• Listen to the entire program

Recently many of us heard the news that a US army unit has been deployed on US soil, ostensibly to deal with civil unrest in the wake of the unfolding economic meltdown. It was a frightening revelation to many of us and signaled another step towards direct control of the American people by government. Government and corporate methods to control human behavior in order to create conformity, compliance, consumerism, etc, have a long and sordid history in the US, starting with the psychoanalytical theories of Sigmund Freud and those who followed him. Today we want to explore that history through the words of Adam Curtis, whom many of you may remember as the film maker of the extremely popular documentary The Power of Nightmares. BBC producer and film maker, Adam Curtis’ other meticulously documented and powerfully presented documentary, The Century of the Self is our “thank you gift” to you today. In a four part, four-hour series created for the BBC, Curtis details the impact of Freud’s theories on the perception of the human mind, and the ways public relations agencies and politicians have used this during the last 100 years for their “engineering of consent”.

Among the main characters are Freud himself and his nephew Edward Bernays, who was the first to use psychological techniques in advertising. He is often seen as the “father of the public relations industry”. Freud’s daughter Anna Freud, a pioneer of child psychology, is mentioned in the second part, as well as Wilhelm Reich, one of the main opponents of Freud’s theories. Along these general themes, The Century of the Self asks deeper questions about the roots and methods of modern consumerism, representative democracy and its implications. It also questions the modern way we see ourselves, the attitude to fashion and superficiality – which, given Governor Palin’s recent shopping sprees, is particularly relevant.