The Century of the Self Psychology Essay Research Paper

For your next assignment, you will need to watch a documentary film, The Century of the Self, Part I (58 minutes long).



Once you watch the video, please answer two (2) question of your choice from the list below. Your response to each question should not exceed 400 words. You may want to read the questions prior to watching the movie.



You can access the video by copying this link into your browser https://www(dot)youtube(dot)com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04&ab_channel=JustAdamCurtis





List of questions:



1. Freud believed that we were driven by our unconscious desires. We repress our animal feelings, which are powerful, sexual, and aggressive forces because they are too dangerous. There is a hidden part of the mind of which the conscious is unaware. The First World War convinced Freud that governments unleashed our primitive forces and could not control them. But it’s what we should have expected. Once released, no one knew how to control them. Do you agree with Freud’s fundamental assessment of humans? Why or why not?



2. Freud’s ideas of hidden irrational forces intrigued Bernays. Perhaps he could make money by manipulating groups through their unconscious desires rather than through rational information. He looked at commodities and how they related to people’s irrational emotions. He experimented with controlling mass consciousness. He was hired to sell smoking to women. He found that smoking, from a psychoanalytic perspective, was related to power since the cigarette represented the penis. Thus smoking led women to believe they had power and independence. It also meant that you could control how others see you. Cigarettes became “Torches of Freedom.” How are other Freudian interpretations used in modern advertising? Give examples.



3. A new way to sell products emerged: it is not through rational approaches but because the “consumer” will feel better by owning the product. The end result is that people bind themselves emotionally or personally to a product or service. This was done because the corporations were worried that they would overproduce after ramping up production during the war. They feared that people would stop buying. They needed to get people to buy more. Bernays had a tool to get people to buy more by appealing to their unconscious desires. He worked to change how people think about buying. Paul Maser of Lehmann Brothers was clear. We must shift America from “a needs - to a desires” culture. People need to be trained to desire, to want new things even before the old have been entirely consumed. He thought that we must shape a new mentality in America. Man’s desires must overshadow his needs. At this time there were no “Consumers” there were “Workers.” The rich bought luxury items but the workers did not. Maser saw he could convince people to buy not what they needed, but what they wanted. Do you think this was, overall, a good thing or a bad thing for America? Why?



4. Bernays brings psychological theory to merchandising and sales to sell products to the masses. The banks, who were his clients, funded chains of department stores. These became outlets for mass-produced goods. Bernays’ job was to produce a new type of customer. He created techniques of mass-consumer persuasion. His women’s magazine clients linked famous movie stars to products of his other clients. He created product placement in movies, and also got car companies to associate automobiles with male power. He hired psychologists to issue reports concluding that products were good for us and then pretended the reports were independently generated. He hired celebrities to hype products. They would say things like “You buy products to express your inner sense of self.” How convincing is that type of advertising to you today? Do you think that you are in a position to adequately answer that question to begin with?



5. In Europe, the economic crisis led to armed confrontations between members of different political parties. Freud wrote Civilization and its Discontents which is an argument against the idea of civilization as an expression of human progress. Freud believed that civilization was constructed to control the wild unconscious urges people have. The idea of individual freedom at the heart of Democracy was impossible according to Freud. Ultimately, humans can’t be allowed to fully express themselves because it’s too dangerous. They must always be controlled and thus always discontent. Do you agree with this assessment of civilization? Why?



6. Man doesn’t want to be civilized. It’s necessary for his survival so he must be forever discontented. Freud didn’t believe in the equality of man. Hitler saw this and used it. Too many political parties in Germany would lead to destruction. But one person would fix things. Hitler emerged and thought democracy unleashed a dangerous selfish-ism since it doesn’t have the means to control what is unleashed. Democracy, he thought, leads to chaos and unemployment. National Socialism, the name of the Nazi party, would control people in a new way. The state would control business since the free market is unstable. Workers’ leisure time would also be controlled by the state. Their motto was “Service not self.” It would be a new alternative to democracy channeled into ways to bind the society together. Huge rallies forged the mind of the nation by unifying thinking, feeling, and desire. Hitler’s inspiration was Bernays. He wanted the deep libidinal forces to be given up to the leader of a group: love the Fuhrer. The aggressive forces are unleashed on those outside the group. Freud wrote this as a warning; the Nazis thought they could master and control these forces. How do politicians use these same techniques today?



7. Alastair Cooke saw that the people at the Nazi rallies were releasing irrational force. The people were deeply moved. It brought them together. At the same time in America, Democracy was under threat. The angry mobs attacked the corporations. Then Roosevelt was elected. He wanted to strengthen democracy by using the power of the state to control the free market by using a new way to deal with the masses. Roosevelt took broad executive power: the New Deal. The Government would plan and run new industrial projects for the good of the nation. Capitalism couldn’t run the economy. The Government needed to do it instead. The Nazis agreed. They saw Roosevelt’s ideas as better than allowing private interests to control society. Roosevelt believed that people were rational and can be trusted. In order to explain his policies to the people, he needed a way to understand the mass mind. He turned to social scientists George Gallop and Elmo Roper who created polling as a science. It helped Roosevelt see people’s views. It was based on the idea that people can be trusted to know what they wanted. We can predict the behavior of the public if one asked factual questions and avoided manipulating their emotions. How important are polls today as a tool to understand the public mind?