The Century of the Self [http://pialogue.info/books/Century-of-the-Self.php]

• Ed Bernays
• Dr. Ernest Dichter
  • But it was only the beginning of the rise to power of psychoanalysis in America. Psychoanalysts were about to move into big business and use their techniques not just to create model citizens but model consumers. Last week's episode showed how Freud's American nephew Edward Bernays had been the first to convince American corporations that they could sell products by connecting them with people's unconscious feelings. But now a group of psychoanalysts were going to take what Bernays had begun and invent a whole range of techniques to get inside and manage the unconscious mind of the consumer. They were led by Ernest Dichter. Dichter had practiced next door to Freud in Vienna, but he had come to America and set up The Institute for Motivational Research in an old mansion north of New York.
  • Promotional Clip: This is The Institute for Motivational Research, a place devoted to the intriguing business of finding out why people behave as they do. Why they buy as they do. Why they respond to advertising as they do. And this is Dr. Ernest Dichter. "We don't go out and ask directly why do you buy and why don't you, what we try to do instead is try to understand the total personality, the self image of the customer; we use all the resources of modern social sciences. It opens up some stimulating psychological techniques for selling any new product.
  • Like the other psychoanalysts Dichter believed that American citizens were fundamentally irrational beings; they could not be trusted. Their real reasons for buying products were rooted in unconscious desires and feelings. And Dichter wanted to find ways to uncover what he called 'the secret self' of the American consumer.