This documentary seems to give a lot more credence to a movement that it deserve. It tries to convey the idea that Freud’s theories helped profoundly shape the 20th century society, and has some good points. But for each valid observation, that are often anecdotal, I found twice as many approximations and fallacies.

The driving idea, as stated in its introduction, is that “[Bernays] showed American corporations for the first time how to they could make people want things they didn’t need by linking mass produced goods to their unconscious desires.”

As exhibit A i would use another documentary, “The Human Spark”, where it is shown that for hundreds of thousand of years humans have used shells as adornment. Talk about things we didn’t need. Moreover when people couldn’t find the shells in vogue, they sculpted them out of bones. That’s right, shells knock-offs.

So, in no way humans waited for Freud’s theory and their use in mass production, to have objects they don’t need but merely desire. Because it is the basis of human culture.

You could object that the mass production of desire driven goods is bad, but it is an opinion, and this opinion runs contrary to thousand years of human evolution.

I would also object that Freudian theories impact on mass production are anecdotal at best, and blown out of proportion in this documentary. And that, again, a desire driven society is something i have a hard time railing against, since it is precisely what made us human since the dawn of times, and one of the main difference that gave us the upper hand over other hominids such as neanderthals.

The Century of the Self Documentary by Adam Curtis

Note: The notes that follow do not necessarily convey the reviewer’s opinion of the accuraty of the film in terms of reality. Rather it demonstrates the ideas that are explored in each episode of the documentary. Some quotes are taken directly from the documentary and are denoted as such.

Episode One: Happiness Machine

“By satisfying people’s inner selfish desires, one made them happy, and thus docile. It was the start of the all-consuming self, which has come to dominate our world today.”

Early 1920s: Cigarette experiment – getting women to smoke by portraying cigarettes as “touches of freedom.”

“Irrelevant objects could become powerful emotional symbols of how you wanted to be seen by others.”

Edward Bernays (cousin of Sigmond Freud)

Freud thought that unconscious forces are more easily released when people are in crowds.

“If you can keep stimulating the irrational self, then leadership can basically go on doing what it wants to do.”

In a large crowd, the collective subconscious goodwill is given to the leader while the collective subconscious badwill is wreaked on outsiders (see Nazi Germany).

Film tries to portray Bernays as claiming that democracy and free markets (i.e. corporations) are inseparable.

Edward Bernays would work for the CIA.

Government programs were instituted to manage the inner psychological lives of the masses.

Episode Two: The Engineering of Consent

“Hidden deep in all human beings were dangerous and irrational desires and fears.”

“Anna Freud believed that if children…strictly followed the rules of accepted social conduct, then as they grew up, the conscious part of their mind, what was called the ego, would be greatly strengthened in its struggle to control the unconscious. But if children did not conform, their ego would be weak, and they would be pray to the dangerous forces of the unconscious.”

“…American citizens were fundamentally irrational beings – they could not be trusted. Their real reasons for buying products were rooted in unconscious desires and feelings.”

“Anne Freud was a very powerful person.” (Anne Freud’s test case patients began to relapse – suffer depression and marriage failures.)

“Bernays argued that instead of trying to reduce people’s fears of communism, one should actually encourage and manipulate the fear but in such a way that it became a weapon in the cold war. Rational argument was fruitless.”

Bernays manipulated the American people into thinking that Guatemala was a threat to the U.S. because of its ties to Moscow and communism. In reality, no such communist ties existed. However, Bernays was able to manipulate the media and convince the American people that Guatemala was a threat to the U.S. [This was really done because the president of Guatemala demonopolized the banana industry, thereby harming the United Fruit Company in the U.S.A.]

(Refers to the above) “Bernays had manipulated the American people, but he had done so because he…believed that the interests of business and the interests of America were indivisible.” This idea was called “engineering of consent.”

C.I.A. tried experiments to try to control the human mind.

Marylyn Monroe committed suicide even though she went to psychoanalysis.

Herbert Marcuse thought: “that the very idea that you had to control people was wrong. Human beings did have inner emotional drives, but they were not inherently violent or evil. It was society that made these drives dangerous by repressing and distorting them.”

Episode Three: There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed

“Freudian psychoanalysts became rich and powerful by teaching people how to control their feelings.”

“In the mid 1960s, a protest movement began on American campuses. One of the students’ main targets was corporate America. They accused the corporation of brainwashing the American public. Consumerism was not just a way of making money. It had become a way of keeping the masses docile while allowing the government to pursue a violent and illegal war in Vietnam.”

Herbert Marcuse (opposed this consumerism).

A counter movement occurred in the 60s that stressed self-liberation and freeing oneself from societal standards by truly expressing who you really were.

These people in the countermovement said, “We just want the feeling to be ourselves…We don’t say that you’re wrong; we just want to be free to be what we want to be, what we find ourselves to be.”

These people in the countermovement lived for the moment. This harmed industries like the life insurance industry.

People in the sixties wanted products that provided individuality.

Earnhart’s (EST) training sessions in the 1970s helped people to remove societal constraints – to be themselves, individually. “Your living a fulfilling life is all you need be concerned about.”

“What was now emerging was the idea that people could be happy simply within themselves and that changing society was irrelevant.”

“…people spend so much of their life being bedeviled by their past and being locked into their past, and being limited by their past, and there is an enormous freedom from that – letting people create themselves.”

“Maslow’s hierarchy might form the basis for a new way to categorize society.”

(Early 1980s) “[Inner directives are]…people who felt they were not defined by their place in society but by the choices they made themselves.” [Inner directives are moving toward self-actualization.]

Inner directives supported Ronald Reagan for president in 1980 because Reagan’s individualistic plans “fitted the way they saw themselves.”

“With the `new self,’ consumer desires seemed to have no limit.”

Individualism – This was the idea that: “…everything in the world and all moral judgment was appropriately viewed through the lens of personal satisfaction.”

Episode 4: Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering

“…rise of the self was fostered and promoted by business.”

Film portrays that in the 1960s and before in Britain, the BBC and government told people how to behave and classified them according to class.

“Mrs. Thatcher’s vision was of a society in which the wants and desires of millions of individuals would be satisfied through the free market…”

“Among those who voted conservative for the first time in 1979, they no longer wanted to be seen as part of social classes but to express themselves and crucial to this were products they chose to buy.”

“Both politicians (i.e. Reagan and Thatcher) had encouraged business to take over from government the role of fulfilling the needs of the people.”

“The Left believed the opposite – that the way to create a better society was not to treat people as emotional, isolated individuals but to persuade them to realize that they had common interests with others – to help them rise above their individual feelings and fears.”

`Liberals’ began to campaign by claiming that they would raise taxes on the rich but not on the middle class, who did not want their money going to the poor because of their own self-interest.

Clinton in the 1996 election campaigned on the issues that were important to swing voters. Blair campaigned similarly in Britain. (Politicians used focus groups of swing voters to discover what mattered most to swing voters.)

Some researchers say appealing to the population and its self-interested individuality was a problem because of humanity’s irrationality.

“Although we feel we are free, in reality, we, like the politicians, have become the slaves of our own desires. We have forgotten that we can be more than that.”

Concludes with the question: Are people bundles of irrational, subliminal emotions?

This is a great documentary by Adam Curtis who is the British version of Michael Moore but way more inciteful. He has been doing this for alot longer also. I would say that Moore is significantly influenced by Adam Curtis just based on his subject matter and technique.

This is not however, the best work by Adam Curtis…The Power of Nightmares (ADAM CURTIS) is better because it is more relevant to today current events in my opinion. Century of the Self deals with the mind control techniques that big brother and corporations employ to keep us happy with democracy and buying stuff we don’t need. The Power of Nightmares is about the Fear Tactics that big brother employs to get us on board for wars that don’t need faught.

All in all you need to own both if you like great conspiracy theories and great documentaries.