The Century of the Self

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The Century of the Self
The Century of Self Titles.jpg
Title screen
Written by Adam Curtis
Directed byAdam Curtis
Country of originUnited Kingdom
Original languageEnglish
No. of episodes4
Production
Executive producer Stephen Lambert
Producers
  • Adam Curtis
  • Lucy Kelsall
Cinematography
  • David Barker
  • William Sowerby
Running time240 mins (in four parts)
Production companies
Original release
Network BBC Two
Release2002 (2002)

The Century of the Self is a 2002 British television documentary series by filmmaker Adam Curtis. It focuses on the work of psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Anna Freud, and PR consultant Edward Bernays. [1] In episode one, Curtis says, "This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy."

Contents

Episodes

NoTitleBroadcast DateNotes
1"Happiness Machines"17 March 2002 [2]
2"The Engineering of Consent"24 March 2002 [3]
3"There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads; He Must Be Destroyed"31 March 2002 [4]
4"Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering"7 April 2002 [5]

Overview

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, changed our perception of the mind and its workings. The documentary explores the various ways that governments, global organizations and corporations have used Freud's theories. Freud and his nephew Edward Bernays, who was the first to use psychological techniques in public relations, are discussed in part one. His daughter Anna Freud, a pioneer of child psychoanalysis, is mentioned in part two. Wilhelm Reich, an opponent of Freud's theories, is discussed in part three.

To many in politics and business, the triumph of the self is the ultimate expression of democracy, where power has finally moved to the people. Certainly, the people may feel they are in charge, but are they really? The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests?

BBC publicity. [6]

Along these lines, The Century of the Self asks deeper questions about the roots and methods of consumerism and commodification and their implications. It also questions the modern way people see themselves, the attitudes to fashion, and superficiality.

The business and political worlds use psychological techniques to read, create and fulfill the desires of the public, and to make their products and speeches as pleasing as possible to consumers and voters. Curtis questions the intentions and origins of this relatively new approach to engaging the public.

Where once the political process was about engaging people's rational, conscious minds, as well as facilitating their needs as a group, Stuart Ewen, a historian of public relations, argues that politicians now appeal to primitive impulses that have little bearing on issues outside the narrow self-interests of a consumer society.

The words of Paul Mazur, a leading Wall Street banker working for Lehman Brothers in 1927, are cited: "We must shift America from a needs- to a desires-culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. [...] Man's desires must overshadow his needs." [7]

In part four the main subjects are Philip Gould, a political strategist, and Matthew Freud, a PR consultant and the great-grandson of Sigmund Freud. In the 1990s, they were instrumental to bringing the Democratic Party in the US and New Labour in the United Kingdom back into power through use of the focus group, originally invented by psychoanalysts employed by US corporations to allow consumers to express their feelings and needs, just as patients do in psychotherapy.

Curtis ends by saying that, "Although we feel we are free, in reality, we—like the politicians—have become the slaves of our own desires," and compares Britain and America to 'Democracity', an exhibit at the 1939 New York World's Fair created by Edward Bernays.

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Related Research Articles

Psychoanalysis is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques that deal in part with the unconscious mind, and which together form a method of treatment for mental disorders. The discipline was established in the early 1890s by Sigmund Freud, whose work stemmed partly from the clinical work of Josef Breuer and others. Freud developed and refined the theory and practice of psychoanalysis until his death in 1939. In an encyclopedic article, he identified the cornerstones of psychoanalysis as "the assumption that there are unconscious mental processes, the recognition of the theory of repression and resistance, the appreciation of the importance of sexuality and of the Oedipus complex." Freud's colleagues Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung developed offshoots of psychoanalysis which they called individual psychology (Adler) and analytical psychology (Jung), although Freud himself wrote a number of criticisms of them and emphatically denied that they were forms of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis was later developed in different directions by neo-Freudian thinkers, such as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack Sullivan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sigmund Freud</span> Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis (1856–1939)

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies seen as originating from conflicts in the psyche, through dialogue between patient and psychoanalyst, and the distinctive theory of mind and human agency derived from it.

Psychoanalytic theory is the theory of personality organization and the dynamics of personality development relating to the practice of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology. First laid out by Sigmund Freud in the late 19th century, psychoanalytic theory has undergone many refinements since his work. The psychoanalytic theory came to full prominence in the last third of the twentieth century as part of the flow of critical discourse regarding psychological treatments after the 1960s, long after Freud's death in 1939. Freud had ceased his analysis of the brain and his physiological studies and shifted his focus to the study of the psyche, and on treatment using free association and the phenomena of transference. His study emphasized the recognition of childhood events that could influence the mental functioning of adults. His examination of the genetic and then the developmental aspects gave the psychoanalytic theory its characteristics. Starting with his publication of The Interpretation of Dreams in 1899, his theories began to gain prominence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fritz Perls</span> German-born psychiatrist (1893–1970)

Friedrich Salomon Perls, better known as Fritz Perls, was a German-born psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and psychotherapist. Perls coined the term "Gestalt therapy" to identify the form of psychotherapy that he developed with his wife, Laura Perls, in the 1940s and 1950s. Perls became associated with the Esalen Institute in 1964 and lived there until 1969.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward Bernays</span> American public relations pioneer (1891–1995)

Edward Louis Bernays was an American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, and referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations". His best-known campaigns include a 1929 effort to promote female smoking by branding cigarettes as feminist "Torches of Freedom", and his work for the United Fruit Company in the 1950s, connected with the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the democratically elected Guatemalan government in 1954. He worked for dozens of major American corporations, including Procter & Gamble and General Electric, and for government agencies, politicians, and nonprofit organizations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anna Freud</span> Austrian–British psychoanalyst (1895–1982)

Anna Freud CBE was a British psychoanalyst of Austrian–Jewish descent. She was born in Vienna, the sixth and youngest child of Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays. She followed the path of her father and contributed to the field of psychoanalysis. Alongside Hermine Hug-Hellmuth and Melanie Klein, she may be considered the founder of psychoanalytic child psychology.

In psychology and psychiatry, scopophilia or scoptophilia is an aesthetic pleasure drawn from looking at an object or a person. In human sexuality, the term scoptophilia describes the sexual pleasure that a person derives from looking at prurient objects of eroticism, such as pornography, the nude body, and fetishes, as a substitute for actual participation in a sexual relationship.

Repression is a key concept of psychoanalysis, where it is understood as a defense mechanism that "ensures that what is unacceptable to the conscious mind, and would if recalled arouse anxiety, is prevented from entering into it." According to psychoanalytic theory, repression plays a major role in many mental illnesses, and in the psyche of the average person.

Girindrasekhar Bose was an early 20th-century Indian psychoanalyst, the first president (1922–1953) of the Indian Psychoanalytic Society. Bose carried on a twenty-year dialogue with Sigmund Freud. Known for disputing the specifics of Freud's Oedipus complex theory, he has been pointed to by some as an early example of non-Western contestations of Western methodologies. Apart from this, he also started the first general hospital psychiatry unit (GHPU) in Asia at the R.G. Kar Medical College, Calcutta in 1933.

"The Engineering of Consent" is an essay by Edward Bernays first published in 1947, and a book he published in 1955.

Ernest Dichter was an American psychologist and marketing expert known as the "father of motivational research." Dichter pioneered the application of Freudian psychoanalytic concepts and techniques to business — in particular to the study of consumer behavior in the marketplace. Ideas he established were a significant influence on the practices of the advertising industry in the twentieth century. Dichter promised the "mobilisation and manipulation of human needs as they exist in the consumer". As America entered the 1950s, the decade of heightened commodity fetishism, Dichter offered consumers moral permission to embrace sex and consumption, and forged a philosophy of corporate hedonism, which he thought would make people immune to dangerous totalitarian ideas.

Stuart Ewen is a New York-based author, historian and lecturer on media, consumer culture, and the compliance profession. He is also a Distinguished Professor at Hunter College and the City University of New York Graduate Center, in the departments of History, Sociology and Media Studies. He is the author of six books. Under the pen name Archie Bishop, Ewen has also worked as a graphic artist, photographer, pamphleteer, and agitprop activist for many years.

Anne Fleischman Bernays is an American novelist, editor, and teacher.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martha Bernays</span> Wife of Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud

Martha Bernays was the wife of Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.

<i>Freud</i> (miniseries) 1984 British film

Freud, also known as Freud: the Life of a Dream, (1984) is a BBC television serial based on the life and times of Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. David Suchet stars as Freud. The 6-part production is 360 minutes in duration.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dorothy Burlingham</span> American psychoanalyst

Dorothy Trimble Tiffany Burlingham was an American child psychoanalyst and educator. She had a same-sex relationship with Anna Freud and also was a partner of her work and investigation, Burlingham is known for her joint work with Freud on the analysis of children. During the 1960s and 70s, Burlingham directed the Research Group on the Study of Blind Children at the Hampstead Clinic in London. Her 1979 article on blind infants, "To Be Blind in a Sighted World," published in The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, is considered to be a landmark of empathic scientific observation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Freud family</span> Family of Sigmund Freud

The family of Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psychoanalysis, lived in Austria and Germany until the 1930s before emigrating to England, Canada, and the United States. Several of Freud's descendants and relatives have become well known in different fields.

Healthy narcissism is a positive sense of self that is in alignment with the greater good. The concept of healthy narcissism was first coined by Paul Federn and gained prominence in the 1970s through the research of Heinz Kohut and Otto Kernberg. It developed slowly out of the psychoanalytic tradition, and became popular in the late twentieth century.

The following is a list of public relations, propaganda, and marketing campaigns orchestrated by Edward Bernays.

<i>Freud</i> (TV series) German crime drama television series, first broadcast in 2020

Freud is an Austrian-German crime thriller television series re-imagining the life of a young Sigmund Freud. The series produced 8 episodes which were first aired on ORF 15 March 2020 then released on Netflix on 23 March 2020.

References

  1. Adams, Tim (10 March 2002). "How Freud got under our skin". The Observer . Retrieved 13 January 2013.
  2. "The Century of the Self - BBC Two England - 17 March 2002". BBC Genome . No. 4071. 14 March 2002. p. 86. Retrieved 19 October 2015.
  3. "The Century of the Self - BBC Two England - 24 March 2002". BBC Genome. No. 4072. 21 March 2002. p. 80.
  4. "The Century of the Self - BBC Two England - 31 March 2002". BBC Genome. No. 4073. 28 March 2002. p. 82.
  5. "The Century of the Self - BBC Two England - 7 April 2002". BBC Genome. No. 4074. 4 April 2002. p. 70.
  6. "BBC Four Documentaries - The Century of the Self". BBC Online . Archived from the original on 14 May 2011.
  7. Note: the quote is from a 1927 article by Mazur in the Harvard Business Review .
  8. "BBC cleans up at Broadcast Awards 2003". Broadcast . Retrieved 22 October 2015.
  9. Furtado, Peter (March 2003). "Back to Narrative at the History Today Awards". History Today . Archived from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 22 October 2015.
  10. "Programme Awards Winners 2002". Royal Television Society . 14 March 2011.[ permanent dead link ]