THE CEN­TU­RY OF THE SELF
Mon­day 29 April -​ Thurs­day 2 May 2002 7pm-​8pm

Episodes: One | Two | Three | Four

Two: The En­gi­neer­ing of Con­sent
Tues­day 30 April 7pm-​8pm

The pro­gramme ex­plores how those in pow­er in post-​war Amer­i­ca used Freud's ideas about the un­con­scious mind to try and con­trol the mass­es.

Politi­cians and plan­ners came to be­lieve Freud's un­der­ly­ing premise -​ that deep with­in all hu­man be­ings were dan­ger­ous and ir­ra­tional de­sires and fears. They were con­vinced that it was the un­leash­ing of these in­stincts that had led to the bar­barism of Nazi Ger­many. To stop it ev­er hap­pen­ing again they set out to find ways to con­trol this hid­den en­e­my with­in the hu­man mind.

Sig­mund Freud's daugh­ter, An­na, and his nephew, Ed­ward Bernays, pro­vid­ed the cen­tre­piece phi­los­o­phy. The US gov­ern­ment, big busi­ness, and the CIA used their ideas to de­vel­op tech­niques to man­age and con­trol the minds of the Amer­i­can peo­ple. But this was not a cyn­i­cal ex­er­cise in ma­nip­u­la­tion. Those in pow­er be­lieved that the on­ly way to make democ­ra­cy work and cre­ate a sta­ble so­ci­ety was to re­press the sav­age bar­barism that lurked just un­der the sur­face of nor­mal Amer­i­can life.

Episodes: One | Two | Three | Four