Watch-Free.TV :: Stream Movies, TV, Live Sports for Free!

“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 4 discusses how Clinton and Blair used Freudian techniques to get elected and how it changed policies. Watch the complete documentary now (59 minutes)

This episode explains how politicians on the left, in both Britain and America, turned to the techniques developed by business to read and fulfill the inner desires of the self.

Both New Labour, under Tony Blair, and the Democrats, led by Bill Clinton, used the focus group, which had been invented by psychoanalysts, in order to regain power. They set out to mould their policies to people’s inner desires and feelings, just as capitalism had learnt to do with products.

Out of this grew a new culture of public relations and marketing in politics, business and journalism. One of its stars in Britain was Matthew Freud who followed in the footsteps of his relation, Edward Bernays, the inventor of public relations in the 1920s.

The politicians believed they were creating a new and better form of democracy, one that truly responded to the inner feelings of individual. But what they didn’t realize was that the aim of those who had originally created these techniques had not been to liberate the people but to develop a new way of controlling them.