Crowd Psychologists: Edward Bernays

Chapters: Elias Canetti, Edward Bernays, Gustave le Bon, Gabriel Tarde, Wilfred Trotter. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 37. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Edward Louis Bernays (November 22, 1891 March 9, 1995, was an American pioneer in the field of public relations along with Ivy Lee, referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations". Combining the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Dr. Sigmund Freud, Bernays was one of the first to attempt to manipulate public opinion using the subconscious. He felt this manipulation was necessary in society, which he regarded as irrational and dangerous as a result of the 'herd instinct' that Trotter had described. Adam Curtis's award-winning 2002 documentary for the BBC, The Century of the Self, pinpoints Bernays as the originator of modern public relations, and Bernays was named one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century by Life magazine. Born 1891 in Vienna to Jewish parents, Bernays was a double nephew of psychoanalysis pioneer Sigmund Freud. His father was Ely Bernays, brother of Freud's wife Martha Bernays. His mother was Freud's sister, Anna. In 1892 his family moved to New York City, where he attended DeWitt Clinton High School. In 1912 he graduated from Cornell University with a degree in agriculture, but chose journalism as his first career. He married Doris E. Fleischman in 1922. As a Jew who had witnessed the critical role that propaganda and mass media had played in creating anti-German sentiment in Britain prior to WWI and again during and after the Nazi's pseudo-democratic rise to power in Europe, Bernays felt that the same unleashing of irrational animosity could happen in any democratic society. According to the BBC in...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=158130 View Less