Psychoanalysis Seminar 1

Psychoanalysis - Richards Seminar

Dynamic unconscious

Repressed desires

Freud

Penis is power

Children have sexual desires but our society looks down on them. Western culture is different.

ID – Biological instincts – primal urges – Children are walking ID’s

Ego - Conscious

Super Ego – Right and wrong, rational and irrational thinking. – Repressed feelings and urges. Super ego kind of battles the ID – shame, guilt, self-pitty.

The Century of the Self – Adam Curtis

The emergences of American culture. To control the public and their desires.

Edward Bernays – 1^st person to take Freud’s ideas and manipulate the masses. Make people want things they didn’t need by linking things to their unconscious desires. Satisfying their inner selfish desires. Creating the all consuming self.

People thought Freud’s theories were a threat to themselves.

Dangerous instinctive urges – the empire did not agree with Freud.

1913 war – unlocked the peoples killing instincts. Freud new people had it in them.

Edward Bernays was employed to promote Americas warheads to the press. – Fight to bring democracy to Europe. They propaganda made Wilson a hero. Bernays wondered if you can use propaganda for war you could use it for peace.

He returned to America as a public relations manager. – Wanted to alter how the public thought. He read Sigmunds introduction to psychoanalysis and wondered if he could make money from manipulating the public’s unconscious and irrational emotions.

Persuaded women to smoke as it was taboo at the time – George Hill president of Tobacco Company.

Cigarettes were a symbol of the penis and power. Women would smoke if they could be convinced this, they would have their ‘own penis’s’

 

Torches of Freedom – Got women to smoke in a parade on the sly to promote smoking for women. Played on peoples emotons. This event made women smoking more socially acceptable. Women thought this gave them power.

Sell the product by making people think they NEED the object, investing emotional values.

Made America Rich mass production increased. They thought they might start over selling things. Advertising things as necessities rather than treats. Showing the products practical virtues.

Training people to desire. Shaping the American mentality.

 

Bernays – started the practice of product placement.

Sell cars as symbols of male sexuality.

Used celebrities to influence the masses.

Consumptions 1927 – No longer the citizens but consumerists.

Ordinary people should by shirts and borrow money from banks he represented, tricking the masses into getting things they don’t actually want or need.

Bernays persuaded 34 celebrities to go to the Whitehouse. To try and publicizes the president who had been depicted as a human less character.

Freud was facing bankruptcy he contacted Bernays and got his books published. Bernays publicizes them so everybody reads them. He made Freud accepted then capitalized on it.

Freud underestimate the human instincts in human beings, for more dangerous than he thought. He became a massive pessimist towards humans, thinking that man cannot be tamed.

He wanted to Manage the bewildered heard, manipulating the unconscious.

Stimulate the Irrational Self.

American PR has created a system that fools us into believing are needs are met by consumerist products. 

Examples of Advertising using manipulation

Cigarettes became so popular with women that men looked like women smoking. Changing the whole balance. Started a campaign with the marlborough man

Silk Cut Campaign

Sophistication, smart, luxurious, associated with tea, coffee.

Silk has feminine connotations that could be considered in a negative way.

Silk cut are a low tar cigarette and the danger is the brand getting associated with a

weak or effeminate image.

They used Freudian techniques to link the brand with hidden desires.

Eros - life instinct

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Thanatos - death instinct

In advertising code of practice, in britain products are no longer allowed to be associated with:

• Sport
• Glamour
• Success in Business
• Masculinities and Femininities
• Also, 'Advertising should not seek to actively persuade people to start smoking

Other key Freudian Concepts

• Oral Fixation
• Oedipus Complex
• Vagina Dentata
• Penis Envy

Silk Cut

Might kill you might not

Pipe of bag could be read as a cigarette or a penis

Vagina Dentata 

Life and Death

Vaginal connotation - Purple sexy silk

Eros

Market it to males and females