The Century of The Self A Summary, Critique and

Practical Lessons
This documentary is nothing short of astonishing. It gives you an
explanation to why the world is the way it is today and how human nature
shaped it in the past century. Even if you didnt learn any new facts
from it (you will), it would be worth watching just for the way it
connects the dots. Its made up of four parts. Ill share my notes and
critical thoughts of it.
Happiness machines
The film starts with the ideas of Sigmund Freud, who believed that humans
are irrational and are governed by their subconscious fears and desires.
His nephew, Edward Bernays, put his theory to practice and got to work to
build a social structure that controls the masses that could not be
trusted to control themselves and would pose a threat otherwise.
Bernays worked with business and government using the techniques and
ideology he took from Freud. One of his great success stories was getting
American women to smoke, which was previously unheard of. However,
Bernays associated it with gender equality (torches of freedom) and it
took off like wildfire. The techniques he applied are astonishing: he
paid women at mass gatherings to smoke setting an example.
What Bernays realized was that what people needed was very different from
what they wanted. And that the latter was way more profitable for
business. Also, as long as peoples desires were fulfilled governments
could do pretty much what they wanted.
The National Socialists of Germany essentially shared the same belief
about democracy as Bernays did: it didnt work. Bernays solution was to
build a system that provides an illusion of democracy and wellbeing,
while the Nazis were straightforward: they would abandon democracy for an
alternative that would channel the masses uncontrollable energies in ways
that held the nation together. That didnt work out too well either, but
at least they were honest about their stance on democracy.
In the socio-economic system Bernays helped build, people are not active
participants, but passive consumers. People are not in charge, their
innermost (often irrational) desires are.
The engineering of consent
It didnt take long for big business in the US to get from psychoanalysis
to focus groups in order to figure out the deepest fears and desires of
people that they didnt know themselves and then to manufacture the
matching products.
Ernest Dichter realized that people didnt always know what they wanted
and the origins of their desires were often unconscious. He essentially
invented the focus group, which gave him a chance to observe consumers
using and interacting with products and letting them talk freely about
them rather than asking straight questions. One of his memorable

achievements was when an instant cake didnt sell well, he figured out it
was because house wives felt guilty for not having to work. So they made
the women add their own eggs to the mix, which changed the perceived ease
of making the instant cake and now women felt like they deserved the
credits for their work and sales soared.
Psychoanalysts like Dichter trained corporations to identify and exploit
peoples fears and desires. By the early 50s their ideas became widely
accepted in business as well as politics. The reason why they did what
they did was they believed that by regulating peoples wild desires and
unconscious fears, wed live in a better society. By giving people
products that complement their personalities, products they could
identify with, people would become more stable emotionally and able to
lead more balanced and happy lives. Psychoanalysts believed that ordinary
individuals and the masses were not capable of being democratic by
themselves unless their unstable way of being was controlled. They
believed themselves to be part of an elite that had the knowledge and
means to enable the masses to live in a democratic society and they did
so by promoting the ideas of psychoanalysis and the practices derived
from them at every level and fragment of society.
Freuds daughter, Anna, was determined to spread his fathers theory as
well as to take it a step further. And she did. She took a troubled
mother and her four children and moved them into a new environment,
which, in combination with psychoanalysis, was supposed to cure them of
anxiety and aggression. The experiment seemed to have worked, but decades
later all the problems resurfaced and several of the then grown up
children committed suicide.
One of the outright deceitful acts of Bernays under the umbrella of
shaping public opinion was his way of making Guatemala look like a
communist threat to the US and overthrowing its government. Bernays sent
over American journalist and made sure the people they talked to painted
the picture he wanted. He went as far as organizing an anti American
demonstration and setting up a fake news agency just to spread fake news
about the threat Guatemala posed to the US. He did all this with the
justification that the cold war had to be won and the American way of
life had to be preserved. However, the masses were not able to act
rationally so they had to be manipulated. Bernays called this the
engineering of consent.
The CIA went even further. They funded brainwashing experiments in which
they tried to erase the memories of people and create new identities that
were in line with their interests. They succeeding in erasing memories,
but failed miserably to reprogram people.
Psychoanalysts influence and power peaked around the 50s in America and
started to decline in the 60s. Merilyn Monroe, who was the patient of a
prominent psychoanalyst, committed suicide which raised a lot of
questions about the effectiveness of their methods. Then books appeared
and influencers spoke up against psychoanalysts saying that the system
they helped build was based on planned obsolescence and helped a small
elite to get rich by exploiting and controlling the masses through the
manufacturing of products that repressed and fulfilled their hidden

desires. So the pendulum swung the other way. Psychoanalyst were now
accused of building a society that corrupts the innocent individual as
opposed the Freudian idea of the evil and dangerous individual that was a
threat to society.
There is a policeman inside all our heads, he must be destroyed
The Freudian view of the human psyche is based on dangerous and primitive
emotions and their repression. Thats why Anna Freud tried to cure her
patients by putting them in a new environment and thats why she died a
virgin. Wilhelm Reich believed the opposite. He though that sexual energy
had to be expressed freely to be healthy and that humans are inherently
good, but the society that wanted to repress their inner energies made
them sick and dangerous. He also believed a lot of baloney, like he could
cure cancer and make rain fall
Reich died in the 50s, but his views became very popular in the 60s.
People took to the streets and demonstrated against corporations and the
government and how they worked together to keep the masses docile while
they fought an unjustified war in Vietnam. Demonstrators were overpowered
by the state, which resulted in a change of tactics. The personal become
political. People started making the changes in themselves they wanted to
see happen at a social level. Psychologist that followed and took Reichs
teachings further developed methods for people to express their innermost
fears and desires that would allow them to shed the controls and
conditioning imposed by society. The movement that started with small
isolated experiments quickly spread nationwide in the US and by the 80s
80% of the American population was transformed.
The process had dire consequences for business. The insurance industry
took the first blow as these new free individuals who lived in the
present didnt buy insurance. And thats where business had to reinvent
itself. Mass production was dead. They had to come up with products that
facilitated self expression, and showing off individual differences.
Corporations realized they had to conform to the new non-conformist
consumers in order to stay in business.
Abraham Maslow and his pyramid of needs provided a basis for business to
segment society into groups that had their own desires. It also became
clear that there was a limit to being different: the ways in which people
liked to express themselves could be categorized. They called this method
the Values and Lifestyles system. This went way beyond the previous
methods of demographics and social classes and allowed businesses to make
offers that seemed really personal to consumers.
The exact same methods were employed in politics. Regan and Thatcher both
got into power because they appealed to the inner directives group, who
could not be identified with traditional methods as they were part of all
social classes and demographic groups. But by going after their values
and figuring out what mattered to them (less government, more
individualistic society), they were able to give them exactly what they
wanted.
The hippie movement started as a rebellion against the state and big
business and was aimed at self expression and self actualization. By the

end of the century, these new self actualized individuals became

dependent on business for their new identities because business found the
way to help them be who they wanted to be. Business turned a threat into
the biggest opportunity in history. An old and finite economy based on
the static needs of the masses fulfilled by mass produced products was
made redundant by an ever changing and infinite number of individual
desires
that
made
infinite
economies
possible.
In
this
new
individualistic society, there is no society really. Its all about the
individual and satisfying its desires.
Eight people sipping wine in Kettering
The first three episodes showed how business learned to read consumers
desires and sell them products that satisfied them. The closing episode
shows how politics has done the same towards the end of the century using
the very same techniques as business.
In the classic model of politics, different candidates showed up with
their different agendas and it was up to the voter to choose one that
matched their preferences. In this new system dominated by super granular
opinion polls and analysis of peoples political desires, each candidate
tried to match their agenda to what they thought people wanted.
At first, that might sound like the ultimate democracy. However, by
responding to peoples particular whims and even unconscious desires,
politicians ended up making contradicting policies and not having a clear
sense of direction. In addition, things that people favoured in the short
term (like spending less on infrastructure), backfired in the medium and
long run and cost politicians votes. So in essence, what worked for
business, didnt work in politics.
The final message of the documentary is that by the end of the century,
we willingly reduced ourselves to our conscious or subconscious desires
and trying to satisfy them at all times. We have forgotten that being
human is a lot more than that.
Criticism
On the whole, this film is extremely useful to forming a well rounded
view of the world we live in and to putting together the pieces of the
puzzle that the developments of the past century represent. At the same
time, its important to note that this is only one of many different
interpretations.
My strongest critical point is that it could easily fuel conspiracy
theories. By focusing on the Freud family and certain other individuals,
it suggests that these people had an agenda and it was up to them to
trigger the events that took place. Conversely, I believe that while the
individuals portrayed played a significant role in shaping the course of
events (and, consequently, our world today), they were instrumental, but
not essential to the process. They were not part of a secret society with
an evil plan to enslave humanity. They merely acted out of self interest
(even believing they were making the world a better place) and in
accordance with the incentives their environment gave them. In other
words, if they had not done what they did, other people would have,

because the system was set up in a way that this was the only possible
outcome.
The 20th century saw an unprecedented acceleration of technological
development (which is hardly referenced in the documentary), and the
human psyche could not keep up. Our physiology has not changed much since
the prehistoric ages. We have a lot more in common with our ape ancestors
than we do with the rational beings we like to think we are (not
necessarily in the Freudian way though). And we suddenly found ourselves
in a completely new environment, which presented brand new challenges and
also certain opportunities to everyone who saw them.
The stories of the people who saw those opportunities dominate the
documentary. There is no conspiracy. There is simply a profit motive and
there are advanced techniques to read people and give them what they
(dont even know they) want. The documentary fails to make that point and
lets the viewer assume that there is some dark and mysterious plot behind
all this.
I feel that to paint an accurate image of the entanglement of capitalism
and democracy of the 20th century, externalities should be mentioned,
which the documentary fails to do. The idea of planned obsolescence does
come up at one point, but the fundamental flaw in the capitalistic
economy is overlooked: as long as neither business nor the consumer pays
for externalities, such as destruction of the environment, exploitation
of human and natural resources, the system is distorted. Someone will
eventually have to pay for these, as we increasingly find with global
warming, but the fact that these costs are removed from the economic
cycle is essential to understanding the capitalistic societies of the
20th century.
The documentary discusses the Reagan and Thatcher administrations in
detail, but it focuses mainly on how they got into power rather than the
consequences of their policies, which was just as if not more important
in shaping our recent history. The feverish deregulation, privatization
and liberalization and the belief that markets were self regulatory and
would solve every problem of society lead to suboptimal performances
across many domains, growing inequality of wealth distribution and
recurring economic crises. The most eloquent example is of course the
crisis of 2008, which is obviously out of the scope of current film.
Again, this documentary is definitely a must see for everyone wanting to
understand the world today and it begs for a 5th episode. From what weve
seen of the 21st century so far, the tendencies of the past century have
only accelerated. That said, small groups have also sparked up and they
keep flashing the light at the end of the tunnel so that we can hope to
transcend the Freudian capitalistic socio-economic system sometime in the
late 21st century.
Dilemma
The dilemma this documentary raises concerns everyone who wants to
succeed in a capitalistic society. To succeed in business you need to
employ the same techniques big business does. Or do you?

I dont think the techniques are bad in themselves. It all depends what
you use them for. As long as they are used to figure out real needs of
people that will improve their lives and allow them to become better
versions of themselves, I dont think there is anything wrong with that.
To me the key is solving a real problem that really improves someones
life as opposed to making them believe that it does.
Lessons
What practical lessons can we
1. Question your own wants
2. To live a good life,
yourself.
3. Make products that help
and (only) then you can
buy your product.

take away from all this?

and desires they may not be your own.
you need to work for things bigger than
people become better versions of themselves
use any technique necessary to get them to