Watch Century of Self, Episode 3: There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed Documentary Online Free (2002)
“Century of the Self” tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests? Episode 3 discusses the backlash to Freud’s ideology and how corporations used this new philosophy for their own gain. Watch the complete documentary now (59 minutes)
In the 1960s, a radical group of psychotherapists challenged the influence of Freudian ideas in America. They were inspired by the ideas of Wilhelm Reich, a pupil of Freud’s, who had turned against him and was hated by the Freud family. He believed that the inner self did not need to be repressed and controlled. It should be encouraged to express itself.
Out of this came a political movement that sought to create new beings free of the psychological conformity that had been implanted in people’s minds by business and politics.
This program shows how this rapidly developed in America through self-help movements like Werber Erhard’s Erhard Seminar Training - into the irresistible rise of the expressive self: the Me Generation.
But the American corporations soon realized that this new self was not a threat but their greatest opportunity. It was in their interest to encourage people to feel they were unique individuals and then sell them ways to express that individuality. To do this they turned to techniques developed by Freudian psychoanalysts to read the inner desires of the new self.
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