The Century of the Self by Adam Curtis

The BBC series The Century of the Self created by Adam Curtis, first screened in 2002. Top reason to watch the series:

• Probably the most significant TV documentary ever made.
• It sheds light on Sigmund Freud’s American nephew Edward Bernays who created PR as we know it.
• The rare video footage of Sigmund Freud.
• It explains the obscure but powerful undercurrents of the American and world history.

This is a film of unprecedented significance. I don’t think I ever watched a documentary that is so enlightening and far reaching. Truly life changing in a meaningful way.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6718420906413643126

Links to Google Video:

1. The Century of the Self – Part 1 of 4 – Happiness Machine.
2. The Century of the Self – Part 2 of 4 – The Engineering of Consent.
3. The Century of the Self – Part 3 of 4 – There is a Policeman Inside all our Heads and he must be Destroyed.
4. The Century of the Self – Part 4 of 4 Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering.

(interestingly at 6.05 mark Part 2, Psychotherapist Martin Bergmann who became famous as Professor Louis Levy in Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors)

Edward Bernays wrote in Propaganda (1928):

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”

Further Reading:
Louis Levy from Crimes and Misdemeanors on Love

Reinventing the Past with Sigmund Freud

The Case for the Negative Freedom in Isaiah Berlin v. the Existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre

Tagged as: adam curtis, freud, history, holocausts, marketing, psychiatry, psychology, tribes