Posted on: 18. Dezember 2012
#Adam Curtis #Documentary #Sigmund Freud #Politics #Machines #Psychoanalyses #Public Relations #Business #Happiness #America
The Century of the Self – BBC Documentary by Adam Curtis, 2002

The Century of the Self (2002)


BBC Documentary by Adam Curtis, 240 minutes

Starring: Adam Curtis, Anna Freud, Bill Clinton, Edward Bernays, Herbert Marcuse, Jerry Rubin, Martin S. Bergmann, Robert Reich, Sigmund Freud, Stuart Ewen, Tony Blair, Werner Erhard, Wilhelm Reich

Review: «How Freud got under our skin» by Tim Adams, 10.03. 2002. The Observer. Retrieved 13 January 2013, www.theguardian.com


Part 1: Happiness Machines 


Happiness Machines. Part one documents the story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays who invented Public Relations in the 1920s, being the first person to take Freud's ideas to manipulate the masses.



Part 2: The Engineering of Consent 


Part two 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.



Part 3: There is a Policeman Inside All of Our Heads, He Must Be Destroyed


In the 1960s, a radical group of psychotherapists challenged the influence of Freudian ideas, which lead to the creation of a new political movement that sought to create new people , free of the psychological conformity that had been implanted in people's minds by business and politics.



Part 4: Eight People Sipping Wine In Kettering


This episode explains how politicians turned to the same techniques used by business in order to read and manipulate the inner desires of the masses. Both New Labor with Tony Blair and the Democrats led by Bill Clinton, used the focus group which had been invented by psychoanalysts in order to regain power.

All videos on: archive.org