A documentary about the rise of psychoanalysis as a powerful means of persuasion for both governments and corporations.
The legacy of famed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud informs the lives of people throughout the world even to this day, though it’s a phenomenon of which most are unaware. The Century of the Self, written and produced by Adam Curtis, is an exhaustive examination of his theories on human desire, and how they’re applied to platforms such as advertising, consumerism, and politics. This four-hour odyssey is divided into four distinct segments.
Part 4: Eight People Sipping Wine In Kettering:
This episode explains how politicians on the left, in both Britain and America, turned to the techniques developed by businesses to read and fulfil the inner desires of the self. Both New Labour, under Tony Blair, and the Democrats, led by Bill Clinton, used the focus group, which had been invented by psychoanalysts, to regain power. They set out to mould their policies to people’s inner desires and feelings, just as capitalism had learnt to do with products. Out of this grew a new culture of public relations and marketing in politics, business and journalism. One of its stars in Britain was Matthew Freud who followed in the footsteps of his relation, Edward Bernays, the inventor of public relations in the 1920s. The politicians believed they were creating a new and better form of democracy, one that truly responded to the inner feelings of the individual. But what they didn’t realize was that the aim of those who had created these techniques had not been to liberate the people but to develop a new way of controlling them.
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