openly I want help I do I [120:01] want help it was a direct attack on the [120:03] ideas of the Freudian psychoanalysts who [120:06] had become rich and Powerful teaching [120:08] Americans how to control their [120:12] feelings in Freud work you see they they [120:15] were afraid of the feeling [120:21] they lived that what they wanted was [120:23] contain people very proper doing the [120:26] right thing and living a proper life [120:28] that's what they wanted but not a not an [120:31] intense emotional [120:33] life Freud wasn't emotional himself I [120:36] mean he's a he's an intellect [120:40] Freud I was an intellect too I know but [120:42] I also more than that [120:45] now the leader of this group was a man [120:48] hated by Freud and and his family he was [120:50] called Wilhelm Reich Reich lived an [120:53] isolated life in a house he had built [120:55] for himself in remote mountains near the [120:57] Canadian [120:59] border Reich originally had been a [121:01] devoted disciple of freuds in Vienna in [121:03] the [121:05] 1920s but he had challenged Freud over [121:07] the fundamental basis of [121:10] psychoanalysis Freud argued that at [121:12] heart human beings were still driven by [121:14] primitive animal [121:16] instincts the job of society was to [121:19] repress and control these dangerous [121:22] forces Reich believed the complete [121:24] opposite the unconscious forces inside [121:27] the human mind he said were [121:29] good it was their repression by society [121:32] that distorted them that was what made [121:34] people [121:35] [Music] [121:37] dangerous Reich and Freud had two [121:41] fundamentally differing views about what [121:45] was essential human nature at a core [121:50] Freud saw an [121:53] uncontrolled violent [121:57] warlike raging Inferno of emotions re [122:01] said these things are not the way human [122:03] beings are originally destined to be [122:06] they're the result [122:08] of not permitting the original impulse [122:11] to express itself the underlying natural [122:14] impulse Reich argued was the libido [122:17] Sexual Energy If This Were released then [122:20] human beings would [122:22] flourish but this idea brought him into [122:24] direct conflict not only with Sigman [122:26] Freud but Freud's daughter Anna who [122:29] believed that the sexual forces in [122:30] humans were dangerous if not controlled [122:33] my father thought that you should [122:35] Liberate the libido and have freedom and [122:38] he developed the theory rather early [122:41] that Neurosis were due to lack of good [122:44] orgasm or any [122:47] orgasm um and that was Anna Freud you [122:51] know was a virgin I mean this is very [122:54] important because she never had a sexual [122:57] relation with a man and here was this [122:59] man preaching that the way to health was [123:02] through orgasm and here was this woman [123:05] who had been analyzed by her father cuz [123:08] she was [123:09] masturbating so here's this woman who's [123:11] opposed to sexuality really and here's [123:14] this man who who's preaching sexual [123:16] freedom I mean that was by found to be a [123:19] clash wasn't there the conflict came to [123:23] a head at a conference in 1934 in [123:26] Switzerland Anna Freud who had by now [123:28] become the acknowledged leader of the [123:30] psychoanalytic movement forced will hel [123:32] Reich out she destroyed his [123:36] career she got rid of him very [123:39] definitely and I guess part of what I'm [123:41] doing is getting rid of [123:45] her explain well I think that that Anna [123:49] Freud shouldn't get away with what she [123:52] did that it should be known maneuvering [123:55] to get him kicked out of the [123:56] interational psychotic [123:59] Association so you're taking [124:01] Revenge you might say [124:04] so or wronging a right no writing a [124:09] wrong you better cut that one out isn't [124:11] that called a Fran yes it [124:16] is Reich fled to the United States built [124:19] his home and a [124:20] laboratory his ideas became grandio to [124:23] the point of [124:24] madness he was convinced that he had [124:27] discovered the source of libidinal [124:29] energy he called it orgone energy and [124:32] Reich built a giant gun which he said [124:34] could capture this energy from the [124:36] atmosphere and concentrated onto clouds [124:38] to produce [124:40] rain he also said that the gun could be [124:43] used to destroy UFOs which threaten the [124:45] future of the [124:47] world in 1956 Reich was arrested by the [124:51] federal authorities for selling a device [124:53] that he said used orgone energy to cure [124:57] cancer Reich was treated as a Madman he [125:01] was imprisoned and all his books and [125:03] papers burnt on the order of the [125:06] Court a year later Reich died in [125:09] prison to the freudians it seemed as if [125:12] their main threat had been removed [125:17] forever but they were wrong what the [125:20] freudians didn't realize was that their [125:23] influence in American society was also [125:25] about to be challenged and in a way that [125:28] would lead not only to their decline but [125:30] to the dramatic Resurgence of reich's [125:32] ideas in America and throughout the [125:34] capitalist [125:41] world the consumer is King his whim [125:45] makes or unmakes manufacturers hold [125:48] saers and retailers whoever wins his [125:51] confidence wins the game whoever loses [125:54] his confidence is lost by the late 50s [125:58] psychoanalysis had become deeply [126:00] involved in driving consumerism in [126:02] America most advertising companies [126:05] employed psychoanalysts and as last [126:07] week's episode showed they had created [126:09] new ways to understand consumers motives [126:12] above all with the focus group in which [126:14] consumers free Associated their feelings [126:17] about products [126:19] out of this came new ways to market [126:21] products by appealing to the hidden [126:23] unconscious desires of the [126:26] [Applause] [126:28] consumer meability [126:31] steering wheel [126:34] sybol it dreams think the mistress [126:37] something intimate is going [126:42] on but in the early 60s a new generation [126:45] emerged who attacked this they accused [126:48] American Business of using psychological [126:50] techniques to manipulate people's [126:53] feelings and turn them into ideal [126:58] consumers advertising was manipulation [127:00] it was a way to get you to do something [127:03] that didn't come out of you it came out [127:07] of somebody else somebody else said this [127:10] year you should be wearing powder pink [127:12] shirts with matching powder pink Buck [127:16] shoes and I said [127:19] why that that's not who I am that's who [127:22] somebody else is they wanted you to be [127:24] somebody who would buy their stuff this [127:27] whole feeling of being somebody else's [127:30] tool um I don't want to be that I don't [127:33] want to be somebody else's man I want to [127:36] be me this campus [127:39] is in the mid-60s a protest movement [127:42] began on America's [127:44] campuses one of the students main [127:46] targets was Corporate America [127:49] they accused the corporations of [127:50] brainwashing the American public [127:53] consumerism was not just a way of making [127:55] money it had become the means of keeping [127:58] the masses dos while allowing the [128:00] government to pursue a violent and [128:02] illegal war in [128:04] Vietnam the students Mentor was a famous [128:07] radical philosopher called Herbert [128:09] maruza maruza had studied psychoanalysis [128:12] and was a fierce critic of the [128:14] freudians they had he said helped to [128:17] create a world in which people were [128:18] reduced to expressing their feelings and [128:20] identities through mass-produced objects [128:24] it resulted in what he called [128:25] one-dimensional man conformist and [128:29] repressed the psychoanalysts have become [128:31] the corrupt agents of those who ruled [128:34] America it was uh one of the most [128:36] striking phenomena to see to what extent [128:40] the ruling uh Power structure structure [128:44] could manipulate manage and control not [128:47] only the Consciousness but also the [128:50] subconscious and unconscious of the uh [128:54] individuals and this it took place on a [128:57] psychological basis by the controls and [129:01] the [129:02] manipulation of the unconscious primary [129:05] drives which frud [129:08] stipulated think about it dear American [129:10] people out there you hear you're all [129:13] brainwashed kitties you're all [129:15] brainwashed that's why your here they're [129:16] saying right now kill the bum like look [129:18] you're in the living room you know [129:19] you're saying kill [129:22] [Music] [129:24] [Applause] [129:26] me following the logic of maru's [129:28] argument the new student left set out to [129:31] attack this system of social [129:33] control it was summed up in the slogan [129:36] there is a policeman inside all our [129:38] heads he must be [129:40] destroyed and that policeman was going [129:42] to be destroyed by overthrowing the [129:44] state and the corporations that had put [129:46] him there one group the weatherman began [129:49] a series of bomb attacks on companies [129:51] that they said both controlled people's [129:53] minds through consumer products and made [129:55] the weapons being used in [129:58] Vietnam there's no way to be committed [130:00] to nonviolence in the middle of the most [130:02] violent society that history's ever [130:04] created I'm not committed to [130:05] non-violence in any [130:09] way we want to live a life that isn't [130:13] based on materialistic values and yet [130:15] the whole system of government and the [130:17] economy of America America is based on [130:19] profit on personal greed and selfishness [130:21] so that in order to be human in order to [130:24] love each other and be equal with each [130:26] other and not Place each other in roles [130:29] we have to destroy the kind of [130:31] government that keeps us from asserting [130:34] our positive values of [130:36] life but the American state fought back [130:40] violently at the Democratic Convention [130:42] in Chicago in 1968 the police and the [130:45] National Guard were Unleashed to attack [130:47] thousands of demonstrators [130:50] it was the start of a phase of Ruthless [130:51] repression of the new left in America it [130:54] culminated in the killing of four [130:56] students at Kent State University 18 [130:58] months [130:59] [Music] [131:01] later in the face of this the left began [131:03] to fall [131:04] [Music] [131:07] apart we had met the force of the state [131:10] it was much bigger and stronger and more [131:13] powerful than we realized and at that [131:16] point what seemed to happen was that [131:19] there was a a change in [131:22] tactics confronted by this violent [131:25] repression many on the new Left began to [131:27] turn to a new idea if it was impossible [131:30] to get the policeman out of one's head [131:32] by overthrowing the state instead one [131:35] should find a way of getting inside [131:36] one's own mind and removing the controls [131:39] implanted there by the state and the [131:41] corporations out of this would come a [131:43] new self and thus a new [131:47] Society [131:48] [Music] [131:51] people who had been politically active [131:53] were persuaded that if they could change [131:56] themselves and be healthy individuals [131:59] and if a movement grew up just aimed at [132:01] people changing themselves then at some [132:04] point all that positive change going on [132:08] well you could say Quantity would become [132:10] quality and there would be a sort of a [132:12] spontaneous transformation of society [132:15] but polit but political activism was not [132:18] required it's about making a new you [132:22] that if enough people changed the way [132:24] they were that the society would change [132:27] so the personal became political yes the [132:30] personal became [132:32] political without changing the personal [132:36] you didn't stand a chance of changing [132:37] the political coming up against the [132:40] state power of the United [132:43] States was not an option I they [132:47] outgunned us [132:50] and to produce the new self they turned [132:52] to the ideas and techniques of Wilhelm [132:55] [Music] [132:57] Reich since his death a small group of [133:00] psychotherapists have been developing [133:02] techniques based on reich's [133:03] ideas their aim was to invent ways that [133:06] would allow individuals to free [133:08] themselves from the controls implanted [133:10] in their minds by [133:12] Society their Center was a tiny old [133:15] Motel on the remote coast of California [133:18] it was called The eselin [133:20] Institute the dominant figure at Elin [133:23] was a psychoanalyst called Fritz pearls [133:26] pearls had been trained by Reich and had [133:28] developed a form of group encounter in [133:30] which he pushed individuals to publicly [133:32] Express the feelings inside them that [133:35] Society had said were dangerous and [133:37] should be [133:39] repressed it's a basic fear of that [133:42] thing inside me like a little demon in [133:44] there it doesn't come out very [133:46] often it's really hard hard to get it [133:51] out now put the thing inside you on that [133:55] chair talk to it pearls used to call [133:57] this getting on the hot seat in front of [133:59] a group this if this were the hot seat [134:02] and you were pearls and you would uh [134:04] guide me into this process of uh self- [134:09] enactment [134:12] self-revelation um of staying present to [134:15] all the parts of yourself and noticing [134:19] it and then taking ownership of [134:22] this as the demon yeah yes I can come [134:26] out I can come right out of him and I [134:30] can push him [134:32] aside you see you push I can push you [134:36] aside yeah be the demons with each one [134:39] of us I can make you all [134:43] cry I can't make you all feel terrible [134:49] maybe even [134:50] forever I [134:52] can [134:54] make the mouth this mouth here do things [134:58] and say things I can almost destroy [135:00] anyone each one of [135:02] you if I get [135:06] out there isn't one of you that I would [135:11] spare not even you yeah how do you feel [135:16] now I feel better I I mean [135:20] I I feel very honest yeah and you notice [135:24] the increase of power in other words [135:27] taking ownership of who you are and how [135:30] you [135:31] act and how you feel your whole being in [135:35] the world in other words giving you [135:38] autonomy owning your [135:40] freedom I'm [135:43] frightening when I have my power I am [135:46] frightening see I frighten you with my [135:49] power I frighten you with my [135:53] power now where do you feel your power [135:56] in your [135:57] hands your [135:59] muscles where [136:04] else wake [136:08] up I want to do for me [136:12] godam okay okay [136:15] okay stop it you it was not phony [136:19] movement that's what I wanted to do and [136:21] I did [136:22] it what pearls and others working at [136:25] esselin believed was that they were [136:27] creating ways that allowed individuals [136:29] to express their true inner [136:32] selves I want them to apply it for [136:35] me out of this they believed would come [136:38] new autonomous beings free of social [136:41] condition to the left defeated in the [136:44] wake of Chicago it was an enormously [136:46] attractive idea these techniques could [136:49] be used to unleash a new powerful self [136:52] strong enough to overthrow the old [136:54] [Music] [137:00] order in the late 60s and early '70s [137:03] thousands flocked to [137:05] eselin only a few years before it had [137:07] been an obscure Fringe Institute now it [137:10] became the center of a national movement [137:12] for personal [137:13] transformation the human potential [137:16] movement [137:19] so it became magnetic people wanted to [137:21] join this stream of expiration within 7 [137:25] or8 years there were about 200 of these [137:27] centers in America uh looking uh mainly [137:30] to eln for the leadership I feel so [137:33] liberated really it's [137:36] fantastic and it took on a big political [137:39] agenda you could not separate personal [137:42] transformation from social [137:44] transformation the two go together as [137:47] the movement grew the leaders of esen [137:49] decided to try and use their techniques [137:51] to solve social [137:53] problems they began with racism they [137:56] organized an encounter group for white [137:58] and black radicals both groups would be [138:00] encouraged to express their inner racist [138:03] feelings which had been instilled in [138:04] them by Society by doing this they would [138:07] transcend those feelings and encounter [138:09] each other as [138:11] individuals I started a series of [138:13] encounters called um racial [138:15] confrontation as transcend Al experience [138:19] we thought that we wanted to get that [138:20] kind of black white confrontation so you [138:22] could really get down to see what was [138:24] between the two races not by backing off [138:26] and trying to be polite but by going [138:28] right into the belly of the Beast of [138:30] this Beast of of racial Prejudice and [138:34] these were extremely dramatic these were [138:36] the toughest workshops ever convened at [138:39] eln Institute I'm looking at you w you [138:42] got clothes on you got shoes on you're [138:45] just so sure looking at me H you got the [138:47] goddamn police in the neighborhood [138:49] really they're not my police you got a [138:51] governor you got a mayor oh really you [138:53] got the president you got ambassadors [138:56] you can vote too you got Debs in Vietnam [138:58] that's the benefits of slave labor you [139:01] got build and skyscrapers that you [139:03] dominate and control economically and [139:05] politically and tell me that it's not [139:08] yours it's yours too then the blacks all [139:11] got together and attack the whites and [139:14] they just let us have it what they call [139:16] it was peeping somebody [139:18] peeping somebody means uh peeping into [139:20] their secrets into their phoniness and [139:23] so forth like uh the white liberal oh [139:26] they really really got on to the white [139:27] liberal you know so don't give me no [139:29] [ __ ] about I'm free you're a goddamn Li [139:32] you white pink son of a [ __ ] you yeah I [139:34] want to know what you came down here for [139:35] you want a black Buck huh yep tell the [139:38] truth you looking for a stud that's all [139:41] you huh what did you come here for you [139:44] sitting there with your legs all Gap [139:46] wide open showing your draws now what' [139:48] you come here for the black white [139:50] encounter groups were a disaster the [139:52] black radicals saw it as an Insidious [139:54] attempt to destroy their power realiz by [139:57] trying to turn them into liberated [139:59] individuals eselin was removing the one [140:01] thing that gave them power and [140:03] confidence in their struggle Against [140:04] Racism their Collective identity is [140:07] Blackson for my reason for your reason [140:10] take this your reason for being here is [140:12] different from my [140:13] reason so the human potential movement [140:16] turned to another social group group who [140:18] they believed would benefit from [140:19] personal [140:22] transformation nuns and this time they [140:25] were more [140:27] successful the convent of the Immaculate [140:29] Heart in Los Angeles was one of the [140:31] largest seminaries in [140:33] America a group of radical [140:35] psychotherapists approached the convent [140:38] they wanted to try out their techniques [140:39] for personal Liberation on individuals [140:42] whose identities were defined by a [140:44] series of external rules which they had [140:46] deeply internalized [140:48] the convent anxious to appear modern [140:50] agreed to the [140:53] experiment and we did weekend encounter [140:55] workshops uh for several hundred [140:58] Immaculate Heart nuns nuns who were [141:01] reserved and they tended to be more [141:03] reserved than other normal people were [141:06] told don't be so reserved let it all out [141:09] you're a good person you can afford to [141:11] be who you really are you don't need to [141:14] play the role of a none you don't need [141:16] to keep downcast eyes and uh Prudence is [141:19] an oversold virtue you're trying to um [141:22] assert yourself trying to find out who [141:24] you are who you're becoming at the same [141:27] time you're trying to live a life of [141:29] dedication of service and you're trying [141:31] to make all these things fit into who [141:33] you are and you're just you know it's [141:35] just it's such a turmoil at times that [141:36] you just you you just blow a gasket and [141:39] do silly crazy things you running around [141:42] the Orchard and stealing oranges and [141:44] taking Cokes out of the refrigerator and [141:46] crazy czy things I felt like I was being [141:48] a hypocrite and I wanted people to [141:50] respect me for what I was not for what I [141:52] was wearing and so I'm glad for the [141:54] change you feel frightened but you'll go [141:57] on oh yeah I'm scared to death but but [142:00] it's worth it the experiment began to [142:02] transform the convent the nuns voted to [142:05] discard their habits in favor of [142:07] ordinary [142:07] clothes but the psychotherapists found [142:10] they had awoken other Sol solid one of [142:13] the things we unleashed was Sexual [142:15] Energy the kind of thing that the church [142:18] had been very good at restraining was no [142:21] longer to be restrained one sister who [142:23] was a member of the community she got [142:26] the idea that she could be Freer than [142:28] she had been before and she seduced one [142:31] of her classmates and then seduced uh [142:34] the Mistress of novices who was an older [142:37] woman very reserved and her program of [142:40] freeing this older woman was sexual she [142:45] drove her to the store and when they [142:46] drove back um and drove into the garage [142:49] she leaned over and gave her a big kiss [142:52] on the lips and thereafter sister who [142:54] had perhaps Never Been Kissed before was [142:57] ready for [142:59] more the effect of the experiment on the [143:01] convent was [143:02] cataclysmic within a year 300 nuns more [143:06] than half the convent petitioned the [143:08] Vatican to be released from their vows [143:10] and 6 months later the convent closed [143:12] its [143:13] doors all that was left was a small [143:16] group of nuns [143:17] but they had become radical lesbian nuns [143:20] the rest gave up the religious life they [143:23] gave up being nuns they did yeah they [143:26] became [143:27] [Music] [143:29] persons by the late 60s the idea of [143:32] self- exloration was spreading rapidly [143:34] in America encounter groups became the [143:37] center of what was seen as a radical [143:39] alternative culture based on the [143:41] development of the self free of a [143:43] corrupt capitalist [143:45] culture we just want the freedom to to [143:48] be ourselves and that's for love for [143:51] experience positive way of life we don't [143:54] we don't say uh that you're wrong we [143:56] just want to be free to to be what we [143:58] want to be or what we find ourselves to [144:00] be as we continue to search ourselves [144:03] and it was beginning to have a serious [144:05] effect on Corporate America because [144:08] these new selves were not behaving as [144:09] predictable [144:11] consumers the life insurance industry in [144:14] particular was concerned that fewer and [144:16] fewer college students were buying life [144:17] insurance when they left [144:19] University they asked Daniel Yankovich [144:22] America's leading Market researcher to [144:24] investigate he had studied [144:27] psychoanalysis the life insurance [144:30] business more than any other business at [144:32] the time was built on the Protestant [144:34] ethic you only bought life insurance if [144:38] you were a person who sacrificed for the [144:41] future if you lived in the present you [144:45] had no need for life insurance so they [144:47] had some sense that maybe the sort of [144:50] core values of the Protestant ethic were [144:54] being challenged by some of these uh new [144:56] values that were beginning to appear and [144:59] I was really astonished at what I found [145:03] the conventional interpretation the [145:05] dominant interpretation was that it had [145:07] to do with political [145:09] radicalism you know it was clear to us [145:12] that that was a mask a cover the core of [145:16] it had to do with self-expressiveness [145:21] that this preoccupation with the self [145:24] and the inner self that was what was so [145:26] important to people the ability to be [145:30] self-expressive wow what a [145:33] feeling 300 miles [145:37] go Yankovic began to track the growth [145:40] and behavior of these new expressive [145:43] selves what he told the corporations was [145:46] that these new beings were consumers but [145:48] they no longer wanted anything that [145:50] would place them within the narrow [145:52] strata of American society instead what [145:55] they wanted were products that would [145:57] Express their [145:58] individuality their difference in a [146:00] conformist world the very things that us [146:03] corporations did not [146:06] make products have always had an [146:09] emotional meaning what was new was [146:14] individuality the idea that this product [146:18] expresses me and uh whether it was a [146:22] small European [146:24] car the particular music [146:28] system relaxation your presentation of [146:31] self your [146:33] clothing for immediate energy from our [146:36] muscles and [146:38] relx these become ways in which people [146:41] can expend their money in order to say [146:44] to the world who they are [146:49] but the manufacturers they had no idea [146:52] of what was going on really in the uh [146:55] with consumers and in the Market at like [146:58] major advertising companies set up what [147:00] they called operating groups to try and [147:03] work out how to appeal to these new [147:05] individuals the head of one agency sent [147:07] a memo to all staff we must conform he [147:11] told them to the new [147:13] non-conformists we must listen to the [147:15] music of Bobby Dylan and go to the [147:17] theater more but the problem was few of [147:21] the self-expressive individuals would [147:23] take part in focus groups the [147:25] advertisers were left to their own [147:27] devices there's a new cereal that tastes [147:30] So Right makes you dance it's a way out [147:34] of sight it's tasty little squares of [147:37] malted wheat it's crispy and it's [147:39] crunchy and a [147:41] t faster though that's what I'm saying [147:43] use a folk rock with more rock than Folk [147:47] and there was an even more serious [147:49] problem to make products for people who [147:51] wanted to express themselves would mean [147:53] creating variety but the systems of mass [147:56] production that had been developed in [147:58] America were only profitable if they [148:00] made large numbers of the same objects [148:03] this had fitted perfectly with the [148:05] limited range of desires of a conformist [148:08] Society the expressive self threatened [148:11] this whole system of [148:13] manufacturer and the threat was about to [148:15] grow rapidly [148:21] go because an entrepreneur had invented [148:24] a way of mass producing this new [148:26] independent [148:31] cell he was called wner AAR some of the [148:35] stuff that we traditionally think of as [148:38] being in your mind is actually in the [148:40] world was you're moving to that [148:43] too aard had invented a system called [148:45] EST aard seminar training hundreds of [148:49] people came for weekend sessions to be [148:51] taught how to be themselves and EST was [148:54] soon copied by other groups like [148:56] exeresis in [148:58] Britain many of ahad's techniques came [149:01] from the human potential movement but he [149:03] criticized the movement for not having [149:05] gone far enough their idea that there [149:08] was a central core inside all human [149:10] beings was he said just another [149:12] limitation on human [149:14] freedom in reality there was no fix self [149:18] which meant that you could be anything [149:19] that you wanted to [149:21] be the thesis of the human potential [149:24] movement was that there was something [149:26] really good down in there and if you [149:28] took these layers off what you were [149:31] going to wind up with was a kernel a [149:33] something that was innately [149:37] self-expressive that was the true self [149:40] that was going to be a wonderful thing [149:42] in actuality you found people who' gone [149:46] to the last layer and took off the last [149:49] layer and found that what was left was [149:52] nothing all right [149:54] push move do it the S sessions were [149:57] intense and often brutal the [150:00] participants signed contracts agreeing [150:01] not to leave and to allow the trainers [150:03] to do anything they thought necessary to [150:05] break down their socially constructed [150:07] identities get sandwiched in there for a [150:11] whn if I push harder than you do I'm [150:14] going to squash you so you better push [150:16] fast now hard do it that's it do it [150:19] again push good good good again [150:28] Yes the real point to the S training was [150:32] to go down through layer after layer [150:35] after layer after layer until you got to [150:39] the last layer and peeled it off where [150:42] the recognition was that it it's really [150:48] all meaningless and [151:05] empty now that's existentialism end [151:08] point s when a step further in that [151:13] people began to recognize that it was [151:14] not only meaningless and empty [151:16] but it was empty and meaningless that it [151:18] was empty and [151:19] meaningless and in that there's an [151:21] enormous Freedom all the constrictions [151:25] all of the rules you've placed on [151:29] yourself are [151:31] gone and what you're left with is [151:34] nothing and nothing is an [151:36] extraordinarily powerful place to stand [151:39] because it is only from nothing that you [151:41] can [151:42] create and from this nothing people were [151:45] able to invent a life and allowing them [151:48] to create [151:51] themselves invent themselves invent [151:53] themselves you can be what you want to [151:55] be I want you to start to make that [151:58] sound and on that sound create and [152:02] people the world the way you want to [152:05] create [152:07] it what aart did was to say that only [152:11] the individual [152:13] matters that there is no societal [152:17] concern that you living a fulfilled life [152:21] is all you need be concerned about s [152:25] people came out of those trainings [152:26] feeling that it wasn't selfish to think [152:29] about yourself it was your highest Duty [152:32] so kiss me and smile for me tell me that [152:38] you wait for me hold me like you never [152:44] let me go the training is uh is two [152:47] weekends MH and uh it was quite an [152:49] incredible experience in my life I'll [152:51] forever be grateful for the experience I [152:53] got a great deal out of it we really [152:55] want to know who we are there are things [152:57] going on we learn more and more about [152:59] ourselves all the time and to really [153:01] find out what it make what it is that [153:02] makes us tick and how we are discovering [153:05] the [153:08] sound es became hugely successful [153:11] singers film stars and hundreds of [153:13] thousands of ordinary Americans [153:15] underwent the training in the [153:18] 1970s but in the process the political [153:20] idea that had begun the movement for [153:22] personal transformation began to [153:25] disappear the original Vision had been [153:28] that through discovering and expressing [153:30] the a new culture would be born one that [153:33] would challenge the power of the [153:36] [Music] [153:38] state we will not let them separate our [153:41] culture from our politics we are a [153:44] people we are all together [153:47] together but what was now emerging was [153:50] the idea that people could be happy [153:52] simply within themselves and that [153:54] changing Society was [153:57] irrelevant one of the proponents of this [153:59] was Jerry Rubin in 1968 Rubin as leader [154:03] of the yippies had led the march on [154:05] Chicago but now he had undergone s [154:09] training I was willing to die and I and [154:12] I had a martyr complex in a sense I [154:14] think we all did and I've given up that [154:16] ideal of sacrifice um and I'm not as um [154:22] I'm not as overwhelmingly moved by [154:25] Injustice as I was and now we [154:27] reincarnated ourselves from within [154:30] basically the politics were lost and and [154:33] and and totally replaced by this [154:37] lifestyle and and then the desire to [154:40] become deeper and deeper into the self [154:42] by now a grandiose sense of the self and [154:46] and my uh uh good friend uh and one of [154:49] the original yippy Founders Jerry rubben [154:51] definitely moved in that direction and [154:55] and I think he was buying into beginning [154:57] to buy into the notion that he could be [155:00] happy and fully self-developed on his [155:03] own socialism in one [155:07] person yes was he alone in that traj [155:10] although that of course is [155:13] capitalism that's that's the whole joke [155:18] I think it's [155:20] funny I think it's funny because people [155:23] spend so much of their life being [155:25] bedeviled by their past and being locked [155:27] into their past and being uh limited by [155:31] their past and there's an enormous [155:33] freedom from that letting people create [155:36] themselves is [155:40] it EST was only the most Vivid and [155:43] intense expression of an idea that was [155:45] spreading rapidly through all strata of [155:47] American [155:48] society books and television programs [155:50] promoted the idea that one's first Duty [155:53] was to be [155:55] oneself and those monitoring this shift [155:57] were astonished at the speed with which [155:59] the idea was [156:00] spreading in [156:02] 1970 it was a small percentage of the [156:06] total population maybe 3 to [156:09] 5% by [156:12] 1980 it had spread to the vast majority [156:16] of the public up to [156:18] 80% you asked the question how do you [156:20] get self-actualized you take this day [156:23] and you say when I shave every morning I [156:25] look in that mirror I say to myself I [156:26] really say this I say nobody is going to [156:29] ruin this day for you Wayne Dyer nobody [156:32] that this preoccupation with the self [156:34] and the inner self traveled and spread [156:37] throughout the society in the [156:40] 1970s it helped me to stop living in the [156:42] past and start building from today and [156:44] using my experience is in a positive way [156:47] to be a better person today and tomorrow [156:49] but then the problem comes well how do [156:52] you be [156:55] self-expressive and it was at this point [156:57] that American capitalism decided it was [156:59] going to step in and help these new [157:01] individuals to express themselves and in [157:04] the process make a lot of [157:06] money the first thing they were going to [157:09] do was to find a way of getting inside [157:11] their heads to discover what these new [157:13] beings wanted in order to be themselves [157:16] [Music] [157:17] this came not from Madison Avenue but [157:19] from one of the most powerful scientific [157:21] research institutes in [157:23] America Stanford Research Institute in [157:25] California worked for corporations and [157:28] government it had done much of the early [157:30] work on computers and was also working [157:33] for the Department of Defense on what [157:35] would become the Star Wars [157:39] project in 1978 a group of economists [157:42] and psychologists at SRI decided to find [157:45] a way to read measure and fulfill the [157:49] desires of these new unpredictable [157:52] consumers the idea was to create a [157:57] rigorous tool for measuring uh a whole [158:01] range of of of desires wishes values [158:05] that uh uh prior to that time had been [158:07] kind of overlooked they say in business [158:09] you know what gets measured gets [158:12] done we were basically telling [158:14] manufacturers if you're really going to [158:17] satisfy not just the basic needs but [158:20] individuated wants whims and desires of [158:24] of more highly uh developed human beings [158:28] you're going to have to segment you're [158:30] going to have to [158:31] individuate to do this SRI turned for [158:34] help to those who had begun The [158:36] Liberation of the self in particular one [158:39] of the leaders of the human potential [158:40] movement a psychologist called Abraham [158:43] maslo through observing the work work at [158:46] places like esselin maslo had invented a [158:48] new system of psychological [158:51] types he called it the hierarchy of [158:53] needs and it described the different [158:55] emotional stages that people went [158:57] through as they liberated their feelings [159:00] at the top was [159:02] self-actualization this was the point at [159:04] which individuals became completely [159:06] self-directed and free of [159:11] society the team at SRI thought that [159:14] maso's hierarchy might form the basis [159:17] for a new way to categorize [159:19] Society not by social class but by [159:22] different psychological Desir and [159:25] drives to test this they designed a huge [159:28] questionnaire with hundreds of questions [159:30] about how people saw themselves their [159:32] inner [159:33] values the questions were designed to [159:35] see whether people fitted into maso's [159:38] categories we were trying to find out [159:40] what people really felt like so we asked [159:42] these really penetrating questions and [159:46] we hired a a company that administers [159:48] surveys you know to do them they said [159:51] they've never seen anything like it [159:53] usually you have to send out a postcard [159:55] six weeks and then another postcard and [159:57] then you got to call the people up you [159:58] know to get the return rates up we had [160:01] an 86% return and they only sent out one [160:04] postcard people loved filling out this [160:07] questionnaire we got several [160:09] questionnaires back with a note attached [160:11] saying do you have any other [160:13] questionnaires I could fill out because [160:14] people we were asking people to think [160:17] about things that they had never thought [160:20] about before and they liked thinking [160:22] about them like what like what they felt [160:24] inside yeah like what they felt inside [160:26] what what motivated them what was their [160:28] life about what was important to them it [160:32] was sort of like wow the answers were [160:35] then analyzed by computer it revealed [160:38] that there were underlying patterns in [160:39] the way people felt about themselves [160:41] which fitted maso's categories and at [160:44] the top of the hierarchy were a large [160:46] and growing Group which cut across all [160:48] social classes the SRI team called them [160:51] the inner [160:52] directors these were people who felt [160:54] they were not defined by their place in [160:56] society but by the choices they made [161:00] themselves but what SRI discovered was [161:03] that these people could be defined by [161:05] the different patterns of behavior [161:07] through which they chose to express [161:09] themselves self-expression was not [161:12] infinite it fell into identifiable types [161:15] [Music] [161:17] the SRI team invented a new term for it [161:21] Lifestyles they had managed to [161:23] catagorize the new [161:24] individualism they called their system [161:27] values and Lifestyles vowels for [161:31] short at the Forefront of this change [161:33] are three new vs groups groups we call [161:36] Inner directed these are people for whom [161:38] personal satisfaction is more important [161:40] than status or money they tend to be [161:42] self-expressive complex and individual [161:45] [Music] [161:49] istic Rob is an IM IM IM are searching [161:54] for new values breaking away from [161:56] traditions and inventing their own [161:57] standards Rob even invented his own name [162:00] Rob knous jod is an [162:04] experiential this is a group seeking [162:06] inner growth through direct experience [162:08] experientials aren't in one place much [162:10] this is the try anything once crowd and [162:12] all that activity takes goods and [162:14] services their hobbies are Hands-On and [162:17] their possessions are simple but not [162:19] always simply [162:21] priced I'm a book seller I sell [162:25] books uh I'm a [162:28] businessman um it doesn't necessarily [162:31] believe mean that I believe in [162:33] capitalism it just happens to be what [162:35] I'm doing [162:36] now SRI created a simplified [162:39] questionnaire with just 30 key questions [162:42] anyone who answered them could be [162:43] immediately fitted into a TH or so of [162:46] these new [162:47] groups it allowed businesses to identify [162:49] which groups were buying their products [162:52] and from that how the goods could be [162:53] marketed so they became powerful emblems [162:56] of those groups inner values and [162:58] Lifestyles it was the beginning of [163:00] Lifestyle [163:01] marketing so it allowed people not just [163:04] to look at people as demographics group [163:07] of age and income and whatever but to [163:10] really understand the underlying [163:12] motivations I mean most of marketing was [163:14] looking at people's actions and trying [163:16] to figure out what to do but what we [163:19] were doing is we were trying to look [163:21] more into people's underlying values so [163:23] that we could predict what is their [163:25] lifestyle what kind of house do they [163:27] live in what kind of car do they drive [163:29] so the corporations were then able to [163:32] sell things to them by understanding [163:35] them by having labels by knowing what [163:37] these people look like where they live [163:38] what their lifestyles [163:40] are if a new product expressed a [163:43] particular group's values it would be [163:44] bought by them this is what made the [163:47] values and Lifestyle system so powerful [163:49] its ability to predict what new products [163:52] self-actualizers would [163:54] choose and this power was about to be [163:56] demonstrated dramatically vows would [163:58] show it could predict not just the [164:00] products they would buy but the [164:02] politicians they were going to choose to [164:04] elect ladies and gentlemen the next [164:07] president of the United States of [164:09] America Ronald [164:11] Reagan in 1980 Ronald Reagan ran for [164:14] president he and his advisers were [164:16] convinced they could win on a program of [164:18] a new individualism it would be an [164:20] attack on 50 years of government [164:22] interference in people's [164:24] [Music] [164:27] lives I wrote a speech about let the [164:30] people make the basic decisions get [164:32] judges out of the way get bureaucrats [164:34] out of the way get centralized [164:36] government out of the way I gave Reagan [164:38] a choice of several titles for the [164:40] speech and the one he picked was let the [164:43] people rule let the people regain gain [164:45] rule regain control over their own [164:47] destiny away from a remote Elite in [164:52] Washington I would like to think that [164:54] the kind of leadership that I would [164:56] exercise in Washington is not the kind [164:59] of leadership that I would pretend that [165:01] I can solve all the problems I've been [165:02] discussing here but the together you and [165:06] I can I would like to be take the lead [165:09] in taking government off the backs of [165:12] the American people and turning you [165:13] loose to do what I know [165:17] it was Radical moderate Republicans [165:19] thought it was suicide Jimmy Carter [165:22] called it ridiculous the Press was [165:24] extremely negative but the odd thing is [165:27] that it pulled very well in New [165:29] Hampshire which was the first primary [165:31] State the state that we had to win what [165:34] was odd was that there seemed to be a [165:35] strange Mosaic of support for Reagan's [165:38] policies the traditional posters could [165:40] see no coherent pattern across class age [165:43] or gender [165:46] but those who had designed the values [165:47] and Lifestyle System believed that they [165:49] knew why they were testing their system [165:52] in both America and Britain and they [165:55] were convinced that both Reagan's and [165:56] Mrs Thatcher's message about individual [165:58] Freedom would appeal to the group at the [166:01] top of their hierarchy the inner [166:03] directeds because it fitted with the way [166:05] they saw [166:07] themselves they were really concerned [166:10] about being individuals being [166:12] individualistic and so in the early [166:15] stages when we were looking at the [166:17] messages that both Thatcher and then [166:19] Reagan were were putting across we said [166:23] they are using words that will really [166:25] appeal to a lot of the younger people [166:27] and particularly to the people who are [166:30] moving towards self-actualization we [166:32] call them the inner directed people a [166:35] lot of our colleagues said you you [166:38] that's absolutely ridiculous because [166:40] inner directeds are very socially aware [166:42] very socially concerned um they'll never [166:46] vote conservative or they'll never vote [166:48] um for the [166:50] Republicans but we said if fer and [166:53] Reagan continue to appeal to them in [166:55] this way they really will and I Vision [166:59] leadership in taking government off your [167:02] backs and turning you loose to do what [167:04] you can do so well thank you very much [167:07] the idea that the new self-actualizing [167:09] individuals would choose a politician [167:11] from the right not the left seemed [167:14] extraordinary [167:15] but to test their prediction the values [167:17] and Lifestyles team did a survey of [167:19] voting intentions and they correlated it [167:22] with their new psychological [167:24] categories when we said in our surveys [167:27] who are you going to vote for sure [167:29] enough it was the in directives who said [167:32] that they would vote for Thatcher and [167:33] for Reagan and they made the difference [167:36] in those [167:37] elections because of their they're [167:39] voting for thatan Reagan and it really [167:41] surprised our colleagues even within my [167:43] own organization [167:45] it really showed the power of this [167:47] approach because it's very difficult to [167:49] identify in a directives on the [167:53] street these people who voted for thatch [167:56] and Reagan these inner directeds came [167:58] from any Walk of Life it's really hardly [168:01] correlated with social class at all I [168:04] mean if you just go along and look at [168:06] age sex social [168:07] class uh you would never pick them up [168:11] but if you if you really go along with a [168:13] questionnaire that gets at their values [168:14] you can identify them very easily and [168:18] that was new and that was completely new [168:21] yeah at the beginning of 1981 Ronald [168:24] Reagan was inaugurated as president but [168:27] he took charge of a country that was [168:29] facing economic [168:30] disaster the terrible inflation of the [168:33] 1970s had destroyed much of America's [168:35] traditional heavy Industries and [168:37] millions were [168:38] unemployed but true to his campaign [168:40] promises Reagan told the country he [168:43] would not step into help as as all [168:45] previous governments had since the war [168:48] these United States are confronted with [168:50] an economic Affliction of great [168:53] proportions we suffer from the longest [168:56] and one of the worst sustained [168:57] inflations in our National History idle [169:00] Industries have cast workers into [169:02] unemployment human misery and personal [169:05] indignity in this present [169:08] crisis government is not the solution to [169:11] our problem government is the problem [169:15] but America's alien economy was about to [169:18] be rescued not by government but by the [169:20] new groups that the market researchers [169:22] had identified the self-actualizing [169:25] individuals they were about to become [169:27] the motor for what would be called the [169:29] new [169:32] economy you can be what you want to be [169:35] so regarding V8 what do you really want [169:38] uh tasty product that's good for me what [169:41] do you want that for one technique is [169:43] that we ask people the same question [169:45] over and over and over again and we say [169:47] what do you want what do you really want [169:50] what do you want that for and they start [169:51] to talk about it and they kind of get [169:53] intimate with what's going on what we're [169:56] doing with that technique is unpeeling [169:58] the onion if you want to think of a [169:59] person kind of having layers and layers [170:01] and layers of protection and thoughts [170:03] and behaviors and belief we want to get [170:05] to that Center core in the wake of the [170:07] invention of values and Lifestyles a [170:10] vast industry of psychological market [170:12] research grew [170:13] up and the old technique of the focus [170:16] group invented by the Freudian [170:17] psychoanalysts in the 50s was used in a [170:20] new and Powerful [170:21] way the original aim of the focus group [170:24] had been to find ways to entice people [170:26] to buy a limited range of mass-produced [170:29] goods but now focus groups we used in a [170:32] different way to explore the inner [170:34] feelings of Lifestyle groups and out of [170:36] that invent whole new ranges of products [170:39] which would allow those groups to [170:40] express what they felt was their [170:43] individuality and the generation who had [170:46] once rebelled against the Conformity [170:48] imposed by consumerism now embraced it [170:51] because it helped them to be [170:53] themselves what capitalism managed to do [170:56] that was brilliant was to actually [170:58] create products that people like me [171:01] would be interested in that people like [171:03] Jerry Rubin would be interested in [171:06] capitalism developed a whole industry at [171:09] developing products that evoked a larger [171:12] sense of self that that um that seemed [171:16] to agree with us that the self was [171:18] infinite that you could be anything you [171:19] wanted to be that that took our [171:21] philosophy and agreed with it and then [171:24] created products that supposedly helped [171:27] you AIDS that helped you be this [171:30] Limitless self the product sells you a [171:34] way of life a way of being the product [171:36] sells you values you you dress this [171:40] way you live in a house like this you [171:43] you have furniture like like this you [171:45] use this [171:48] computer you have do you have the [171:50] regular jeam or oh Gloria Vander does a [171:52] lot in denim in silks and in Cotton you [171:56] eat in these restaurants their values [171:59] there hipness coolness this is not I [172:03] repeat not a marketing scheme so the [172:06] notion that you could buy an identity [172:09] replace the original movement notion [172:12] that you were perfectly free to create [172:13] an identity [172:15] and you were perfectly free to change [172:17] the world and make the world anything [172:18] you wanted it to be well what I wear is [172:22] um a [172:25] statement and this vast range of new [172:27] desires fitted perfectly with changes in [172:30] industrial [172:31] production computers now allowed [172:34] manufacturers to economically produce [172:36] short runs of consumer goods the old [172:39] restrictions of mass production [172:41] disappeared as did the worry that have [172:43] beveled Cor Corporate America ever since [172:45] mass production had been invented that [172:48] they would produce too many Goods with [172:51] the new self consumer desire seemed to [172:53] have no limit in the United States the [172:57] concern of companies was always that [173:00] Supply without strip demand that we were [173:04] we were producing too much and that [173:06] there was not a market for it you don't [173:09] hear that kind of talk anymore because [173:12] you've gone from a con ception of a a [173:15] market of limited needs and if you fill [173:18] them they're filled to a market of [173:21] unlimited everchanging needs dominated [173:25] by self-expressiveness [173:26] that products and services can satisfy [173:31] in an endless variety of ways and ways [173:33] that change all the [173:35] time and consequently economies have [173:39] unlimited [173:42] Horizons out of this explosion of design [173:44] came what seemed a NeverEnding consumer [173:46] boom that regenerated the American [173:50] economy the original idea had been that [173:53] the liberation of the self would create [173:55] new kinds of people free of social [173:59] constraint that radical change had [174:02] happened but while the new beings felt [174:04] liberated they had become increasingly [174:07] dependent for their identity on [174:10] business the corporations had realized [174:13] that it was in their interests to [174:15] encourage people to feel that they were [174:17] Unique Individuals and then offer them [174:19] ways to express that [174:21] individuality a world in which people [174:23] felt they were rebelling against [174:25] Conformity was not a threat to business [174:28] but its greatest [174:30] [Music] [174:35] opportunity it was in a sense the [174:37] Triumph of the self it was the Triumph [174:40] of a certain [174:41] self-indulgence a view that [174:44] everything in the world and all moral [174:48] judgment was appropriately viewed [174:50] through the lens of personal [174:53] satisfaction indeed the ultimate ending [174:57] point of that logic is that there is no [175:00] Society there is only a bunch of [175:02] individual people making individual [175:04] choices to promote their own individual [175:08] [Music] [175:13] well-being [175:15] next week's episode tells the story of [175:17] how politicians on the left in both [175:19] Britain and America turn to the [175:21] techniques developed by business in [175:23] order to regain [175:25] power but what they didn't realize is [175:28] that what had worked for business would [175:30] undermine the very basis of their [175:31] political [175:33] beliefs they would find themselves [175:35] trapped by the greedy desires of the new [175:38] [Music] [175:43] self [175:47] nothing is beyond you this is the story [175:51] of the rise of an idea that has come to [175:53] dominate our [175:54] society it is the belief that the [175:56] satisfaction of individual feelings and [175:58] desires is our highest priority today [176:02] we're going to tell you how to get [176:04] whatever you want I wanted to live a [176:07] different life that wasn't available to [176:08] me in the image I was born I am here [176:12] look at me notice me prev episodes have [176:15] shown how this rise of the South was [176:17] fostered and promoted by [176:19] business they had used the ideas of [176:21] Sigman Freud to develop techniques to [176:24] read the inner desires of individuals [176:27] and then fulfill them with [176:31] products this final episode is about how [176:34] that idea took over [176:36] politics it tells the story of how [176:38] politicians on the left in both America [176:41] and Britain turned to these techniques [176:44] to regain [176:45] power they believed that they were [176:47] creating a new and better form of [176:50] democracy one that truly responded to [176:52] the inner feelings of [176:55] individuals but what the politicians [176:57] didn't realize was that the aim of those [176:59] who had originally created these [177:01] techniques had not been to liberate the [177:03] people but to develop a new way of [177:06] controlling them in an age of mass [177:08] [Music] [177:13] democracy [177:21] the roots of the story lie way back in [177:23] the America of the 1920s with one [177:26] man he was called Edward bernes the [177:29] nephew of Sigman [177:30] Freud bernes had been one of the [177:32] inventors of the profession of public [177:35] relations and he was fascinated by his [177:37] uncle's theory that human behavior was [177:39] driven by unconscious sexual and [177:41] aggressive [177:43] drives [177:44] many of Bern's clients were large [177:46] American [177:47] corporations and he was the first person [177:49] to show them how they could sell many [177:51] more products if they linked them [177:53] through images and symbols to those [177:56] unconscious desires that Freud had [178:00] identified the strategy he offered them [178:03] was that people could now look at the [178:06] goods that were emerging within this [178:08] society and not merely view those goods [178:12] as things that they needed in order to [178:14] deal with some specific material want [178:17] but also as Goods which would stroke and [178:20] respond to deep emotional [178:23] yearnings you know how this bar of soap [178:27] or this bag of flour will make you a [178:30] happier more successful more sexually [178:32] appealing less fearful person somebody [178:35] to be admired rather than [178:37] reviled the powerful people in that [178:40] world are those people who are capable [178:42] of reading the public mind and giving [178:44] the public uh what it wants in those [178:48] terms and bernes was at the heart of it [178:50] bernes was the guy who was the foremost [178:53] articulator of the theories which were [178:56] driving this new [178:59] system by the 1980s Bern's ideas had [179:03] come of age a vast industry had grown up [179:06] in America devoted to reading the inner [179:08] desires of consumers at its heart was [179:11] the technique of the focus group [179:14] previous episodes have shown how the [179:16] focus group was invented by [179:17] psychoanalysts employed by us [179:20] corporations the aim was to allow [179:23] consumers to express their inner [179:24] feelings and needs just as patients did [179:27] in [179:28] psychoanalysis the information was then [179:30] used to promote and design new products [179:33] that would fulfill those [179:35] desires and Edward bernes who is now [179:38] nearly 100 years old was celebrated as [179:41] the founding father of this marketing [179:43] world [179:45] hi doctor good to see you come on up [179:48] over here there you [179:50] go doctor what uh tell me again what the [179:53] doctor is what are we dealing with [179:54] you're the father of public relations [179:56] we're dealing with really is the concept [179:59] that people will believe me more if you [180:03] call me doctor oh I [180:07] see [180:10] so it's a good idea and Bern is his idea [180:14] and techniques were also about to [180:15] conquer Britain in the [180:17] 1980s unlike America the ruling Elites [180:20] in Britain had always distrusted the [180:22] idea of pandering to the [180:25] masses it was epitomized by the [180:27] Patrician Elite who ran the [180:29] BBC even as late as the 60s popular [180:32] programmers were referred to as [180:34] groundbait their real job was to lure [180:37] the viewers into watching the more [180:38] serious programs the elite knew was good [180:41] for [180:42] them [180:44] and market research reflected this [180:47] attitude individuals were observed and [180:49] classified by market researchers [180:51] according to their social class from a [180:54] through C2 d and [180:57] [Music] [180:59] e imagine probably they might be C TOS [181:02] yes I think uh by these the way they're [181:04] carrying their luggage or no taxi and [181:08] all stuffed in in the bags like that I [181:10] think the lady possibly sets her own [181:12] hair which is always an indication the [181:15] children are nicely dressed yes they are [181:18] probably a skilled [181:20] worker some a skilled worker I think [181:24] certain an apprenticeship or G some [181:27] qualifying we agree then yes we we think [181:30] so yes when people were asked their [181:33] opinion about both products and politics [181:36] they were selected by social class and [181:38] asked only strictly factual questions [181:40] about what they thought leaving your own [181:42] party sympathies on one ins side who do [181:44] you think will win this world coming El [181:47] labor and tell me which you [181:52] prefer which party do you think you'll [181:54] be voting for this time this liberals [181:57] you'll be voting for the [182:01] Liberals and who do you think will be [182:03] second [182:04] conservative this one okay the idea that [182:08] one might ask people what they [182:10] themselves felt and desired and then [182:12] give it to them was SE is alien to the [182:14] ruling Elites which would challenge [182:16] their belief that they knew what was [182:18] best for the [182:19] public there's evidence in other [182:22] countries in the United States for [182:23] example where pollers have been used [182:26] before elections to interpret the mood [182:28] of the public and then you give people [182:30] more they want to have unless what they [182:32] ought to have but again this could be to [182:35] be more democratic I don't know it's [182:37] very dangerous ground I think though [182:39] when polls are used uh in that [182:42] way but then in the economic crisis of [182:44] the mid '70s British industry was forced [182:47] to begin to pay attention to the inner [182:49] feelings of [182:51] consumers as the recession deepened [182:53] consumer spending fell dramatically and [182:55] the advertisers insisted that the only [182:57] way for companies to survive was to make [182:59] their advertising more effective and to [183:02] do this they would have to delve into [183:04] people's underlying psychological [183:06] motives for [183:07] purchasing the advertising industry [183:10] started to bring in Americans to run [183:12] focus groups with British [183:17] Housewives everyone is a unique person [183:19] and even though you're a group of 10 [183:21] today we don't want a group opinion and [183:25] we want to know your ideas and your [183:27] thoughts no matter how crazy it might be [183:30] please let your imagination run wild [183:32] because that's how very crazy things [183:34] like instant coffee got born now can we [183:37] get somebody this lady to be a kitchen [183:39] sink and kitchen sink how do you feel [183:43] with with these things that are being [183:45] used to clean you up well I've got to [183:47] feel clean I've got to be kept clean so [183:51] I feel that I should hate it if I was [183:52] all greasy so I've got to be easy to [183:55] clean okay now the housewife this lady [183:59] what would you use to clean your kitchen [184:02] sink um a scaring [184:05] powder of course a cloth to apply the [184:08] things on and plenty of [184:11] water now how do you feel as you're [184:13] doing this chore um feel satisfied well [184:16] satisfied when I have done it yes I'm [184:18] doing my duty I feel it's a job well [184:21] done the consumers were encouraged to [184:23] play at being products from household [184:25] cleaners to car seat belts the aim was [184:29] not to talk rationally but to act out [184:31] and reveal their inner emotional [184:33] relationship to [184:36] products which [184:38] firmly and unmistakably [184:42] underlines [184:45] and then a politician emerged who also [184:47] believed that people should be allowed [184:49] to express themselves instead of being [184:51] controlled by the state the individual [184:53] should become the central focus of [184:55] society some socialists seem to believe [184:58] that people should be numbers in a state [185:02] computer we believe they should be [185:05] individuals we're all unequal no one [185:08] thank heavens is quite like anyone else [185:11] however much the Socialists May end [185:14] otherwise and we believe that everyone [185:16] has the right to be unequal but to us [185:20] every human being is equally [185:26] important a man's right to work as he [185:28] will to spend what he earns to own [185:32] property to have the state as servant [185:35] and not as Master they are the essence [185:38] of a free economy and on that freedom [185:41] all our other freedom [185:44] [Music] [185:45] depend Mrs Thatcher's Vision was of a [185:48] society in which the wants and desires [185:50] of millions of individuals would be [185:52] satisfied through the free market this [185:55] she believed would be the engine to [185:57] regenerate Britain and with her Ascent [185:59] of power the advertising and marketing [186:01] Industries flourished their task was to [186:04] find out what the British people really [186:06] wanted and then sell it to [186:08] them in this new climate the focus group [186:12] flourished and those who ran them [186:14] borrowed from the techniques of [186:15] psychotherapy to delve ever deeper into [186:18] people's feelings about [186:22] products we're trying to understand how [186:25] people feel about Brands how they relate [186:27] to brands that is to say what the brands [186:29] personality is as far as consumers are [186:31] concerned and there are a number of [186:33] techniques which are very very helpful [186:35] for uh getting to that uh to that [186:37] understanding the consumer has given [186:40] crayons to Doodle to express their [186:42] feelings to go into inside their own [186:43] head pull out their feelings and somehow [186:45] get them onto paper and these are [186:47] ordinary drinkers uh expressing their [186:49] feelings about drinking Guinness here [186:52] you see a rich very female aspect of [186:55] Guinness so if you were describing a [186:57] woman who somehow to you had that [187:01] character what sort of person is it [187:03] Paula Yates who used to lay in bed [187:06] surrounded with magazines and chocolates [187:09] like a 50 Starlet out of this research [187:12] the marketeers began to detect a new [187:15] individualism in particular among those [187:17] who had voted conservative for the first [187:19] time in [187:20] 1979 they no longer wanted to be seen as [187:23] part of social classes but to express [187:25] themselves and crucial to this were the [187:27] products they chose to [187:29] buy we identified that there was this [187:32] trend towards what might be called [187:34] individualism where people wanted to [187:37] still be part of a crow but to express [187:39] themselves as individuals within it to [187:41] have their own personalities to be I [187:44] suppose their own men I didn't want to [187:47] be the same as everybody else I wanted [187:50] it to be little bit different a little [187:53] bit individual it's quite individual [187:55] upstairs it's not remarkable but I think [187:57] it's quite individual it is expensive [187:59] it's Italian it's Italian it's expensive [188:01] and it's good quality we different yeah [188:04] we want to set our own standards so [188:06] nobody else has got what we've got we [188:08] just didn't want it be the same as [188:10] everybody else we just want to be [188:12] different business responded eagerly to [188:14] this new individualism but it soon [188:17] became one of the main forces driving [188:19] the growing consumer boom in [188:21] Britain using the data from the focus [188:23] groups the manufacturers created new [188:25] ranges of products that allowed people [188:28] to express their [188:29] [Music] [188:32] individuality business also [188:34] recategorized people they were no longer [188:37] divided by social class but by their [188:39] inner psychological [188:41] needs if the primary need is security [188:44] and belonging we call the groups [188:45] mainstreamers um if it's status and the [188:47] esteem of others then it's aspirers if [188:50] it's control it's succeeders and if it [188:52] self-esteem it's [188:54] reformers and this new marketing culture [188:56] began to take over the institutions [188:58] previously dominated by a patrici elite [189:01] in particular the world of Journalism [189:04] the assault was led by the profession of [189:06] public [189:08] relations in the past PR had been seen [189:10] as seedy and corrupt now it became a [189:13] glamorous business promoting products [189:16] and [189:16] [Music] [189:19] celebrities and one of the Rising Stars [189:21] was another member of the Freud family [189:23] Matthew Freud the son of the liberal MP [189:27] Clement what Freud and other PRS [189:30] realized was that they could use their [189:32] celebrities as levers to infiltrate [189:34] advertising into the editorial content [189:36] of [189:37] newspapers the newspapers were offered [189:39] exclusive interviews with celebrities [189:42] but only if they also agreed to mention [189:44] products made by Freud's corporate [189:46] clients in terms dictated by the [189:49] company what happened with Freud's was [189:52] that you effectively got some kind of [189:54] product placement or even product the [189:57] manufacturers of the product got some [189:59] degree of control over how their [190:02] products would appear in print so if for [190:05] example you did want to write about [190:06] Capri's passion for stuffed cross Pizza [190:09] you would sign a contract which [190:11] guaranteed that you would mention The [190:13] Firm Pizza Hut uh in at least twice in [190:16] certain positions in the introductory [190:18] paragraph of of of the article you would [190:20] agree to run the Pizza Hut logo at such [190:23] and such a size in such and such a place [190:25] and of course you would agree to run the [190:26] enclosed pictures of Capri eating her [190:29] stuffed cross Pizza there was no choice [190:31] about how you would run this article in [190:34] the Press you were effectively told how [190:36] to run the article in the Press by [190:38] freuds by [190:40] freuds it's a rise of the corporate [190:42] culture and the rise of of business to [190:45] traditional journalists this [190:46] infiltration of advertising into the [190:48] editorial Pages was a Corruption of [190:50] their [190:51] profession but to Mrs Thatcher's allies [190:54] like Rupert Murdoch who owned the sun [190:56] and the times it was part of a [190:58] democratic Revolution against an [191:00] arrogant Elite who had too long ignored [191:03] the feelings of the [191:04] masses they hate to see someone [191:06] communicating with the masses they feel [191:08] that newspapers the written word is not [191:09] for the masses that should be left to [191:12] television or perhaps to nobody I'm very [191:14] proud of the sun and the sun was not [191:16] represented tonight in your film you [191:17] just took page three which it w seem so [191:19] fascinated with I about page one page [191:21] two every other page of the paper it was [191:23] typical piece of slanting and elitism by [191:26] the BBC who after all in order to get [191:28] viewers for this program and put on a [191:30] very sexy episode of Star Trek just [191:32] which I was watching out in the room [191:34] there I don't think they put it on to [191:35] get us viewers I think we just luck they [191:37] try to carry viewers into these show [191:39] programs know how it's [191:41] done [191:43] by the late 80s Mrs Thatcher and her [191:45] allies in advertising and the media had [191:48] brought the desires of the individual to [191:50] the center of [191:53] society as last week's episode showed it [191:56] was the same transformation that [191:58] President Reagan had brought about in [192:00] America both politicians had encouraged [192:03] business to take over from government [192:05] the role of fulfilling the needs of the [192:08] people in the process consumers were [192:10] encouraged to see the satisfaction of [192:12] their their desires as the overriding [192:16] priority to that and Reagan this was a [192:19] new and better form of [192:21] [Applause] [192:24] democracy but to their opponents in the [192:26] parties of the left they had summoned up [192:29] the most selfish and greedy aspects of [192:31] human [192:33] nature Ronald rean and Margaret Sater [192:36] both embraced an economic philosophy it [192:39] says the unit of judgment was not only [192:40] the individual but it was the indiv [192:42] individual's personal satisfaction the [192:45] individual's own unique happiness and [192:51] well-being it was in a sense the Triumph [192:54] of regarding individuals as purely [192:57] emotional beings who have needs and [193:00] wants and desires that need to be [193:02] satisfied and can be satisfied [193:05] unconsciously it goes way back to the [193:09] early part of the 20th century to Freud [193:13] to Notions of the [193:15] unconscious um the assumptions that we [193:18] are uh in terms of our rational Minds [193:20] we're little corks bobbing around on [193:22] this great sea of hopes and fears and [193:25] and desires of which we are only dimly [193:28] aware and that the role of a [193:31] marketer the role of somebody selling [193:33] something including a politician is to [193:36] appeal to this Great Swamp of of Desire [193:40] of unconscious desire [193:43] [Music] [193:46] the left believed the opposite that the [193:49] way to create a better Society was not [193:51] to treat people as emotional isolated [193:54] individuals but to persuade them to [193:56] realize that they had common interests [193:58] with others to help them rise above [194:00] their individual feelings and [194:03] Fears let me assert my firm belief that [194:08] the only thing we have to fear is fear [194:12] here [194:13] itself nameless unreasoning unjustified [194:17] Terror which paralyzes needed efforts to [194:21] convert Retreat into [194:24] Advance this idea had flourished in [194:26] America in the depression of the [194:29] 1930s President Roosevelt faced with the [194:31] chaos caused by the Wall Street Crash [194:34] encouraged Americans to join together in [194:36] trades unions to set up consumer groups [194:39] and to pay for a welfare system for [194:41] those trapped in [194:43] poverty his aim was to create a [194:45] collective awareness which would become [194:47] a powerful weapon against the unfettered [194:50] power of capitalism which had caused the [194:53] crisis that idea had driven the [194:56] Democratic party for 50 years but now [194:59] Roosevelt's inheritors railed vainly [195:01] against the effects of the self-interest [195:03] encouraged by President [195:06] [Music] [195:07] Reagan there is despair Mr [195:10] President in the face that you don't see [195:14] maybe Mr President if you stopped in at [195:16] a shelter in [195:19] Chicago and spoke to the homeless [195:22] there maybe Mr President if you asked a [195:26] woman who had been denied the help she [195:28] needed to feed her children because you [195:31] said you needed the money for a tax [195:33] break for a millionaire or for a missile [195:36] we couldn't afford to [195:38] use the worst thing Ronald Reagan did [195:41] was to make the denial of compassion [195:43] respectable he said you've worked hard [195:45] you've made your money you shouldn't [195:48] have to feel guilty about refusing to [195:52] throw it away on people who choose to be [195:54] homeless and who choose not to work [195:57] that's what he said he said it with an [195:59] elegance and a kind of benign aspect [196:03] that disguised its [196:05] harshness you think we can do anything [196:07] about it well why not if we can work [196:10] together now to look after the lives of [196:12] the people people here I don't see why [196:13] we couldn't work together afterwards to [196:14] clear up the mess and help build a [196:16] better world in which these things can't [196:18] possibly happen the qualities we've [196:19] learned from comradeship and common [196:21] suffering are not going to be wasted [196:23] after this war it's out of experience [196:25] like ours that the new world will be [196:29] built that same idea of marshalling the [196:32] collective force of the masses to [196:34] challenge the entrenched power of wealth [196:36] and business but also led the labor [196:38] party to power in Britain after the [196:41] war but in the ' 880s labor like the [196:44] Democrats in America lost election after [196:47] election as Millions who had once voted [196:49] for them switch their allegiance to the [196:54] conservatives There It Is Going blue [196:56] just about everywhere sweeping the [196:58] country rural parts of Britain now gone [197:01] for they are the party of yesterday and [197:05] tomorrow is [197:06] ours in the face of this a growing [197:09] number within the labor party became [197:11] convinced that if were ever to regain [197:13] power labor would have to come to terms [197:15] with the new [197:17] individualism one of them was an [197:19] advertising executive called Philip G [197:22] who had been a lifelong labor [197:24] supporter G believed that Labor's [197:26] leadership had become corrupted by the [197:28] same Patrician arrogance that dominated [197:31] all Britain's [197:32] institutions they denigrated and [197:34] disapproved of the new aspirations of [197:36] workingclass Voters labor stopped [197:39] listening to these people and I remember [197:42] remember uh the best example of this was [197:44] after the election of 1983 which was the [197:47] election above all where the people's [197:50] voices just were not heard and I had [197:54] dinner with a [197:55] leading uh labor party figure who' been [197:57] involved in the defeat heavily devolved [198:00] in involved in the defeat and his wife [198:01] said God these workingclass people these [198:04] workingclass people they just you know [198:06] we give them education we give them [198:08] chances in life what do they do they [198:09] read the Sun and they just don't vote [198:10] for us and there was such a gap [198:13] between these people just trying to make [198:16] lies of themselves better lies of [198:18] themselves and the kind of theism of the [198:21] labor party that was just S A Chasm that [198:25] that that that had to be [198:26] filled G became part of a small group of [198:29] modernizers centered around Peter [198:32] mandelson their aim was to reconnect [198:34] labor with the Lost [198:37] voters to do this G turned to the [198:39] technique he knew well from his work in [198:41] advertising [198:43] the focus [198:44] group ghoul commission focus groups in [198:46] Suburban areas across the country with [198:49] small groups of Voters who had switched [198:51] to Mrs [198:52] Thatcher people were encouraged not to [198:55] talk rationally about policies but to [198:57] express their underlying [198:59] feelings and what G discovered was a [199:02] fundamental shift in people's [199:03] relationship to [199:05] politics they no longer saw themselves [199:08] as part of any group but as individuals [199:11] who could demand things from politicians [199:13] in return for paying [199:15] taxes just as business had taught them [199:17] to do as [199:21] consumers and I found that the people [199:24] have become consumers people now wanted [199:26] to have you know politics and life on [199:28] their own terms I mean not just in [199:30] politics but all aspects of life too [199:33] people see themselves as they are as [199:35] autonomous powerful individuals who are [199:38] entitled to be respected who are [199:41] entitled to have the best not just in um [199:44] you know going to Tesco or wherever but [199:47] the best in terms of health and in [199:49] education too all this was about getting [199:52] the labor party to understand the people [199:55] really really really had changed and the [199:58] labor party had not unless the labor [199:59] party change it would not win Philip G [200:02] Now set out to try and persuade the [200:04] labor party that they would have to make [200:06] concessions to what he called the new [200:08] aspirational classes but he was going to [200:11] face implacable [200:13] position in the runup to the 1992 [200:15] election G argued that the only way to [200:18] win was for Labour to promise not to put [200:20] up taxes but the shadow Chancellor John [200:23] Smith angrily refused label would stick [200:26] to its fundamental policies they would [200:28] fight the election with the promise of [200:30] tax increases to create a fairer [200:34] society and as the campaign began it [200:37] seemed as if Philip G was [200:39] wrong the traditional polls consistently [200:41] showed labor ahead despite the [200:43] conservative campaign message the labor [200:46] government would put up [200:48] [Music] [200:51] taxes even the conservatives oldest [200:53] allies in the Press became convinced [200:56] that by Haring on about tax the [200:58] conservatives were cutting their own [200:59] throats so the worry about the Tores [201:02] must be that they're not at the moment [201:03] conveying a sense of grip and being in [201:05] control and unless they can do better [201:09] than that I think they're going to lose [201:10] and is the other thing is they still say [201:12] that they are going to go on and on with [201:15] this one single message of tax and I [201:18] think I mean part of the difficulty this [201:19] morning was that you had a whole lot of [201:21] uh people who' been going to the same [201:24] press conference for S days had [201:26] virtually the same message thrust at [201:28] them and kind of getting bored and [201:30] restless and hitting back on it I think [201:32] the media sense a big story coming in [201:35] the Tor is being [201:37] defeated and the labor party too was [201:39] convinced it would win and finally [201:41] return to power it's now time to meet [201:44] the men and women who will form the next [201:50] government labor Chancellor of exer John [201:54] Smith and now it is time time for the [201:58] next prime minister Neil [202:02] kinck those running Labor's campaign [202:04] believed that by modern presentation [202:06] they would attract back the voters we [202:10] yet keep the old policies [202:13] but Philip good was convinced that [202:15] Labour were going to lose through his [202:17] focus groups he knew that the very [202:19] people who were telling the traditional [202:21] pollsters they would vote labor were in [202:23] reality preparing to vote conservative [202:26] out of [202:27] self-interest but they were too [202:28] embarrassed to admit it you he and John [202:33] Major also knew this because his focus [202:36] groups were telling him the same [202:38] [Music] [202:40] thing what you make of a pole which puts [202:43] labor five points [202:45] ahead daily feel out the streets that [202:47] matters you it's feeling good on the [202:49] streets is feeling good on the streets [202:51] yes has been feeling surprisingly good [202:53] on the streets for some time quite [202:55] surprisingly quite out of line with [202:58] opinion poles don't ask me to explain it [203:00] but it feels all right anyway come on no [203:05] Lads you must sit down we waiting to [203:07] go John Major's victory in 1992 was a [203:11] disaster for the labor [203:13] party a small group of reformers [203:15] centered around Peter mandon and Philip [203:17] G were convinced that the only way for [203:20] the party to survive was to change its [203:22] basic [203:23] policies but their ideas were rejected [203:25] by John Smith who had now become [203:28] leader Philip G left Britain to go to [203:31] work for the campaign to elect Bill [203:33] Clinton president in [203:35] America the 1992 election during it and [203:38] afterwards people felt under great [203:40] strain and really did feel [203:42] demoralized and dejected and then to go [203:44] from this to the Clinton campaign it was [203:46] an extraordinary experience because here [203:48] suddenly I found articulated many of the [203:52] ideas that I'd had but not fully myself [203:56] been able to encapsulate or to [203:57] articulate if you want a president who [204:00] will restore the middle class reclaim [204:03] the future for the middle class and [204:05] restore the American dream vote for Bill [204:07] Clinton in New Hampshire and send a [204:09] signal to the country that we are coming [204:12] together what G discovered was that like [204:14] the labor party the Democrats had also [204:16] been doing focus groups with swing [204:18] voters the difference was that Bill [204:21] Clinton had decided to tailor his [204:22] policies to fit with these voters [204:25] desires above all with their ferocious [204:28] belief that they should only pay tax for [204:30] things that benefited them not for the [204:33] welfare of [204:34] others I have no idea what percentage of [204:37] my tax dollars go to welfare but even if [204:40] it's a minuscule percentage you know [204:42] even if it's a quarter of a percent you [204:44] know it's still too much for the people [204:48] that are receiving these benefits that [204:50] that are basically non productive the [204:52] Clinton team decided that to win they [204:54] had to promise tax cuts for these [204:56] Suburban [204:57] voters and they also used the focus [205:00] groups throughout the campaign to check [205:02] every appearance speech and policy with [205:05] them for their [205:06] approval what Clinton called The [205:08] Forgotten middle class became Central [205:11] figures in a new type of reactive [205:15] politics candidates for the presidency [205:18] in the United States had been [205:19] prepackaged and designed for many many [205:22] years what was new was an attempt to use [205:27] very sophisticated or pseudo [205:30] sophisticated techniques to Plum the [205:32] public psychology to find out precisely [205:34] what the desires of the individuals were [205:37] and then to come up with a candidate and [205:40] a platform and images and words that [205:44] exactly responded to those deep desires [205:47] this was packaging at a new level this [205:50] was polling uh at an extreme I'm not [205:53] going to raise taxes on the middle class [205:56] and the middle class needs a break [205:57] government is in the way it's taking [206:01] more of your money and giving you less [206:03] in [206:04] return in the name of the hardworking [206:07] Americans who make up our forgotten [206:09] middle class I proudly accept your [206:12] nomination for president of the United [206:15] States stay focused talk about things [206:17] that are matter to people you know it's [206:20] the economy stupid okay but Clinton's [206:25] campaign team led by James Carville and [206:27] George Stephanopoulos did not believe [206:29] that they were capitulating to the [206:30] selfish desires of the middle classes [206:33] tax cuts were the price they had to pay [206:35] to regain power but once in power they [206:38] would still fulfill traditional [206:40] democratic policies and helped the poor [206:43] who had been neglected under Reagan [206:45] above all with the reform of [206:47] healthcare they would pay for the tax [206:50] cuts by cutting defense spending and [206:52] increasing taxes on the very rich in [206:55] this way they beli they were forging a [206:57] coalition of the new and the old voters [207:00] both of whom could be satisfied probably [207:03] for the first time in a generation [207:04] tomorrow we're going to win and that [207:07] means that more people are going to have [207:09] better jobs people are going to pay a [207:11] little less for healthare get better [207:13] care and um more kids are going to go to [207:15] better [207:16] schools um so [207:23] thanks but the democrat's optimism was [207:25] to be [207:27] shortlived in November 1992 Clinton was [207:30] triumphantly elected president but [207:33] within weeks his administration [207:35] discovered that the budget deficit was [207:37] far greater than they had [207:39] anticipated at a meeting in the White [207:41] House house in January 1993 the head of [207:44] the Federal Reserve told them that the [207:46] deficit was nearly $300 [207:48] billion there was no way they could [207:50] borrow any more without panicking the [207:52] markets and causing a [207:54] crisis the only way to pay for the [207:56] proposed tax cuts would be to cut [207:58] government spending not just on defense [208:01] but on [208:04] welfare Clinton was faced with a choice [208:07] between the old politics and the new and [208:10] he chose the old the tax cuts were [208:13] dropped and he tried to inspire the [208:15] country with the old democratic ideal of [208:18] government spending to help the poor and [208:21] disadvantaged tonight I want to talk [208:23] with you about what government can do [208:25] because I believe government must do [208:27] more to put people to work now to create [208:29] a half a million jobs jobs to rebuild [208:32] our highways and airports to renovate [208:34] housing to bring new life to rural [208:36] communities and spread hope and [208:38] opportunity among our nation's youth [208:41] care reform sounds like a great idea to [208:42] me well I know but some of these details [208:45] sure scare the heck out of me like what [208:47] well like for at the start of the [208:49] Clinton Administration many of us [208:51] including I believe President Clinton [208:54] himself reverted back to an older [208:56] tradition tried to lift the public to [209:00] talk about genuine ideals uh beyond the [209:03] individual and that reform agenda being [209:06] not only Universal Health Care and child [209:08] care and dealing with widening [209:10] inequalities in our society and [209:13] homelessness many things that [209:15] many citizens just particularly [209:18] middle-income citizens didn't want to [209:19] deal [209:20] with but the Suburban voters who had [209:23] been promised tax cuts were not inspired [209:25] by Bill Clinton's Vision they felt [209:28] betrayed and wanted [209:30] [Music] [209:32] Revenge their opportunity came in 1994 [209:36] with the Congressional elections the [209:38] Republicans led by new Gingrich promised [209:41] huge tax cuts and to dismantle the [209:43] welfare system the voters who had [209:46] defected to Clinton switch sides yet [209:48] again and the Republicans won both [209:50] houses of Congress in a [209:52] landslide well I think it's a tremendous [209:55] vote in favor of smaller government [209:56] lower taxes and in a sense a renewal of [209:59] the fer Reagan tradition and I think in [210:01] that sense it's pretty decisive it means [210:03] that the welfare state is going to be [210:05] less hospitable for people who are not [210:07] willing to take responsibility for their [210:09] own situation no question about it I [210:12] think this is today is the beginning of [210:14] the end of the Ware [210:15] state for Clinton it was a disaster [210:19] faced with a hostile Congress there was [210:21] no way for him to get his reforms [210:23] through his personal popularity [210:25] plummeted and it seemed certain he would [210:27] not be reelected in 2 years [210:30] time in desperation and without telling [210:33] his cabinet Clinton turned for help to [210:35] one of America's most ruthless political [210:37] strategists Dick [210:39] Morris what he wants you to do save his [210:43] butt Clinton was in serious trouble uh [210:46] he had lost the 94 election he had lost [210:50] control of Congress and he hired me to [210:52] come back and help save him uh so he was [210:54] basically asking me to perform roughly [210:56] the same role as a life preserver what [210:59] if you're [211:00] drowning what Morris told Clinton was [211:02] that to win re-election he would have to [211:05] transform the very nature of [211:07] politics The crucial swing voters in the [211:10] suburbs now thought and behaved like [211:12] consumers the only way to win them back [211:15] was to forget all ideology and instead [211:17] turn politics into a form of consumer [211:21] business Clinton must try to identify [211:24] their personal desires and whims and [211:26] then promise to fulfill them if he [211:29] followed those consumer rules they would [211:31] follow [211:33] him I said that I felt the most [211:35] important thing for him to do was to [211:37] bring to the political system the same [211:40] consumer rule rules philosophy that we [211:43] that the business Community has because [211:45] I think politics needs to be as [211:47] responsive to the whims and the desires [211:50] of the marketplace as businesses uh and [211:53] it should needs to be as sensitive to [211:55] the bottom line profits or votes as a [211:58] business is I think that all of this [212:01] involves really a changed view of the [212:04] voters so that instead of treating them [212:06] as targets you treat them as owners [212:09] instead of treating them as someone [212:11] something that you can manipulate you [212:12] treat them as something you need to [212:14] learn from and instead of feeling that [212:16] you can stay in one place and you can [212:19] manipulate the voters you need to learn [212:21] what they want and move yourself to [212:24] accommodate it to get inside the minds [212:27] of the Swing voters Morris brought [212:29] lifestyle marketing into politics for [212:31] the first [212:32] time he went to one of America's most [212:35] prominent market research firms called [212:36] pen and shern and commissioned what they [212:39] called a neuro personality [212:43] poll it was a massive survey of hundreds [212:45] of thousands of Voters but the only [212:48] political questions it asked were to [212:50] find out whether someone was a swing [212:51] voter or [212:53] not all the other questions were [212:56] intimate psychological ones designed to [212:58] see whether swing voters fell into [213:00] identifiable psychological [213:03] types well we were asking people like um [213:06] you know do you think you're the life of [213:07] the [213:07] party uh do you think uh when you you [213:11] see things that uh you like to have a [213:13] list and organize them uh do you uh do [213:16] you typically uh you know try to plan [213:19] things ahead or do you like to be more [213:22] spontaneous uh where do you like to go [213:24] what sports do you like to play what [213:26] would you do with your spouse in a [213:28] romantic uh weekend so we were asking [213:31] people some very personal questions [213:32] about their own lives to try to see were [213:35] the kinds of people that were likely to [213:36] change their vote also possessing a [213:40] certain certain kinds of personality [213:43] traits and in fact they [213:46] were the neuro personality poll allowed [213:49] the Clinton team to segment swing voters [213:52] into different lifestyle types they were [213:54] given names like pools and patios or [213:57] caps and gowns who were Urban [213:59] intellectuals living in University [214:02] towns from this the team could identify [214:05] ways in which they could make [214:06] individuals feel more secure in their [214:08] chosen lifestyles just as business had [214:11] learned to do with [214:13] products Dick Morris called it small B [214:16] politics tiny details of people's lives [214:19] and personal anxieties which politics [214:21] had never even thought about or noticed [214:23] before but which now have become the key [214:26] to winning [214:27] [Music] [214:29] power it was an America that focused on [214:33] day-to-day practical concerns should I [214:35] wear seat belts should I stop smoking uh [214:39] should I wear school uniform uh is my [214:43] neighborhood being protected it was a [214:47] not so much a new individualism as the [214:49] social order as we had known it had [214:51] broken down so we got into people's [214:54] heads understood their psychology about [214:56] lifestyle about values what they thought [214:59] was important what issues they wanted [215:01] politicians and particularly the [215:03] president to address and these issues [215:05] proved to be very very different from [215:06] what the conventional wisdom had [215:08] suggested as the election campaign began [215:11] Clinton revealed Morris's new approach [215:13] to a shocked White [215:15] House all traditional policies were to [215:17] be dropped instead he would concentrate [215:20] exclusively on policies that targeted [215:22] the worries of the Swing voters V chips [215:25] would be fitted into televisions to [215:27] prevent children from watching [215:28] pornography and mobile phones would be [215:31] fitted into school buses to make parents [215:33] feel more [215:35] secure Dick Morris also persuaded the [215:37] president to spend his leisure time in [215:39] the same way as particular groups of [215:41] Swing [215:42] voters he sent Clinton on a hunting [215:44] holiday dressed in exactly the gortex [215:47] outfits a group called Big Sky families [215:49] liked the aim was to reflect swing [215:52] voters Lifestyles back to them the [215:55] Liberals in Clinton's cabinet hated this [215:57] approach and I would say well dick why [215:59] have a campaign this was the 1996 [216:02] campaign if all the president is going [216:04] to do is offer up these little bite-size [216:07] miniature initiatives that appeal to [216:09] people's uh desire [216:11] uh like consumers buying soap uh a v [216:14] chips that you could put in your tele [216:16] televisions so you can make sure that [216:18] your children did not have pornography [216:20] and and school uniforms why talk about [216:23] them they're they're they're so mundane [216:25] and they're so tiny and he would say [216:27] back if we don't do this we may not get [216:30] reelected uh and I would say what's the [216:32] point of getting getting reelected if [216:33] you have no mandate to do anything when [216:35] you're reelected and he'd say what's the [216:37] point of having a mandate if you can't [216:38] get reelected [216:41] isn't the ultimate goal getting [216:44] reelected but Morris's New Politics were [216:47] an extraordinary success Clinton's [216:49] ratings among the swing voters began to [216:52] soore and Dick Morris along with the [216:54] marketeer mark Penn took aective charge [216:57] of making White House [216:59] policy Mark Penn set up a huge call [217:01] center in an office Block in Denver and [217:05] every night hundreds of telephone [217:06] operators called swing voters in suburbs [217:09] across the country to check with them [217:12] every detail of policies that Clinton [217:14] was [217:15] proposing the policy was made by a group [217:19] of people manning telephones in Denver [217:21] Colorado placing calls to voters in [217:23] places like Westchester and uh Pasadena [217:27] and asking them what they wanted from [217:29] their government um and asking them very [217:32] specifically about specific policies [217:34] that Bill Clinton was considering would [217:36] you be more likely to support him if he [217:38] offered this particular government [217:40] service or if he offered that one those [217:42] people told them what they thought Mark [217:44] Penn transmitted that to Bill Clinton [217:46] and it came out of his mouth so [217:48] essentially it was suburbanite voters [217:50] Suburban voters in the 9s were creating [217:54] American domestic policy and some of its [217:57] foreign policy as [218:00] well yeah Mark Penn was polling on [218:02] questions like whether we should bomb [218:04] and Bosnia things like that Morris also [218:07] insisted that Clinton make a symbolic [218:09] sacrifice of the old politics to [218:11] convince the swing voters to trust him [218:14] in August 1996 Clinton signed a bill [218:17] which ended the system of guaranteed [218:19] heal for the poor and [218:21] unemployed welfare would be cut back [218:23] after 2 years in order to force people [218:25] into work the new system was called [218:28] welfare to work and would he said be a [218:31] hand up not a hand [218:35] out it was the effective end of the [218:37] guaranteed welfare system created by [218:39] president Roosevelt 60 years [218:43] before for many in Clinton's cabinet it [218:45] was also the end of the progressive [218:47] political ideal that Roosevelt had [218:50] represented the belief that one used a [218:53] position of leadership to persuade the [218:55] voters to think and behave as social [218:57] beings not as self-interested [219:01] individuals Dick Morris and the [219:03] pollsters had won and by that I mean [219:07] that the people who ultimately got to [219:10] the president shaped the president's [219:12] mind were those who viewed the voters as [219:17] just a collection of individual desires [219:19] that had to be catered to and pandered [219:21] to it suggests that democracy is nothing [219:25] more and should be nothing more than [219:28] pandering to these unthought about very [219:33] primitive desires primitive in the sense [219:35] that they are not even necessarily [219:37] conscious just what people want in in [219:40] terms of satisfying [219:43] [Music] [219:45] themselves and the same Triumph of the [219:47] politics of the S was about to happen in [219:49] Britain [219:52] too in 1994 Tony Blair had become the [219:55] leader of the labor party and the [219:57] reforming group centered around Peter [219:59] mandon became all [220:03] powerful almost every night Philip G ran [220:05] focus groups with swing voters in the [220:08] suburbs but this time he was listen to [220:11] and the desires and the fears of the new [220:13] aspirational classes became the central [220:15] Force shaping labor party [220:17] policies in that period I was talking to [220:21] people who used to vote conservative and [220:23] were considering voting labor and the [220:25] want who understood that they are [220:27] financially pressed and that there are [220:28] limits to uh the extent to which [220:31] taxation can be improved they they think [220:32] that crime is an issue that matters to [220:34] them and should be uh respected they you [220:38] know they want welfare to go to people [220:39] who deserve welfare not to people um who [220:42] do not this was seen of by many in the [220:45] labor party as selfish I never saw that [220:47] it was selfish I believe that you know a [220:50] dad or a mom doing the best of their [220:52] family isn't selfish that doing the best [220:54] of their family and that's what people [220:55] do a Crackdown on those who make life [220:58] hell in their local neighborhoods [220:59] through noise or disturbance Law and [221:01] Order is a labor issue [221:03] [Applause] [221:05] today philosophy of campaigning is let's [221:09] concentrate on swing voters let's focus [221:12] group them to find out what they want [221:14] and what will appeal to them and let's [221:15] just relentlessly push those themes in [221:17] the [221:19] election something is happening to [221:23] you after promising to put money in your [221:27] pocket the conservatives are quietly [221:31] taking it away Philip G was was crucial [221:35] because he gave the raw material if you [221:38] like for these politicians to do uh this [221:43] kind of politics in that when he came up [221:45] with stuff they'd follow it you know [221:48] pretty much without exception Blair [221:50] himself would pour over these sort of [221:53] 12-page memos and say well this is what [221:55] we must do we want people to earn more [221:59] to consume the good things of life we [222:02] want people to pay lower [222:03] taxes Jordon brownan says a labor [222:06] government would hold the main tax rates [222:08] unchanged a labor government will not [222:10] increase the basic rate of [222:12] tax I want to make it clear that I will [222:15] not increase tax in fact the labor party [222:18] does stand for Middle England those that [222:21] aspire to do better to get on in life [222:23] and be ambitious for themselves and [222:24] their families will do better with labor [222:26] groups of eight people drinking wine and [222:28] nibbling you know Cheerios um what they [222:33] thought determined effectively [222:35] everything that the labor party [222:37] did and although those running the [222:40] campaign like to portray the new [222:41] approach as their invention it was in [222:44] fact copied from the Americans even down [222:47] to the phrases that the American [222:48] marketeers had tested on their swing [222:50] voters Peter mandelson and his team were [222:53] in the United States watching what we [222:55] did and copied almost verbatim our [222:58] approach in their 1997 campaign the [223:01] benefit system should be about giving [223:04] people a hand up not just a hand out [223:09] mandon is not fool if he's anything he [223:11] saw something at work so why not do [223:13] it and I can remember reading their [223:16] Manifesto and saying to myself they just [223:19] took it Lock Stock and [223:20] Barrel you know on one hand you're proud [223:23] and on another hand you're [ __ ] and as [223:26] in America labor was forced to drop [223:29] policies that would not directly benefit [223:31] the swing voters even if it meant [223:33] sacrificing its fundamental principles [223:36] the commitment to public control of [223:37] Industry which was enshrined as Clause 4 [223:40] of the party Constitution was [223:43] dropped the aim of clause 4 had been to [223:46] use the collective power of the people [223:48] to challenge the unfettered greed of [223:50] business but now Tony Blair was faced [223:53] with crucial voters who no longer saw [223:55] themselves as exploited by the free [223:57] market they saw themselves as individual [224:00] consumers who were fulfilled and given [224:03] identity by what business delivered them [224:06] the new clause for promised not to [224:08] control the free market but to let it [224:10] flourish business is more powerful than [224:13] government it is quicker it is more [224:15] creative business is the lifeblood of [224:19] the country from this come all the [224:21] benefits that Society needs employment [224:25] investment I think frankly there is only [224:27] one party getting business right and [224:29] that's new [224:30] labor what new labor did suits people [224:33] who exert power in [224:36] society not through the political system [224:40] or or not through the Democratic [224:42] political system so it suits big [224:43] business and it suits entrenched [224:45] interests and it suits the status qu um [224:48] you know those three things of course [224:50] just off the top of my head being the [224:52] things that the labor party is supposed [224:53] to be you know a counterforce too what [224:56] that means is Big Business get to carry [224:59] on exerting their power behind the [225:02] scenes getting their way because there's [225:04] no counterveiling pressure counter [225:06] veting pressure isn't going to come from [225:07] you know eight people sipping whing [225:10] ketering here he goes turning an awful [225:12] lot of other blue seats red as [225:19] well very happy very rened very [225:22] exhilerated but those who masterminded [225:24] Labor's victory in 1997 saw it as a [225:27] triumphant Vindication of a new form of [225:30] democracy by understanding and [225:32] fulfilling people's inner desires [225:34] through the focus group they were giving [225:36] power to individuals not treating them [225:39] as faceless groups who were told by [225:41] politicians what was good for [225:43] [Music] [225:45] them I don't believe I don't see the [225:48] focus group as some marketing tool I see [225:51] the focus group as a way of hearing what [225:54] the people have to say and I see the [225:56] focus group as a way to a new form of [226:01] politics what the people give the people [226:05] can take away we are the servants they [226:08] are the Masters [226:10] now 1997 was I think fundamentally [226:14] important in that I think it is the end [226:17] the end of the uh elitist politics [226:21] that's dominated Britain for so much of [226:23] the last uh 100 [226:26] [Music] [226:32] years in 1939 Edward bernes Sigman [226:35] Freud's nephew created a vision of a [226:38] future world in which the the consumer [226:40] was [226:43] King it was at the World's Fair in New [226:45] York and bernes called it [226:48] democracy it was one of the earliest and [226:51] most dramatic portrayals of a [226:52] consumerist democracy a society in which [226:56] the needs and desires of individuals [226:58] were read and fulfilled by business and [227:00] the free [227:02] market the World's Fair created a [227:05] spectacle in which all of these concerns [227:08] were met and there were were met by [227:10] Westinghouse and General Motors and the [227:12] American cash register company and [227:15] Company after company presented itself [227:18] as this sort of centerpiece of a society [227:20] in which human desire and human want and [227:23] human anxiety would all be responded to [227:25] and would be all be met purely through [227:28] the free enterprise system there was [227:31] this sort of notion that the free market [227:33] was something that was not Guided by [227:36] ideologies or by political power it was [227:38] something that simply L was Guided by [227:40] The People's [227:42] will this was the model of democracy [227:45] that both new labor and the American [227:47] Democrats had bought into in order to [227:49] regain [227:51] power they had used techniques developed [227:53] by business to read the desires of [227:55] consumers and they had accepted Bern's [227:58] claim that this was a better form of [228:03] democracy but in reality the World's [228:06] Fair have been an elaborate piece of [228:08] propaganda designed by bernes for his [228:11] clients the giant American [228:15] corporations privately bernes did not [228:17] believe that true democracy could ever [228:20] work he had been profoundly influenced [228:22] in this by his uncle's theories of human [228:26] nature Freud believed that individuals [228:28] were not driven by rational thought but [228:30] by primitive unconscious desires and [228:33] feelings and bernes believed that this [228:36] meant it was too dangerous to let the [228:38] masses ever have control over their own [228:41] lives and consumerism was a way of [228:44] giving people the illusion of control [228:46] while allowing a responsible Elite to [228:49] continue managing [228:52] [Music] [228:54] Society it's not that the people are in [228:57] charge but that the people's desires are [228:59] in [229:00] charge the people are not in charge the [229:03] people exercise no decision-making power [229:06] within this environment so democracy [229:10] is reduced from something which assumes [229:12] an active [229:14] citizenry to something which now [229:16] increasingly is predicated on the idea [229:19] of the public as passive [229:21] consumers the public as people who [229:23] essentially what you're delivering them [229:25] are doggy [229:27] treats the problem for new labor was [229:30] that it believed the [229:32] propaganda they took at face value the [229:35] idea promoted by business that the [229:37] systems invented to read the consumers [229:39] mind could form the basis for a new type [229:41] of [229:43] democracy once in power new labor tried [229:46] to govern through a system that Philip G [229:48] called continuous [229:50] democracy but what worked for business [229:52] in designing products led the labor [229:55] government into a bewildering Maze of [229:57] contradictory whims and [230:00] desires for much of Labor's first term [230:03] the focus groups said that the railways [230:04] were not a high priority and Labor's [230:07] policies Faithfully reflected this [230:09] but now those same groups are blaming [230:12] the government for not having invested [230:14] more money sooner in the [230:17] railways the point about focus group [230:19] politics is that there isn't one because [230:21] people are contradictory and irrational [230:23] and so you have a problem in terms of [230:27] deciding what you're going to do if all [230:29] you do is actually listen to a mass of [230:31] individual opinions that have forever [230:32] fluctuating and don't really have any [230:34] coherence and crucially are not set in [230:36] context so that's why people can say you [230:38] know um I want lower taxes and better [230:41] Public Services of course they do you [230:44] know you say um do you want to pay more [230:47] taxes to get better Public Services [230:49] people are less sure they then don't [230:51] believe that if they do pay more taxes [230:53] they will be spent on better public [230:55] services so you end up in this Quagmire [230:57] where you the truth is a politician has [230:59] to say look this is what I believe I [231:00] believe that you should pay slightly [231:02] more taxes to to make better public [231:04] services and I pledge that I'm competent [231:06] enough to actually use that money wisely [231:08] do you want that vote for me yes or no [231:11] and that's what blur has failed to do [231:13] Tony blur turns around and sort of tries [231:14] to feed back to them what they already [231:16] believe and given what what they believe [231:18] is sort of a load of individual um in [231:21] incoherent contradictory nonsense that's [231:23] all he has to offer and then he wonders [231:26] why people don't get him you know the [231:27] answer they don't get him is because [231:28] they're looking for someone to do [231:30] something that they can't do themselves [231:31] which has actually come up with a cerent [231:33] political opinion that they might have [231:34] faith in new labor are faced with a [231:38] dilemma the system of consumer democracy [231:40] that they have embraced has trapped them [231:43] into a series of short-term and often [231:44] contradictory [231:46] policies there are now growing demands [231:49] that they fulfill a grand division that [231:51] they use the power of government to deal [231:53] with the problems of growing inequality [231:55] and the decaying social fabric of the [231:58] country but to do this they will have to [232:01] appeal to the electorate to think [232:03] outside their own [232:04] self-interest and this would mean [232:06] challenging the now dominant Freudian [232:08] view of human beings beings as selfish [232:10] Instinct driven individuals which is a [232:13] concept of human beings that has been [232:15] fostered and encouraged by business [232:18] because it produces ideal [232:22] consumers although we feel we are free [232:25] in reality we like the politicians have [232:28] become the slaves of our own [232:32] desires we have forgotten that we can be [232:34] more than that that there are other [232:37] sides to Human Nature [232:40] fundamentally here we have two different [232:43] views of human nature and of democracy [232:46] you have the view that people [232:49] are irrational that they are bundles of [232:53] unconscious emotion uh that comes [232:56] directly out of flud and businesses are [232:59] very able to respond to that that's what [233:01] they have honed their skills doing [233:03] that's what marketing is really all [233:05] about what are the symbols the music the [233:07] images the words that will appeal to [233:10] these unconscious [233:13] feelings politics must be more than that [233:17] politics and [233:19] leadership are about engaging the public [233:22] in a rational discussion and [233:25] deliberation about what is [233:28] best and treating people with [233:30] respect in terms of their rational [233:33] abilities to debate what is best if it's [233:37] not that if it is Freudian if it is [233:40] basically a matter of appealing to the [233:42] same basic unconscious feelings that [233:45] business appeals to then why not let [233:47] business do it business can do it better [233:49] business knows how to do it business [233:51] after all is in the business of [233:53] responding to those [233:55] [Music] [234:00] feelings I see trees of [234:04] green red roses [234:07] to I see them [234:11] blue for me and you and I think to [234:16] [Music] [234:18] myself what a wonderful [234:24] way I think to [234:29] myself what a [234:32] [Music] [234:36] wonderful oh yeah [234:42] oh