The story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his
American nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the public
relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to
take Freud's ideas and use them to manipulate the masses. He
showed American corporations how they could make people want
things they didn't need by systematically linking mass-produced
goods to their unconscious desires. Bernays was one of the main
architects of the modern techniques of mass-consumer persuasion,
using every trick in the book, from celebrity endorsement and
outrageous PR stunts, to eroticising the motorcar. His most
notorious coup was breaking the taboo on women smoking by
persuading them that cigarettes were a symbol of independence
and freedom. But Bernays was convinced that this was more than
just a way of selling consumer goods. It was a new political
idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying the inner
irrational desires that his uncle had identified, people could
be made happy and thus docile.It was t