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Video Description
There is an invisible government, Edward Bernays wrote — a small circle of people who mold the minds, tastes, and ideas of the masses behind the scenes. This lecture from Academy of Ideas pulls that claim into the light. It traces how Freud’s nephew turned his uncle’s psychology of the unconscious into modern public relations, and how group identification quietly shuts off our critical thinking. From the car we buy to the causes we join, hidden desires do the steering. The video closes by asking what it takes to recover an individual mind inside a crowd.
Full Video Transcript
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.
Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country.
We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.
In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking,
we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses.
It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.
This passage was written by Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, and a pioneering mind behind advertising, modern propaganda, and the field of public relations.
Bernays’ influence was enormous.
Relying heavily on the insights of his uncle, he developed highly successful manipulation techniques which are still used today,
not only by companies to sell consumer products, but also by the powers that be to, in the words of Bernays, control and regiment the masses.
In this video, we’ll explore some of Bernays most intriguing ideas,
paying particular attention to his insights on how group psychology can be used to control and manipulate the masses.
In his classic work, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego,
Sigmund Freud described group psychology as being
organized into a group at some particular time for some definite purpose. In other words, group
psychology attempts to understand how an individual’s behavior, thoughts, and emotions change
when becoming a part of a group. The tendency of human beings to form groups was selected for
in our evolutionary past due to the survival benefits it offered. Ancient humans who organized
into tribes were more likely to survive and reproduce in the harsh environments in which
they lived. However, with the help of modern technologies, humans today have transformed the
environment in a manner which renders the survival value of tribal organization obsolete. But with
that said, the ancient and instinctual pull of tribal organization still looms large in the lives
of most. With many people today identifying and hence stereotyping both themselves and others
based on things such as race, class, gender, nationality, religion, or the political party or
ideology to which one adheres. This continued proclivity to engage in group identification
is, according to Bernays, a function of the enlarged sense of self-importance that individuals
derive from identifying with a potentially powerful mass. Just as the wolf pack is many
times as strong as the combined strength of its individual members, so too the individual senses
the potential power of the group, and it derives feelings of potency in identifying with it.
Beginning in the late 19th century, a number of thinkers, most notably Freud and Gustave Le Bon,
attempted to understand why people engage in group identification and how group identification
affects one’s mind and behavior. As Bernays noted,
the insights that emerged from this study caught the attention of those in positions of power who wanted to expand their control of societies.
These people saw the potential of taking the theoretical insights of group psychology and
transforming them into practical methods that could be used to manipulate the
masses from outside of the public’s eye. A task which formed the basis of Bernays
work in public relations. As Bernays explained in his book, Propaganda, the
systematic study of mass psychology revealed the potentialities of invisible
government of society by manipulation of the motives which actuate man in the
group. These studies established that the group has mental characteristics
distinct from those of the individual, and is motivated by impulses and emotions which cannot
be explained on the basis of what we know of individual psychology. So the question naturally
arose. If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control
and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it? The great potential
of using insights from group psychology to control the masses is partly a function of the fact that
an individual can be influenced by a group or crowd even when physically isolated.
As Bernays pointed out in his book, Crystallizing Public Opinion, a crowd does not mean merely
a physical aggregation of a number of persons.
The crowd is rather a state of mind.
So long as one engages in group identification, their mind and behaviour will be changed by
the enduring influence of group psychology, even with no other members of the group physically
present.
In his book Propaganda, published in 1928, Bernays explained,
for its intrinsic worth or usefulness but because he has unconsciously come to
see in it a symbol of something else. The desire for which he is ashamed to admit
to himself. A man buying a car may think he wants it for purposes of locomotion.
He may really want it because it is a symbol of social position, an evidence of
his success in business, or a means of pleasing his wife. What Freud suggested
is that often there is a divorce between one’s conscious thoughts and feelings
and desires which do not fit with one’s self-image and which are therefore suppressed.
This fact, Bernays recognized, renders human beings manipulable, for what it implies is
that if one can design propaganda or psychological operations that bypass the conscious and rational
faculties of the individual, targeting instead suppressed emotions and hidden desires, it
is possible to move people to adopt beliefs and behaviors without them being aware of
the underlying motivations leading them on. As Bernays explained,
“…men are very largely actuated by motives which they conceal from themselves. It is evident that
the successful propagandist must understand the true motives, and not be content to accept the
reasons which men give for what they do.” It is possible, although often difficult,
for an individual to become aware of the underlying motives driving their beliefs
and actions through honest and critical introspection. However, once one succumbs
to the effects of group identification, such critical introspection becomes
nearly impossible. A group is extraordinarily credulous and open to
influence, wrote Freud. It has no critical faculty. In identifying with a group, the
individual subordinates self-analysis and a discerning search for the truth in
favor of maintaining group interests and cohesion. And with their critical
capacities weakened by the influence of group psychology, they become highly
susceptible to psychological operations designed to target suppressed or
unconscious desires and emotions. In the modern day, there appears to be forces
operating through the mainstream media and popular culture which are attempting
to increase the individual’s proclivity to engage in certain types of group
identification, namely identifications that divide the population into
conflicting groups. This phenomenon has potentially dire consequences for both the stability and
freedom of a society, as it allows those in power to institute the age-old tactic of divide and
conquer. In his book, Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli noted that those who have held power
over a population have long realized that a population united is always stronger than those
who rule over it, and thus stretching back into ancient times, rulers have sought to divide the
many, and weaken the force which was strong while it was united, through the use of those methods
which promote division. By dividing a population along lines such as race, class, religion, gender,
or political preference, or in other words, into groups naturally prone to clash, the effects of
group psychology render rational discourse and debate between individuals in these separate
groups extremely unlikely. Each group, Bernays wrote, considers its own standards ultimate and
indisputable, and tends to dismiss all contrary or different standards as indefensible. Unable to
settle differences in opinions via rational discourse, groups whose belief structures clash
tend to revert to more destructive means in their attempt to defeat those they perceive as a threat.
A society dominated by such groups is thus easily divided in increasingly hostile conflict, and as a
As a result, not only does the population as a whole become weakened, as Machiavelli
pointed out, but its eyes are diverted away from the actions of those operating behind
the scenes who constitute, in the words of Bernays, the invisible government who controls
the destinies of millions.
While there is nothing wrong with deriving a sense of belonging based on the commonalities
we share with others, it is misguided to base our personal identity primarily on our group
memberships.
In terms of our evolutionary history, it is only fairly recently that we developed the
ability to become aware of ourselves as individuals, separate from any group or tribe.
This was a crucial development in consciousness, as the existence of a society based on individual
rights and personal liberties is dependent on a population which has developed this capacity
for individual consciousness, or in other words, on a society of individuals who understand
themselves and treat others as individuals first and foremost. As Eric Neumann pointed
out in his classic work, The Origins and History of Consciousness, prior to the development
of this capacity for individual consciousness, the group and group consciousness were dominant.
The individual was not an autonomous individualized entity with a knowledge, morality, volition
and activity of its own. It functioned solely as a part of the group, and the group with
its super-ordinate power was the only real subject. Seen in this light, the proclivity
of individuals today to engage in group identification is not only a danger to the freedom and stability
of a society, but it is also a regression of consciousness back to a more primitive
psychological state, and therefore from the standpoint of modernity, a pathological tendency
that needs to be overcome, or as Sigmund Freud put it.
Each individual has a share in numerous group minds, those of his race, of his class, of
his creed, of his nationality, etc. and he can also raise himself above them to the extent
of having a scrap of independence and originality.
Source: Academy of Ideas