To many in both 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 told the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society in Britain and the United States. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests? BAFTA award winner Adam Curtis examined the rise of the all-consuming self in a BBC 2 series last March. These programmes showed how the Freud dynasty was at the heart of compelling social history, from Sigmund to Matthew: Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis; Edward Bernays, who invented public relations; Anna Freud, Sigmund’s devoted daughter; and present-day PR guru to Sigmund’s great grandson, Matthew Freud, who became part of the new marketing culture that took over politics in Britain when New Labour swept to power in the 1990s.

Sigmund Freud’s work into the murky world of the subconscious changed the world. By introducing a technique to probe the unconscious mind, Freud provided useful tools for understanding the secret desires of the masses. Unwittingly, his work served as the precursor to a world full of political spin doctors, marketing moguls, and society’s belief that the pursuit of satisfaction and happiness is man’s ultimate goal.

The first programme told the story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the profession of public relations in the 1920s and was 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. Bernays was one of the main architects of the modern techniques of mass-consumer persuasion but he was convinced that this was more than just a way of selling consumer goods. It was a new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying the inner irrational desires that his uncle had identified, people could be made happy and thus docile. It was the start of the all-consuming self which has come to dominate today’s world.

The second programme showed how Freud’s ideas about the un-conscious mind were used by those in power in post-war America to try and control the masses. Politicians and planners came to believe Freud’s underlying premise ñ that deep within all human beings were dangerous and irrational desires and fears. Sigmund Freud’s daughter, Anna, and his nephew, Edward Bernays, provided the centrepiece philosophy. Their ideas were used by the US government, big business, and the CIA to develop techniques to manage and control the minds of the American people.

The next programme focussed on challenges by a radical group of psychotherapists on the influence of Freudian ideas in America in the 1960s. They were inspired by the ideas of Wilhelm Reich who believed that the inner self did not need to be repressed and controlled. It should be encouraged to express itself.

Out of this came a political movement that sought to create new beings free of the psychological conformity which had been im-planted in people’s minds by business and politics. But the American corporations soon realised that this new self was not a threat but their greatest opportunity. It was in their interest to encourage people to feel they were unique individuals and then sell them ways to express that individuality.

The last episode explained how politicians on the left, in both Britain and America, turned to the techniques developed by business to read and fulfil the inner desires of the self. Both New Labour, under Tony Blair, and the Democrats, led by Clinton, used the focus group, which had been invented by psychoanalysts, in order 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 consumer products.

The politicians believed they were creating a new and better form of democracy, one that truly responded to the inner feelings of individual. But what they didn’t realise was that the aim of those who had originally created these techniques had not been to liberate the people but instead to develop a new way of controlling them.
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