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Full text of 'Public relations, Edward L. Bernays and the American scene; annotated bilbiogrpahy of, and reference guide to writings by and about Edward L. Bernays from 1917 to 1951' See other formats. Propaganda, by Edward Bernays, in PDF format is here. THE ENGINEERING OF CONSENT EDWARD BERNAYS PDF PDF. The Engineering Of Consent Edward Bernays Pdf Other suggested file to download related to the engineering of. Recruiting Women Smokers: The Engineering of Consent. Engineering of consent. Journal of the American Medical Women's. Relations expert Edward Bernays to help. Further reading / viewing on the subject of Bernays and his work: Edward Bernays - Wikipedia. The Century of the Self - a 2002 BBC documentary about Bernays. Crystallizing Public Opinion - Bernays' 1923 work. The Engineering of Consent - Bernays' 1947 work. In 1947, Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays published an essay entitle “The Engineering of Consent.” Bernays defined “the engineering of consent” as the art of manipulating people, specifically Americans, whom Bernays described as “fundamentally irrational” and not to be trusted.

Edward Louis Bernays (/bərˈneɪz/; German: [bɛɐ̯ˈnaɪs]; November 22, 1891 − March 9, 1995) was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, referred to in his obituary as 'the father of public relations'.^[3] Bernays was named one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century by Life.^[4] He was the subject of a full length biography by Larry Tye called The Father of Spin (1999) and later an award-winning 2002 documentary for the BBC by Adam Curtis called The Century of the Self.

His best-known campaigns include a 1929 effort to promote female smoking by branding cigarettes as feminist 'Torches of Freedom' and his work for the United Fruit Company connected with the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the democratically elected Guatemalan government in 1954. He worked for dozens of major American corporations including Procter & Gamble and General Electric, and for government agencies, politicians, and non-profit organizations.

Of his many books, Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923) and Propaganda (1928) gained special attention as early efforts to define and theorize the field of public relations. Citing works of writers such as Gustave Le Bon, Wilfred Trotter, Walter Lippmann, and his own double uncleSigmund Freud, he described the masses as irrational and subject to herd instinct—and outlined how skilled practitioners could use crowd psychology and psychoanalysis to control them in desirable ways.^[5][6]

• 2Career
• 3Notable clients and campaigns
  • 3.5Tobacco
• 4Techniques
• 7Publications
• 9References

Family and education[edit]

Edward Bernays was born to a Jewish family,^[7] the son of Ely Bernays and Anna Freud Bernays. His great grandfather was Isaac Bernays, chief rabbi of Hamburg. Bernays was a 'double nephew' of Viennese psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud—by virtue of his mother, Freud's sister, and of his father's sister, Martha Bernays Freud, who married Sigmund.

The Bernays family moved from Vienna to the United States in the 1890s. Ely Bernays became a grain exporter at the Manhattan Produce Exchange, then sent for his wife and children.^[8]

In 1892, his family moved to New York City, where he attended DeWitt Clinton High School.^[9] In 1912 he graduated from Cornell University with a degree in agriculture, but chose journalism as his first career.^[10]

He married Doris E. Fleischman in 1922.^[11] Fleischman, a member of the Lucy Stone League, was public about keeping her last name, and her husband not only sanctioned but touted this fact. She was the first married woman to be issued a US passport without her husband's last name. Later, however, she changed her mind and her name, becoming Doris Bernays. By all accounts, Fleischman played a major though quiet role in the Bernays public relations business—including ghost-writing numerous memos and speeches, and publishing a newsletter.^[12]

Career[edit]

After graduating from Cornell, Bernays wrote for the National Nurseryman journal. Then he worked at the New York City Produce Exchange, where his father was a grain exporter. He went to Paris and worked for Louis Dreyfus and Company reading grain cables. By December of the same year^{[clarification needed]} he had returned to New York.^[10]

Medical editor[edit]

Following a meeting in New York with school friend Fred Robinson, Bernays became coeditor of Medical Review of Reviews and Dietetic and Hygienic Gazette in 1912. They took editorial positions in favor of showers and against corsets and distributed free copies to thousands of physicians across the country.^[13]

Two months later they took up the cause of Damaged Goods, an English translation of Les Avariés by Eugène Brieux. After publishing a positive review of the play, Bernays and Robinson wrote to its lead actor, Richard Bennett: 'The editors of the Medical Review of Reviews support your praiseworthy intention to fight sex-pruriency in the United States by producing Brieux's play Damaged Goods. You can count on our help.^[14] The play controversially dealt with venereal disease and prostitution—Bernays called it 'a propaganda play that fought for sex education.'^[15] He created the 'Medical Review of Reviews Sociological Fund Committee' and successfully solicited the support of such elite figures as John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, Reverend John Haynes Holmes, and Anne Harriman Sands Rutherford Vanderbilt, wife of William Kissam Vanderbilt.^[16][17]

Press agent[edit]

After his foray into the world of theater, Bernays worked as a creative press agent for various performers and performances. Already, he was using a variety of techniques which would become hallmarks of his later practice. He promoted the Daddy Long Legs stage play by tying it in with the cause of charity for orphans. To create interest in Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, he educated Americans about the subtleties of ballet—and publicized a picture of Flore Revalles, wearing a tight-fitting dress, at the Bronx Zoo, posed with a large snake. He built up Enrico Caruso as an idol whose voice was so sensitive that comically extreme measures were taken to protect it.^[18]

World War I[edit]

After the US entered the war, the Committee on Public Information hired Bernays to work for its Bureau of Latin-American Affairs, based in an office in New York. Bernays, along with Lieutenant F. E. Ackerman, focused on building support for war, domestically and abroad, focusing especially on businesses operating in Latin America.^[19][20] Bernays referred to this work as 'psychological warfare'.^[21][22]

After fighting ended, Bernays was part of a sixteen-person publicity group working for the CPI at the Paris Peace Conference. A scandal arose from his reference to propaganda in a press release. As reported by the New York World, the 'announced object of the expedition is 'to interpret the work of the Peace Conference by keeping up a worldwide propaganda to disseminate American accomplishments and ideals.'^[23][24]

Bernays later described a realization that his work for the CPI could also be used in peacetime:

There was one basic lesson I learned in the CPI—that efforts comparable to those applied by the CPI to affect the attitudes of the enemy, of neutrals, and people of this country could be applied with equal facility to peacetime pursuits. In other words, what could be done for a nation at war could be done for organizations and people in a nation at peace.^[25]

Counsel on public relations[edit]

After returning to New York, Bernays opened a public relations business. In 1923 he published a book, 'Crystallizing Public Opinion', outlining his profession, and taught a course at New York University. Both of these are considered firsts in the modern field of public relations.

Bernays, who pursued his calling in New York City from 1919 to 1963, styled himself a 'public relations counsel'. He had very pronounced views on the differences between what he did and what people in advertising did. A pivotal figure in the orchestration of elaborate corporate advertising campaigns and multi-media consumer spectacles, he nevertheless is among those listed in the acknowledgments section of the seminal government social science study 'Recent Social Trends in the United States' (1933).^[26]

Notable clients and campaigns[edit]

Bernays's famous corporate clients included Procter & Gamble, the American Tobacco Company, Cartier Inc., Best Foods, CBS, the United Fruit Company, General Electric, Dodge Motors, the fluoridationists of the Public Health Service, Knox-Gelatin, and innumerable other big names.

Bernays attempted to help Venida hair nets company to get women to wear their hair longer so they would use hairnets more. The campaign failed but did get government officials to require hairnets for some jobs.

Bernays worked with Procter & Gamble for Ivory-brand bar soap. The campaign successfully convinced people that Ivory soap was medically superior to other soaps. He also promoted soap through sculpting contests and floating contests because the soap floated better than competing products.

Bernays used his uncle Sigmund Freud's ideas to help convince the public, among other things, that bacon and eggs was the true all-American breakfast.^[27]

In the 1930s, his Dixie Cup campaign was designed to convince consumers that only disposable cups were sanitary by linking the imagery of an overflowing cup with subliminal images of vaginas and venereal disease.^[28]

He was publicity director for the 1939 New York World's Fair.^[29]

Another selection from his papers, the Typescript on Publicizing the Physical Culture Industry, 1927: 'Bernarr Macfadden', reveals Bernays' opinion of the leader of the physical culture movement. Yet another client, department store visionary Edward A. Filene, was the subject of the Typescript on a Boston Department Store Magnate. Bernays' Typescript on the Importance of Samuel Strauss: '1924 – Private Life' shows that the public relations counsel and his wife were fans of consumerism critic Samuel Strauss.^{[citation needed]}

Light's Golden Jubilee[edit]

In October 1929, Bernays was involved in promoting Light's Golden Jubilee. The event, which spanned across several major cities in the US, was designed to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Thomas Edison's invention of the light-bulb (though the light-bulb had been previously invented by Joseph Swan). The publicity elements of the Jubilee – including the special issuance of a US postage stamp and Edison's 're-creating' the invention of the light bulb for a nationwide radio audience – provided evidence of Bernays' love for big ideas and 'ballyhoo'. A follow-up event for the 75th anniversary, produced for television by David O. Selznick, was titled Light's Diamond Jubilee and broadcast on all four American TV networks on October 24, 1954.

Political clients[edit]

In 1924 Bernays set up a vaudeville 'pancake breakfast' for Calvin Coolidge to change his stuffy image before the 1924 election. Entertainers including Al Jolson, John Drew, Raymond Hitchcock, and the Dolly Sisters performed on the White House lawn. The event was widely reported by American newspapers, with The New York Times running the story under the headline 'President Nearly Laughs.'^[30]

A desperate Herbert Hoover consulted with Bernays a month before the 1932 presidential election. Bernays advised Hoover to create disunity within his opposition and to present an image of himself as an invincible leader.^[31]

Bernays advised William O'Dwyer, in his candidacy for Mayor of New York City, on how to appear in front of different demographics. For example, he should tell Irish voters about his actions against the Italian mafia—and Italian voters about his plans to reform the police department. To Jews he should appear as a committed opponent of the Nazis.^[32]

He helped to name the President's Emergency Committee for Employment, suggesting this name as preferable to the 'Committee for Unemployment'.^[33]

During World War II, Bernays advised the United States Information Agency as well as the Army and Navy. He was chairman of the National Advisory Committee of the Third US War Loan, co-chairman of the Victory Book campaign, and part of the New York State Defense Council.^[33]

In the 1950s, some of his ideas and vision helped portray India as the most democratic republic in Asia by having the People's Congress of India adapt a Bill of Rights. Freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, and freedom of petition were added to the Constitution of India.^{[citation needed]}

Bernays reported turning down the Nazis, Nicaragua under the Somoza family, Francisco Franco, and Richard Nixon.^[34]

Non-profit clients[edit]

In 1920 Bernays worked on the first NAACP convention in Atlanta, Georgia. His campaign was considered successful because there was no violence at the convention. His campaign focused on the important contributions of African-Americans to Whites living in the South. He later received an award from the NAACP for his contribution.

Bernays also worked on behalf of many non-profit institutions and organizations. These included, to name just a few, the Committee on Publicity Methods in Social Work (1926–1927), the Jewish Mental Health Society (1928), the Book Publishers Research Institute (1930–1931), the New York Infirmary for Women and Children (1933), the Committee for Consumer Legislation (1934), the Friends of Danish Freedom and Democracy (1940),^[35][36][37] the Citywide Citizens' Committee on Harlem (1942), and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society (1954–1961).

Freud[edit]

In 1920, Bernays organized the publication of Freud's Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis in the US, sending royalty money back to his uncle in Vienna. Freud turned down further offers at promotion, such as a possible lecture tour and an invitation to write 3,000-word newspaper columns, for $1,000 each, on topics such as 'The Wife's Mental Place in the Home' and 'What a Child Thinks About.'^[38]

'When a person would first meet Bernays,' says Scott Cutlip, 'it would not be long until Uncle Sigmund would be brought into the conversation. His relationship with Freud was always in the forefront of his thinking and his counseling.' According to Irwin Ross, another writer, 'Bernays liked to think of himself as a kind of psychoanalyst to troubled corporations.' In addition to publicizing Freud's ideas, Bernays used his association with Freud to establish his own reputation as a thinker and theorist.

Tobacco[edit]

In 1927, Bernays worked briefly for Liggett and Myers, makers of Chesterfield cigarettes. He pulled a stunt against the competing brand, Lucky Strike, which involved mocking the endorsements of opera singers who said Lucky Strikes were 'kind to your voice'. George Washington Hill, head of the American Tobacco Company, which made Lucky Strike, promptly hired Bernays away from Liggett and Myers.^[39]

When he started working for American Tobacco Company, Bernays was given the objective of increasing Lucky Strike sales among women, who, for the most part, had formerly avoided smoking. The first strategy was to persuade women to smoke cigarettes instead of eating. Bernays began by promoting the ideal of thinness itself, using photographers, artists, newspapers, and magazines to promote the special beauty of thin women. Medical authorities were found to promote the choice of cigarettes over sweets. Home-makers were cautioned that keeping cigarettes on hand was a social necessity.^[40]

Torches of Freedom[edit]

The first campaign succeeded; women smoked more cigarettes; American Tobacco Company brought in more revenue; and Lucky Strike led the market in growth. But a taboo remained on women smoking in public. Bernays consulted with psychoanalyst Abraham Brill , a student of Freud's, who reported to him that cigarettes represented 'torches of freedom' for women whose feminine desires were increasingly suppressed by their role in the modern world.^[41] Bernays organized a contingent of women to smoke cigarettes—'torches of freedom'—at the 1929 Easter Sunday parade in New York. The event was carefully scripted to promote the intended message. Bernays wrote:^[42]

Because it should appear as news with no division of the publicity, actresses should be definitely out. On the other hand, if young women who stand for feminism—someone from the Women's Party, say—could be secured, the fact that the movement would be advertised too, would not be bad. . . . While they should be goodlooking, they should not be too 'model-y.' Three for each church covered should be sufficient. Of course they are not to smoke simply as they come down the church steps. They are to join in the Easter parade, puffing away.

The march went as planned, as did the ensuing publicity, with ripples of women smoking prominently across the country.^[43][44]

Green Ball[edit]

In 1934, Bernays was asked to deal with women's apparent reluctance to buy Lucky Strikes because their green and red package clashed with standard female fashions. When Bernays suggested changing the package to a neutral color, Hill refused, saying that he had already spent millions advertising the package. Bernays then endeavored to make green a fashionable color.^[45]

The centerpiece of his efforts was the Green Ball, a social event at the Waldorf Astoria, hosted by Narcissa Cox Vanderlip. The pretext for the ball and its unnamed underwriter was that proceeds would go to charity. Famous society women would attend wearing green dresses. Manufacturers and retailers of clothing and accessories were advised of the excitement growing around the color green. Intellectuals were enlisted to give highbrow talks on the theme of green. Before the ball had actually taken place, newspapers and magazines (encouraged in various ways by Bernays's office) had latched on to the idea that green was all the rage.^[46]

Modus operandi[edit]

Throughout the job, Bernays concealed the fact that he was working for the American Tobacco Company, and in fact succeeded in keeping his own name out of the affair as well. Staff were instructed never to mention his name. Third parties were used, and various notable people received payments to promote smoking publicly as if on their own initiative.^[47] (Decades later, however, Bernays boasted about his role.)^[48]

Edward Bernays Pdf

Bernays didn't smoke cigarettes himself, and persistently tried to induce his wife Doris to quit.^[49] After his semi-retirement in the 1960s, he worked with the pro-health anti-smoking lawyer John Banzhaf's group, ASH, and supported other anti-smoking campaigns.^{[citation needed]}

United Fruit and Guatemala[edit]

The United Fruit Company (today's Chiquita Brands International) hired Bernays in the early 1940s for the purpose of promoting banana sales within the United States. Promote them he did, by linking bananas to good health and to American interests, and by placing them strategically in the hands of celebrities, in hotels, and other conspicuous places. Bernays also argued that United Fruit needed to put a positive spin on the banana-growing countries themselves, and for this purpose created a front group called the Middle America Information Bureau, which supplied information to journalists and academics.^[50]

United Fruit shut down the Middle America Information Bureau in 1948 under the new presidency of Thomas Dudley Cabot. Bernays resented this change but stayed on with the company, for a reported annual fee of more than $100,000.^[51] Bernays worked on the national press and successfully drummed up coverage of Guatemala's Communist menace.^[52]

The company became alarmed about the political situation in Guatemala after Jacobo Árbenz Guzman became president in March 1951. On March 21, 1951, Bernays told United Fruit's head of publicity, Edmund Whitman, that Guatemala could reprise Iran's recent nationalization of British Petroleum:

We recommend that immediate steps be undertaken to safeguard American business interests in Latin American countries against comparable action there. News knows no boundaries today. . . . To disregard the possibilities of the impact of events one upon another is to adopt a head-in-the-sand-ostrich policy.

He recommended a campaign in which universities, lawyers, and the US government would all condemn expropriation as immoral and illegal; the company should use media pressure 'to induce the President and State Department to issue a policy pronouncement comparable to the Monroe Doctrine concerning expropriation.' In the following months, The New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, Time, Newsweek, and the Atlantic Monthly had all published articles describing the threat of Communism in Guatemala. A Bernays memo in July 1951 recommended that this wave of media attention should be translated into action by promoting:

(a) a change in present U.S. ambassadorial and consular representation, (b) the imposition of congressional sanctions in this country against government aid to pro-Communist regimes, (c) U.S. government subsidizing of research by disinterested groups like the Brookings Institution into various phases of the problem.^[53]

Per Bernays's strategy, United Fruit distributed favorable articles and an anonymous Report on Guatemala to every member of Congress and to national 'opinion molders'.^[54][55] They also published a weekly Guatemala Newsletter and sent it to 250 journalists, some of whom used it as a source for their reporting.^[55]Bernays formed close relationships with journalists including The New York Times reporter Will Lissner at and columnist Walter Winchell.^[52][53] In January 1952 he brought a cohort of journalists from various notable newspapers on a tour of Guatemala, sponsored by the company. This technique proved highly effective and was repeated four more times.^[55]In June, 1954, the US Central Intelligence Agency effected a coup d'état code-named Operation PBSUCCESS. The CIA backed a minimal military force, fronted by Carlos Castillo Armas, with a psychological warfare campaign to portray military defeat as a foregone conclusion. During the coup itself, Bernays was the primary supplier of information for the international newswiresAssociated Press, United Press International and the International News Service.^[56][57]

Following the coup, Bernays built up the image of Guatemala's new president Carlos Castillo Armas, giving advice for his public appearances both in Guatemala and in the US. In 1956, Bernays produced a pamphlet comparing the Communist way and the Christian way.^[58]

In 1959, United Fruit dispensed with all external advisors including Bernays.^[59]

Techniques[edit]

Third parties[edit]

Bernays argued that the covert use of third parties was morally legitimate because those parties were morally autonomous actors.^[60]

If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway', he said. In order to promote sales of bacon, for example, he conducted research and found that the American public ate very light breakfast of coffee, maybe a roll and orange juice. He went to his physician and found that a heavy breakfast was sounder from the standpoint of health than a light breakfast because the body loses energy during the night and needs it during the day. He asked the physician if he would be willing, at no cost, to write to 5,000 physicians and ask them whether their judgment was the same as his—confirming his judgment. About 4,500 answered back, all concurring that a more significant breakfast was better for the health of the American people than a light breakfast. He arranged for this finding to be published in newspapers throughout the country with headlines like '4,500 physicians urge bigger breakfast' while other articles stated that bacon and eggs should be a central part of breakfast and, as a result of these actions, the sale of bacon went up.^[61]

Describing the response to his campaign for Ivory Soap, Bernays wrote: 'As if actuated by the pressure of a button, people began working for the client instead of the client begging people to buy.'^[62]

Businesses found these covert methods irresistible. Strother Walker and Paul Sklar wrote in Business Finds Its Voice (1938) that Bernays had offered a solution to popular skepticism of business which arose in the depression: better 'to implant an idea in a group leader's mind and let him spread it than to write up an idea and send it to the papers as a release, in the old-fashioned way...'.^[63]

Scientific approach[edit]

Bernays pioneered the public relations industry's use of psychology and other social sciences to design its public persuasion campaigns: '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 about it? The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible, at least up to a certain point and within certain limits.'^[64] He later called this scientific technique of opinion-molding the engineering of consent.^[65]

Bernays explained in his 1947 essay 'The Engineering of Consent':

This phrase quite simply means the use of an engineering approach—that is, action based only on thorough knowledge of the situation and on the application of scientific principles and tried practices to the task of getting people to support ideas and programs.

Bernays expanded on Walter Lippmann's concept of stereotype, arguing that predictable elements could be manipulated for mass effects:

But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given [the common man] a rubber stamp, a rubber stamp inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of tabloids and the profundities of history, but quite innocent of original thought. Each man's rubber stamp is the twin of millions of others, so that when these millions are exposed to the same stimuli, all receive identical imprints. […]

The amazing readiness with which large masses accept this process is probably accounted for by the fact that no attempt is made to convince them that black is white. Instead, their preconceived hazy ideas that a certain gray is almost black or almost white are brought into sharper focus. Their prejudices, notions, and convictions are used as a starting point, with the result that they are drawn by a thread into passionate adherence to a given mental picture.^[66]

Not only psychology but sociology played an important role for the public relations counsel, according to Bernays. The individual is 'a cell organized into the social unit. Touch a nerve at a sensitive spot and you get an automatic response from certain specific members of the organism.' ^[67]

Philosophy[edit]

Bernays' vision was of a utopian society in which individuals' dangerous libidinal energies, the psychic and emotional energy associated with instinctual biological drives that Bernays viewed as inherently dangerous, could be harnessed and channeled by a corporate elite for economic benefit. Through the use of mass production, big business could fulfill the cravings of what Bernays saw as the inherently irrational and desire-driven masses, simultaneously securing the niche of a mass-production economy (even in peacetime), as well as sating what he considered to be dangerous animal urges that threatened to tear society apart if left unquelled.

Bernays touted the idea that the 'masses' are driven by factors outside their conscious understanding, and therefore that their minds can and should be manipulated by the capable few. 'Intelligent men must realize that propaganda is the modern instrument by which they can fight for productive ends and help to bring order out of chaos.'^[68][69][62]

-- Propaganda (1928) pp. 9–10

Propaganda was portrayed as the only alternative to chaos.^[70]

One way Bernays reconciled manipulation with liberalism was his claim that the human masses would inevitably succumb to manipulation—and therefore the good propagandists could compete with the evil, without incurring any marginal moral cost.^[71] In his view, 'the minority which uses this power is increasingly intelligent, and works more and more on behalf of ideas that are socially constructive.'^[72]

Unlike some other early public relations practitioners, Bernays advocated centralization and planning. Marvin Olasky calls his 1945 book Take Your Place at the Peace Table 'a clear appeal for a form of mild corporate socialism.' ^[73]

Bernays also drew on the ideas of the French writer Gustave Le Bon,^[74] the originator of crowd psychology, and of Wilfred Trotter, who promoted similar ideas in the anglophone world in his book Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War.^[75] Bernays refers to these two names in his writings.^{[citation needed]} Trotter, who was a head and neck surgeon at University College Hospital, London, read Freud's works, and it was he who introduced Wilfred Bion, whom he lived and worked with, to Freud's ideas.^{[citation needed]} When Freud fled Vienna for London after the Anschluss, Trotter became his personal physician.^{[citation needed]} Trotter, Wilfred Bion, and Ernest Jones became key members of the Freudian psychoanalysis movement in England.^{[citation needed]} They would develop the field of group dynamics, largely associated with the Tavistock Institute, where many of Freud's followers worked.^{[citation needed]} Thus ideas of group psychology and psychoanalysis came together in London around World War II.^{[citation needed]}

Recognition and legacy[edit]

Much of Bernays' reputation today stems from his persistent public relations campaign to build his own reputation as 'America's No. 1 Publicist'. During his active years, many of his peers in the industry were offended by Bernays' continuous self-promotion. According to Scott Cutlip, 'Bernays was a brilliant person who had a spectacular career, but, to use an old-fashioned word, he was a braggart.'^[76]

Bernays attracted positive and negative attention for his grand statements about the role of public relations in society. Reviewers praised Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923) as a pioneering study of the importance of something called public opinion. Propaganda (1928) drew more criticism for its advocacy of mass manipulation.^[77]

In the 1930s, his critics became more harsh. As the leading figure in public relations and a notorious advocate of 'propaganda', Bernays was compared to European fascists such as Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler.^[78] (Bernays himself wrote in his 1965 autobiography that Goebbels read and used his books.)^[79]

Rather than retreating from the spotlight, Bernays continued to play up his ideas—for example, stating in a 1935 speech to the Financial Advertisers Association that strong men (including publicists) should become human symbols to lead the masses.^[80] On other occasions he tempered this message with the idea that, while propaganda is inevitable, the democratic system allows a pluralism of propaganda, while fascist systems offer only a single official propaganda.^[81]

At the same time, Bernays was praised for his apparent success, wisdom, foresight, and influence as an originator of public relations.^[82]

While opinions ranged negative to positive, there was widespread agreement that propaganda had a powerful effect on the public mind.^[83] According to John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, in a published review of Larry Tye's biography of Bernays:^[84]

It is impossible to fundamentally grasp the social, political, economic and cultural developments of the past 100 years without some understanding of Bernays and his professional heirs in the public relations industry. PR is a 20th-century phenomenon, and Bernays—widely eulogized as the 'father of public relations' at the time of his death in 1995—played a major role in defining the industry's philosophy and methods.

As a result, his legacy remains a highly contested one, as evidenced by Adam Curtis' 2002 BBC documentary The Century of the Self.

Publications[edit]

Books[edit]

• The Broadway Anthology (1917, co-author)
• Crystallizing Public Opinion (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1923) OCLC215243834
• A Public Relations Counsel (1927)
• An Outline of Careers: A Practical Guide to Achievement by Thirty-Eight Eminent Americans (1927)
• Verdict of Public Opinion on Propaganda (1927)
• Propaganda (New York: Horace Liveright. 1928) ISBN978-0-8046-1511-2
• This Business of Propaganda (1928)
• Universities—Pathfinders in Public Opinion (1937)
• Careers for Men: A Practical Guide to Opportunity in Business, Written by Thirty-Eight Successful Americans (1939)
• Speak Up for Democracy: What You Can Do—A Practical Plan of Action for Every American Citizen (New York: The Viking Press, 1940)
• Future of Private Enterprise in the Post-War World (1942)
• Democratic Leadership in Total War (1943)
• Psychological Blueprint for the Peace—Canada, U.S.A. (1944)
• Public Relations (1945)
• Your Place at the Peace Table. What You Can Do to Win a Lasting United Nations Peace (New York: The Gerent Press, 1945)
• What the British Think of Us: A Study of British Hostility to America and Americans and Its Motivation, with Recommendations for Improving Anglo-American Relations (1950, co-author with his wife Doris Fleischman)
• The Engineering of Consent (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955)(contributor) OCLC550584
• Your Future in Public Relations (1961)
• Biography of an Idea: Memoirs of Public Relations Counsel (1965)
• Case for Reappraisal of U.S. Overseas Information Policies and Programs (Special Study) (1970), by Edward L. Bernays and Burnet Hershey (editors)

Selected articles[edit]

• 'The Minority Rules', The Bookman, April 1927, pp. 150–155.
• 'Manipulating Public Opinion: The Why and the How', American Journal of Sociology 33(6), May 1928.
• 'The Marketing of National Policies: A Study of War Propaganda', Journal of Marketing 6(3), January 1942.
• 'Attitude Polls—Servants or Masters?', Public Opinion Quarterly 9(3), Autumn 1945.
• 'The Engineering of Consent', Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 250, March 1947.
• 'An Educational Program for Unions', Industrial and Labor Relations Review 1(1), October 1947.
• 'Emergence of the Public Relations Counsel: Principles and Recollections', Business History Review 45(3), Autumn 1971.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^Tye (1998), p. 147. 'Feeling he was too short, at 5 feet 4 inches, Eddie seemed determined to make everything else larger than life. He even inflated his name with an L., a middle initial that was not on his birth record in Vienna. It apparently stood for Louis, although even his daughters aren't sure, since he didn't like to talk about it.
2. ^https://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/10/obituaries/edward-bernays-father-public-relations-leader-opinion-making-dies-103.html
3. ^'Edward Bernays, 'Father of Public Relations' And Leader in Opinion Making, Dies at 103'. The New York Times. March 10, 1995.
4. ^Ewen, Stuart (1996). 'Chapter 1: Visiting Edward Bernays'. PR! A Social History Of Spin – Chapter 1. Basic Books. Archived from the original on 2008-09-05.Cite uses deprecated parameter |deadurl= (help)
5. ^Bernays, Edward (1923). Crystallizing Public Opinion. Ig Publishing. ISBN193543926X.
6. ^Bernays, Edward (1928). Propaganda. Ig Publishing. ISBN0970312598.
7. ^Lavin, Maud (July 21, 2002). 'A literary couple's muted memoir of 1950s New York'. Chicago Tribune. Edward and his wife, Doris Fleischman, were nonpracticing, highly assimilated, wealthy German-American Jews, and Anne grew up a self-professed hothouse flower on New York's Upper East Side.
8. ^Tye (1998), p. 115.
9. ^Colford, Paul D. (December 5, 1991). 'A Birthday Salute to the Father of Public Relations'. Newsday (Nassau ed.). Part II p. 78. Retrieved February 24, 2016.
10. ^ ^abTye (1998), 4–5.
11. ^Cook, Joan (July 12, 1980). 'Doris Fleischman Bernays Dead; Pioneer Public Relations Counsel'. The New York Times. Metropolitan Report p. 22. Retrieved February 24, 2016.
12. ^Tye (1998), pp. 1–3, 123–124. 'Once she resolved to enter her husband's world of public relations, Doris did play a central role in building the Bernays empire, and when the press dubbed him the prince of publicity she could rightfully claim to be the princess. She made her mark first as a wordsmith, churning out press releases and polished stories on clients ranging from the U.S. War Department to the American Tobacco Company. She also conceived of, wrote, and edited a four-page newsletter called Contact, which reprinted parts of speeches and articles on public relations, sorted through new ideas in the field, and promoted the activities of the Bernays office. And she ghost-wrote scores of speeches and strategy papers that were delivered under her husband's name. It's easy to pick out her writings from among the many papers that Eddie Bernays left behind: they're the ones with rich vocabulary and poetic flourish, free from the more formal style that was his trademark.'
13. ^Tye (1998), pp. 5–6. 'They used the Medical Review to argue against women wearing corsets with stays and to encourage shower baths; they published expert opinions on health controversies, a relatively novel approach; and they distributed free copies to most of the 137,000 licensed physicians in the United States.'
14. ^Tye (1998), pp. 6–7. 'Bennett quickly accepted the offer, pumping up the young editor with visions of a crusade against Victorian mores, promising to recruit actors who would work without pay and prodding him to raise money for the production. Eddie was so excited that he volunteered to underwrite the production.'
15. ^Rampton & Stauber (2001) , p. 44.
16. ^Tye (1998), p. 8. 'The key with Damaged Goods, he realized, was to transform the controversy into a cause and recruit backers who already were public role models. The twenty-one-year-old editor formed a Medical Review of Reviews Sociological Fund Committee, then attracted members with an artful appeal that played on Bennett's reputation as an artist as well as the worthiness of battling prudishness. Among those who signed up were John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt Sr., Mr. and Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dr. William Jay Schieffelin, whose company had recently brought to America a treatment for syphilis, and the Reverent John Haynes Holmes of New York's Unitarian Community Church.'
17. ^Cutlip (1994), p. 162.
18. ^Tye (1998), pp. 9–16.
19. ^Tye (1998), p. 18. 'Finally given his chance to serve, Eddie recruited Ford, International Harvester, and scores of other American firms to distribute literature on U.S. war aims to foreign contacts and post U.S. propaganda on the windows of 650 American offices overseas. He distributed postcards to Italian soldiers at the front so they could boost morale at home, and he planted propaganda behind the German lines to sow dissent. He organized rallies at Carnegie Hall featuring freedom fighters from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other states that were anxious to break free of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And to counter German propaganda he had American propaganda printed in Spanish and Portuguese and inserted into export journals sent across Latin America.
    'In short, he helped win America over to an unpopular war using precisely the techniques he'd used to promote Daddy Long Legs and the Ballet Russe.'
20. ^James R. Mock, 'The Creel Committee in Latin America', The Hispanic American Historical Review 22(2), May 1942, p. 276. 'Another section of the New York office, however, was especially concerned with publicity channels and publicity for the nations south of us. This was the division known as the Bureau of Latin-American Affairs, with Edward L. Bernays and Lieutenant F. E. Ackerman playing possibly the leading roles. That organization appealed especially to American firms doing business in Latin America, and secured their cooperation. In addition to means already cited, this section utilized various kinds of educators, especially as a medium of distributing pamphlets.'
21. ^Ewen (1996), pp. 162–163. 'During the war years, Bernays joined the army of publicists rallied under the banner of the CPI and concentrated on propaganda efforts aimed at Latin American business interests. Within this vast campaign of 'psychological warfare', as he described it, Bernays—like others of his generation—began to develop an expanded sense of publicity and its practical uses.'
22. ^Alan Axelrod, Selling the Great War: The Making of American Propaganda; New York: Palgrave Macmillan (St. Martin's Press), 2009; ISBN978-0-230-60503-9; p. 200.
23. ^Tye (1998), p. 19.
24. ^Cutlip (1994), p. 165. 'Bernays' release announced that the Official Press Mission to the Peace Conference was leaving the next day for Paris and instead of the narrow technical press support mission Creel had defined for the group, Bernays inserted this sentence: 'The announced object of the expedition is to interpret the work of the Peace Conference by keeping up a worldwide propaganda to disseminate American accomplishments and ideals.' Two days later, the New York World headlined the story: 'TO INTERPRET AMERICAN IDEALS.' George Creel was furious; already in a battle with Congress, Creel knew that this would add fat to the fire. He disavowed the story. Nonetheless, it hastened the demise of the CPI.'
25. ^Cutlip (1994), p. 168.
26. ^President's Research Committee on Social Trends (1933). Recent Social Trends in the United States. Internet Archive. McGraw-Hill Book Company.
27. ^Alix Spiegel. Freud's Nephew and the Origins of Public Relations, Morning Edition, 2005-04-22
28. ^Alan Bilton (2013). Silent Film Comedy and American Culture. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 16. ISBN978-1-137-02025-3.
29. ^See 'The New York world's fair, a symbol for democracy', address by Bernays to the Merchant's Association of New York, 7 April 1937.
30. ^Tye (1998), pp 77–79. See 'Breakfast With Coolidge' typescript, prepared 8 February 1962.
31. ^Tye (1988), pp. 79– 80.
32. ^Tye (1998), pp. 81–83.
33. ^ ^abTye (1998), p. 84–85.
34. ^Tye (1998), p. 89.
35. ^Bernays, Edward L. (1965). Biography of an idea: memoirs of public relations counsel. Simon and Schuster. p. 606. I offered to help organize the Friends of Danish Freedom and Democracy, made up for the most part of Americans of Danish ...
36. ^Hasselriis, Caspar Henrik Wolffsen (1959). Helligdag: erindringer (in Danish). Udgivet af Dansk samvirke hos E. Munksgaard. p. 143. ... at han vilde engagere den kendte Public Relations Ekspert Edward L. Bernays til at være Raadgiver. ... Resultatet blev Dannelsen af 'American Friends of Danish Freedom and Democracy', et Navn foreslaaet af Mr. Bernays, som mente, ...
37. ^Jensen, Mette Bastholm; Jensen, Steven L. B. (2003). Denmark and the Holocaust. Institute for International Studies, Department for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. ISBN978-87-989305-1-8. The 'Father of Public Relations and Spin' and nephew of Sigmund Freud Edward L. Bernays (1890–1995), was also hired by the Friends of Danish Freedom and Democracy as a ...
38. ^Tye (1998), pp. 185–190.
39. ^Tye (1998), 35–36.
40. ^ ^abTye (1998), p. 23–26. 'Bernays launched the campaign against sweets with his tried-and-true tactic of enlisting 'experts,' in this case convincing Nickolas Muray, a photographer friend, to ask other photographers and artists to sing praises of the thin. 'I have come to the conclusion,' Muray wrote, 'that the slender woman who, combining suppleness and grace with slenderness, who instead of overeating sweets and deserts, lights a cigarette, as the advertisements say, has created a new standard of female loveliness. . . . I am interested in knowing if my own judgment concurs with that of others, and should be most happy to have your opinion on the subject.'
41. ^Tye (1998), p. 27–28. 'Bernays understood they were up against a social taboo that cast doubt on the character of women who smoked, but he wasn't sure of the basis of the inhibition or how it could be overcome. So he got Hill to agree to pay for a consultation with Dr. A. A. Brill, a psychoanalyst and disciple of Bernays's uncle, Dr. Sigmund Freud.
    'It is perfectly normal for women to want to smoke cigarettes,' Brill advised. 'The emancipation of women has suppressed many of their feminine deisres. More women now do the same work as men do. Many women bear no children; those who do bear have fewer children. Feminine traits are masked. Cigarettes, which are equated with men, become torches of freedom.'
    'That rang a bell for Bernays. Why not organize a parade of prominent women lighting their 'torches of freedom'? And do it on Easter Sunday, a holiday symbolizing freedom of spirit, on Fifth Avenue, America's most prestigious promenade?'
42. ^Tye (1998), p. 29.
43. ^Tye (1998), pp. 30–31. 'The actual march went off more smoothly than even its scriptwriters imagined. Ten young women turned out, marching down Fifth Avenue with their lighted 'torches of freedom,' and the newspapers loved it.
    […] Miss Hunt issued the following communiqué from the smoke-clouded battlefield: 'I hope that we have started something and that these torches of freedom, with no particular brand favored, will smash the discriminatory taboo on cigarettes for women and that our sex will go on breaking down all discriminations.'
    Go on they did. During the following days women were reported to be taking to the streets, lighted cigarettes in hand, in Boston and Detroit, Wheeling and San Francisco.'
44. ^'Group of Girls Puff at Cigarettes as a Gesture of ‘Freedom’' (part of a headline), The New York Times, 1 April 1929.
45. ^Tye (1998), p. 38.
46. ^Tye (1998), p. 39. 'Vogelman signed up and invited fashion editors to the Waldorf for a Green Fashions Fall Luncheon with, of course, green menus featuring green beans, asparagus-tip salad, broiled French lamb chops with haricots verts and olivette potatoes, pistachio mousse glacé, green mints, and crème de menthe. The head of the Hunter College art department gave a talk entitled 'Green in the Work of Great Artists,' and a noted psychologist enlightened guests on the psychological implications of the color green. The press took note, with the New York Sun headline reading, 'It looks like a Green Winter.' The Post predicted a 'Green Autumn,' and one of the wire services wrote about 'fall fashions stalking the forests for their color note, picking green as the modish fall wear.'
47. ^Tye (1998), pp. 31–32. 'One way he found citizens and specialists was by offering money. Sometimes it came as an honorarium, like the $100 he proposed paying 'a dietician [who] talks on diet as the best means to produce moderate curves' and a 'physiologist induced to comment on benefits of modern trend to reasonable figure.' Then there was the $5000 he offered to donate to the favorite charity of Mrs. Charles Dana Gibson, wife of the creator of the renowned Gibson Girl illustrations, if she would agree to sign a statement saying 'she smoked Luckies and that they were kind to her throat.'
48. ^Tye (1998), pp. 33–34. 'If he began by disguising his role in the battle to get women smoking, Bernays more than made up for that in later years. The parade story in particular became part of his repertoire on the speaking circuit and in scores of interviews until his death in 1995, and with each retelling the tale got more colorful and his claims more sweeping. In his 1965 memoirs, for instance, he discussed the slow process of breaking down conventions like the taboo against women smoking. But by 1971 he was telling an oral historian at Columbia University that 'overnight the taboo was broken by one overt act,' the 1929 Easter Sunday march.'
49. ^Tye (1998), pp. 27, 48. 'Whatever his attitude in public, at home he did all he could to persuade his wife, Doris, to give up her pack-a-day habit.'
50. ^Tye (1998), pp. 160–164. Tye notes: 'The bureau even renamed the region, explaining that 'Middle America' was 'a rational and timely expansion of the phrase 'Central America,' which by long usage includes only the republics of Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, and the colony of British Honduras.' Middle America would include those countries, along with Mexico and the Caribbean island republics of Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.'
51. ^Tye (1998), pp. 164–165. Tye's source for Bernays's $100,000 fee is probably Thomas McCann, whom he quotes on p. 178 as saying: 'My estimate is we were spending in excess of $100,000 a year for Edward L. Bernays, just for his consulting services, which was an enormous amount of money in 1952.'
52. ^ ^abRichard H. Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention; University of Texas Press, 1982; ninth printing, 2004; ISBN0-292-71083-6; pp. 112–114.
53. ^ ^abTye (1998), p. 167–170.
54. ^Tye (1998), p. 175.
55. ^ ^abcJohn Kirch, 'Covering a Coup: The American Press and Guatemala in 1954Archived 2012-06-23 at the Wayback Machine', Paper presented at AEJMC National Convention, Washington DC; August 2007.
56. ^Étienne Dasso, 'Aux origines du coup d’État de 1954 au Guatemala : le rôle de la United Fruit Company dans la préparation du soulèvement contre Jacobo Arbenz', L'Ordinaire des Amériques 210 (2010), pp. 175–192.
57. ^Tye (1998), p. 176. 'His Library of Congress files show he remained a key source of information for the press, especially the liberal press, right through the takeover. In fact, as the invasion was commencing on June 18, his papers indicate hew as giving the 'first news anyone received on the situation' to the Associated Press, United Press, the International News Service, and The New York Times, with contacts intensifying over the next several days.'
58. ^Tye (1998), p. 179. 'And in 1956 Bernays came up with the idea of widely disseminating a comparison of the teachings of the Communists with those of the church. 'Hate is the driving force of communism,' the report concluded, whereas 'charity is the impelling motive of Christianity.' And under communism 'there is no moral law' and 'no personal liberty,' whereas in Christianity 'the moral law is the way which man is created to follow' and 'free will means liberty is possible, the liberty of the sons of God to do the right.'
59. ^Tye (1998), p. 180.
60. ^Marks (1957), p. 82. 'Bernays once spoke directly to the question of the ethics of a propagandist's speaking through a 'front.' There is no evidence that, at the time, he convinced anyone; but his position is worth considering as contrast to the prevailing judgment. While he readily admitted that a propagandist may not ethically buy the cooperation of a third party, he argued that it is perfectly legitimate for him to enlist the aid of a third party and conceal the relationship. The third party becomes a new advocate, not a subsidiary of the first. He continued:

    That individual or organization may then propagandize it [the original client's point of view] through its own channels because it is interested in it. In such a case, the point of origin then becomes that individual or organization. The public relations counsel, having made the link between the interest of his client and the interest of the third party, no longer need figure in the resulting expression to the public. [Bernays, 'This Business of Propaganda,' p. 199.]

61. ^'Edward L. Bernays tells the story of making bacon & eggs all-American Breakfast'.
62. ^ ^abMarks (1957), p. 73.
63. ^Quoted in Olasky (1984), p. 10.
64. ^Bernays, Edward (2005) [1928]. Propaganda. Brooklyn, N.Y: Ig Pub. p. 47. ISBN0970312598.
65. ^Bernays, Edward L. (March 1947). 'The Engineering of Consent'(PDF). Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 250 (1): 113–20 at p. 114. doi:10.1177/000271624725000116. ISSN0002-7162. Archived from the original(PDF) on August 13, 2012. Retrieved February 24, 2016. Any person or organization depends ultimately on public approval, and is therefore faced with the problem of engineering the public's consent to a program or goal.Cite uses deprecated parameter |dead-url= (help)
66. ^Bernays, 'The Minority Rules' (1927), pp. 150, 151; cited in Marks (1957), p. 116.
67. ^Bernays, Propaganda (book) (1928), p. 28; quoted in Olasky (1985), p. 20.
68. ^Bernays, Propaganda (book) (1928), p. 159. Quoted in Olasky (1984), p. 3.
69. ^Olasky (1985), p. 17. '… his belief that behind-the-scenes controllers should exercise 'social responsibility' by devising clever public relations campaigns to direct 'human herds' into appropriate corals.'
70. ^Olasky (1985), p. 19.; Olasky (1984), p. 19, f. 40. 'Bernays emphasized that in a large scale society there were only two choices: manipulation or social chaos. He saw history moving in a certain direction and public relations practitioners obliged to climb on the locomotive'.
71. ^Olasky (1984), pp. 13–14. 'What Potter did not understand, though, is that the contradictions apparent to a classically-trained political scientist formed a seamless web in the new world of public relations that Bernays was proposing. If the 'individual common man' has no real individuality, as Bernays argued in Propaganda – only 'rubber stamping' by one propagandist or another, then one more duping does no harm to individual souls. And if Hitler had hit upon the techniques and used them for evil purposes, then that would be all the more reason-- given the inevitability of these techniques being put into use and the inability of men to resist them-- for those hoping to avoid the chaos to rush the techniques into use before evil could turn them into a triumph of fire.'
72. ^Bernays, 'The Minority Rules' (1927), p. 155; quoted in Marks (1957), p. 182.
73. ^Olasky (1984), p. 12. 'Bernays, however, anticipated greater centralization in government and media, and the consequent growth of a new bureaucracy. He advocated governmental licensing of public relations counselors, or at the least a set pattern of formal, university training befitting those who would form a latter-day mandarin class. Bernays also tried to enlist proponents of greater economic centralization in his public-relations planning.
74. ^StormCloudsGathering. 'Rule from the Shadows - The Psychology of Power'. StormCloudsGathering. Retrieved 2017-11-28.
75. ^Strottman, Christine (June 18, 2013). 'Edward L. Bernays'. www.transatlanticperspectives.org. Archived from the original on December 1, 2017. Retrieved 2017-11-28.Cite uses deprecated parameter |dead-url= (help)
76. ^Cutlip (1994), p. 160.
77. ^Olasky (1984), pp. 4–6.
78. ^Olasky (1984), p. 8. 'Bernays' own public relations also tended to suffer when comparisons were made between his techniques and those of the Nazis. One book in 1934, for instance, criticized the techniques of propaganda 'carried into perfection by the Lord Northcliffes in wartime England, the Edward Bernays in industrial America, and the Dr. Goebbels in fascist Germany.' Barrons linked American and German-style public relations in 1935 when it noted that 'Hitler, by making what Bernays calls 'Devils' for the German masses to look down upon, has aroused the acclaim of the more easily swayed masses.' A 1934 article by Abraham H. Cohen in Opinion noted that Bernays had written a preface to a book on public opinion and commented, 'Now that the art of Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays has been reduced to a science, and is receiving the attention of the Universities, we may soon look to a new crop of manipulators of the public will. Who knows, but that a new American Goebbels...is now pouring over this book.'
79. ^Bernays (1965), p. 652. Quoted in Dennis W. Johnson, Routledge Handbook of Political Management, (New York: Routledge, 2009), p. 314 n. 3; and in Tye (1998), p. 111.

    Karl von Wiegand, foreign correspondent of the Hearst newspapers, an old hand at interpreting Europe and just returned from Germany, was telling us about Goebbels and his propaganda plans to consolidate Nazi power. Goebbels had shown Wiegand his propaganda library, the best Wiegand had ever seen. Goebbels, said Wiegand, was using my book Crystallizing Public Opinion as a basis for his destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany. This shocked me. ... Obviously the attack on the Jews of Germany was no emotional outburst of the Nazis, but a deliberate, planned campaign.

80. ^Olasky (1984), pp. 8–9. 'Bernays himself added some gasoline to this fire when he argued, as did Goebbels, for the necessity of strong men, human gods, to emerge as influencers of public opinion; for instance, in a speech to the Financial Advertisers Association in 1935, Bernays said that the main answer to financial problems is 'to acquire an entire new set of outstanding human living symbols that will hold public confidence…Publicists, economists, leaders in research, the heads of great educational institutions can and should be made the human symbols to bring new faith and strength.' Journalists compared statements of that sort by Bernays to the thoughts of Goebbels or, alternately, Stalin.'
81. ^Marks (1957), p. 200 'By that time [the mid-1930s] he had developed a keen sense of the threat from fascism and frequently urged that the democracies use propaganda in their own defense. It was in this context that Bernays began treating propaganda as synonymous with free speech and debate, as an unexceptional feature of democracy itself rather than as its antithesis. As a participant on 'Town Meeting of the Air' in 1937 he said,

    Propaganda is the voice of the people in the democracy of today because it gives everyone an opportunity to present his point of view. Fascist or Communist societies have no alternate propagandas; they must accept the official propagandas of those in power. [...]

82. ^Olasky (1984), p. 9. 'Bernays was able to overcome criticism partly because there was, for many, little arguing with success. Life in 1933 noted that '...at 1 Wall St., there is Edw. L. Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, who has probably made more money out of applied psycho-analysis than all Vienna ever saw.' The Bulletin of the Financial Advertisers Association examined profit figures in 1935 and then called Bernays 'the outstanding counsel on public relations in the United States today, a profession he was largely instrumental in creating.'
83. ^Marks (1957), p. 99. 'And Bernays' word was respected. Said the Committee on Propaganda of the National Education Association, citing Bernays and, incidentally using another conventional metaphor, 'This continual and universal activity [i.e. of the 'thousands of highly trained and ingenious men' who work at 'the great occupation of 'putting it over'] is regimenting the public mind as an army regiments the bodies of its soldiers.' In addition, there was a plethora of independent testimony such as that of the utility executive who told the F. T. C. that without the industry's propaganda 'state, municipal, and Government [sic] ownership would have been 100% ahead of what it is today; and Adolf Hitler's widely quoted comment that 'by sagacious and persistent use of propaganda heaven itself may be presented to a people as hell and, inversely, the most wretched existence as paradise.'
84. ^Stauber, John and Sheldon Rampton. 'Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of PR' (book review). PR Watch6:2, Second Quarter, 1999 (p. 11).

Sources[edit]

• Bernays, Edward. Biography of an Idea: Memoirs of Public Relations Counsel Edward L. Bernays New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965.
• Cutlip, Scott M.The Unseen Power: Public Relations. A History. Hove, UK: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1994. ISBN0-8058-1465-5
• Ewen, Stuart. PR! A Social History of Spin. New York: Basic Books (Perseus), 1996. ISBN0-465-06179-6
• Marks, Barry Alan. 'The Idea of Propaganda in America.' PhD dissertation accepted at the University of Minnesota, 1957.
• Olasky, Marvin. 'Reception of Edward Bernays’ Doctrine of ‘Manipulating Public Opinion'. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, 6 August 1984; (ERIC).
• Olasky, Marvin. 'Bringing 'Order Out of Chaos': Edward Bernays and the Salvation of Society Through Public Relations'. Journalism History, 12(1), Spring 1985.
• Rampton, Sheldon, and John Stauber. Trust Us, We're Experts! How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles With Your Future. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2001. ISBN1-58542-059-X
• Tye, Larry. The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations. New York: Crown, 1998. ISBN0805067892

Further reading[edit]

• American National Biography v. 2, Oxford University Press, 1999.
• John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry
• Edward Bernays, Biography of an Idea: Memoirs of a Public Relations Counsel (excerpt )
• Curtis, Adam (November 26, 2008). 'Century Of Self. 1-1 Happiness Machines'. BBC. Retrieved February 12, 2010.
• 'Freud's Nephew and the Origins of Public Relations'. National Public Radio. Retrieved 2010-02-12.
• Nimmo, Dan D.; Chevelle Newsome (1997). Political Commentators in the United States in the 20th Century: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. pp. 1–9. ISBN0-313-29585-9.
• Marvin Olasky column on his interview with Bernays at Townhall.com
• Wilfred Trotter (1919). Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War – 4th impression, with postscript. New York, MacMillan.
• Stephen Bender. Karl Rove & the Spectre of Freud’s Nephew, LewRockwell.com, 2005-02-04

External links[edit]

• Edward L. Bernays papers at Library of Congress (finding aid)
  • Some Bernays papers at LOC are online as part of 'Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921–1929'.
• The Edward L. Bernays papers, 1982–1998 (bulk 1993–1995) are located in the Northeastern University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections Department, Boston, MA.
• 'Everett Dean Martin and Edward L. Bernays, Are We Victims of Propaganda? (Library of Congress reproduction from The Forum Magazine, March, 1929)'. Memory.loc.gov. Retrieved 2010-02-12.
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Works by Edward L. Bernays at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Edward Bernays at Internet Archive
• LETTER TO MR. EDWARD L. BERNAYS FROM <Sanitized> RDP80B01676R003800020083-0 ; 'LETTER TO MR. EDWARD L. BERNAYS FROM <Sanitized> RDP80B01676R003800020084-9 ', 1958, Central Intelligence Agency,

'The Engineering of Consent' is an essay by Edward Bernays first published in 1947, and a book he published in 1955.

• 3Book

Overview[edit]

In his own words, Bernays describes engineering consent as 'use of an engineering approach—that is, action based only on thorough knowledge of the situation and on the application of scientific principles and tried practices to the task of getting people to support ideas and programs.' ^[1]

Bernays explained, 'Professionally, [public relations] activities are planned and executed by trained practitioners in accordance with scientific principles, based on the findings of social scientists. Their dispassionate approach and methods may be likened to those of the engineering professions which stem from the physical sciences.'^[2]

The threat of engineered consent in democracy has been expressed in a textbook on American government:^[3]

Under modern conditions of political advertising and manipulation, it has become possible to talk of the engineering of consent by an elite of experts and professional politicians. Consent that is thus engineered is difficult to distinguish in any fundamental way from the consent that supports modern totalitarian governments. Were the manipulated voter to become the normal voter, the government he supports could hardly be said to rest on his consent in any traditional sense of that word.

To some observers, consumer psychologists have already made the choice for people before they buy a certain product. Marketing is often based on themes and symbols that unconsciously influence consumer behavior.

Essay[edit]

The essay first appeared in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.^[4] The author's observations in the essay include the following:

• The United States has become a small room where a single whisper is magnified thousands of times.
• There are two divisions in media: commercial and organized group information systems.
• Today’s leaders have become more remote physically from the public, yet, at the same time, the public has much greater familiarity with these leaders through the system of modern communications...Increased influence of mass media is due to widespread and enormously rapid diffusion of literacy.
• With the aid of technicians in the field who have specialized in utilizing the channels of communications, [some leaders] have been able to achieve purposefully and scientifically what we have termed 'the engineering of consent'.
• The freedoms of press, speech, petition and assembly, the freedoms which make the engineering of consent possible, are among the most cherished guarantees in the Constitution of the United States.
• Under no circumstances should the engineering of consent supersede or displace the educational system, either formal or informal, in bringing about understanding by the people as the basis for their actions. The engineering of consent often does supplement the educational process.
• The chief function [of the profession] is to analyze objectively and realistically the position of its client vis-a-vis a public, and to advise as to the necessary corrections in its client’s attitudes towards and approaches to that public.
• It must be remembered of course that good will, the basis of lasting adjustment, can be preserved in the long run, only by those whose actions warrant it...The public relations counsel has the professional responsibility to push only those ideas that he can respect, and not to promote causes or accept assignments for clients he considers anti-social.
• As in physical engineering, a feasibility study must be done and a budget drawn up.
• The engineer of consent must be powerfully equipped with facts, with truths, with evidence before he shows himself before a public.
• Bernays recommends World Almanac with lists of thousands of associations across the United States – a cross-section of the country.
• The public’s attitudes, ideas, presumptions or prejudices result from definite influences. One must try to find out what they are in any situation in which one is working.
• Democratic society is actually only a loose aggregate of constituent groups...To influence the public, the engineer of consent works with and through group leaders and opinion moulders on every level.
• Research furnishes the equivalent of the mariner's chart, the architect's blue print,the traveler's road map.
• Themes must appeal to the motives of the public. Motives are the activation of both conscious and subconscious pressure created by the force of desires
• Organization also correlates the activities of any specialists who may be called upon from time to time, such as opinion researchers, fund raisers, publicity men, radio and motion picture experts, specialists for women's clubs or foreign language groups, and the like.
• Set in motion a broad activity, the success of which depends on interlocking all phases and elements of the proposed strategy, implemented by tactics that are timed to the moment of maximum effectiveness.
• The developing of events and circumstances that are not routine is one of the basic functions of the engineer of consent.

Book[edit]

In 1955 University of Oklahoma Press published Bernays' book The Engineering of Consent. In fact Bernays contributed only the first chapter (22 pages) 'The Theory and Practice of Public Relations: A Resumé'. The seven other chapters were by his associates: 'Objectives' by Howard Walden Cutler, 'Research' by Sherwood Dodge, 'Strategy' by Nicholas Samstag, 'Themes and Symbols' by Doris Fleischman and H.W. Cutler, 'Organization for public relations' by John Price Jones, 'Planning' by Benjamin Fine, and 'The tactics of public relations' by A. Robert Ginsburgh.

The longest chapter, the one on strategy, begins with sociological and psychological observations on human motivation drawn from Karl Menninger and Vilfredo Pareto. Samstag illustrates varieties of strategy with sample cases before the public. He details aspects of timing, forbearance, approach, surprise, participation, association, disassociation, crossroads, personalization, bland withdrawal, apparent withdrawal, apparent runner-up, omission, reversal, mosaic, and understatement.

Reviews[edit]

A. Edgar Schuler^[5] called the book a 'convenient and compact introduction to the field of public relations.' He singles out Samstag’s chapter as 'interesting, enlightening, provocative, and poignant.'

M. Weisglas reviewed the book for International Communication Gazette,^[6] writing that 'Bernays and company have deluded their readers with false hopes about public relations.'

Edward Bernays Engineering Of Consent

Women’s smoking[edit]

In a practical example of Edward Bernays’ theory detailed in his essay, George Washington Hill, president of the American Tobacco Company, hired Edward Bernays in 1928 to lead a campaign to entice more women to smoke in public.^[7] The campaign is believed to have helped converting attitudes towards women's smoking from a social taboo to a more socially acceptable act.^[7] Bernays did this by associating women’s smoking with the ideas of 'power' and 'freedom' which he did by using the slogan Torches of Freedom during a famous parade in New York City.

The idea of “Engineering of Consent” was motivated by Freud’s idea that humans are irrational beings, and are motivated primarily by inner desires hidden in their unconscious. If one understood what those unconscious desires were, then one could use this to one’s advantage to sell products and increase sales.^[8]

Influence[edit]

The Engineering of Consent also applies to the pioneered application of Freudian psychoanalytic concepts and techniques to business—in particular to the study of consumer behavior in the marketplace. Ideas established strongly influenced the practices of the advertising industry in the twentieth century.

The techniques applied developing the 'consumer lifestyle' were also later applied to developing theories in cultural commodification; which has proven successful in the later 20th century (with diffusion of cultures throughout North America) to sell ethnic foods and style in popular mainstream culture by removing them from geography and ethnic histories and sanitizing them for a general public.

Ernest Dichter applied what he dubbed 'the strategy of desire' for building a 'stable society,' by creating for the public a common identity through the products they consumed; again, much like with cultural commodification, where culture has no 'identity,' 'meaning,' or 'history' inherited from previous generations, but rather, is created by the attitudes which are introduced by consumer behaviors and social patterns of the period. According to Dichter, 'To understand a stable citizen, you have to know that modern man quite often tries to work off his frustrations by spending on self-sought gratification. Modern man is internally ready to fulfill his self-image, by purchasing products which compliment it.'

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

1. ^Bernays, Edward (1969). The engineering of consent. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN9780806103280.
2. ^Bernays 1955 page 4
3. ^John C. Livingston & Robert G. Thompson (1966) The Consent of the Governed, 2nd edition, page 11, Collier Macmillan
4. ^Bernays, Edward L. (March 1947). 'The Engineering of Consent'(PDF). Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 250 (1): 113–120. doi:10.1177/000271624725000116. ISSN0002-7162. Archived from the original(PDF) on August 13, 2012. Retrieved February 24, 2016.Cite uses deprecated parameter |dead-url= (help)
5. ^A. Edgar Schuler (1956) Review: The Engineering of Consent, Rural Sociology 21(1):80, link from Cornell University Core Historical Literature of Agriculture
6. ^M. Weisglas (1956) 'Review: Engineering of Consent', International Communication Gazette 2:59
7. ^ ^ab1929 Torches of Freedom, The Museum of Public Relations, archived from the original on July 15, 2014, retrieved March 11, 2014Cite uses deprecated parameter |deadurl= (help)
8. ^Lynn T. Tanoue (2000) 'Cigarette Smoking and Women's Respiratory Health', Clinics in Chest Medicine 21(1): 47–65 doi: 10.1016/S0272-5231(05)70007-1

References[edit]

• The Engineering of Consent, University of California at Los Angeles
• 'Torches of Freedom', The Museum of Public Relations.