On May 10, 2010, at 5:35 PM, Gail Brock wrote:
> Adam Curtis, in his 4-part BBC documentary, "The Century of the
> Self" (http://www.archive.org/details/AdaCurtisCenturyoftheSelf_0)
> does a good job on tracing the rise of this self-congratulating
> individuality. Briefly, in the early years of the 20th c., Freud's
> nephew Edward Bernays adapted the techniques of psychoanalysis to
> consumerism, to create desires for purchasing. Eventually, people
> came to define themselves in terms of their desires. The left had
> problems because it continued to believe in people as rational
> beings with a sense of the common good.
There's a great little clip from the doc - a quote from the German psychoanalyst Martin Bergmann, in which he talks about the US as an irrational, sad country. It's a wonderful 45 seconds in a classic German shrink's accent. I've uploaded it to:
http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Irrational.mp3