Century of the Self – The Rise of the All-Consuming Self

Century of the Self – The Rise of the All-Consuming Self:

 Edward Bernays invented ‘Public Relations' in the 1920s, being the first person to take Freud's ideas to manipulate the masses. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn't need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires.

“If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without them knowing it.” -Edward Bernays, (Propaganda 1928, p.71)

Edward Bernays – also known as the “father of propaganda” – took Freud's key thesis that individuals were driven by unconscious irrational forces and used it to develop marketing techniques which are now common place.