Meet Sigmund Freud and Edward Bernays.

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist who founded “psychoanalysis”, a set of ideas on how to engage and understand the unconscious part of people’s minds. His research and thinking was largely pioneered through the idea that people had inner, unconscious desires that could be used to control them.

Edward Bernays was a nephew of Freud, and an American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda; referred to in his obituary as “the father of public relations”.

During WWI, Bernays was hired to work for the Committee on public Information. His work was focused on building support for the war, both domestically and abroad. He described it as “psychological warfare”.

President Woodrow Wilson announced that the US would fight not to restore old empires, but to bring democracy to all of Europe. Bernays proved

cA Crelulel elifelte eerie extremely skillful in promoting this idea at home, and abroad. used to promote the idea of America spreading democracy.

At the end of the war, Bernays accompanied Wilson to the Paris Peace Conference. Wilson’s incredible positive reception Paris astounded Bernays. The way in which their propaganda had effectively made Wilson out to be a hero and a liberator fascinated Bernays, and he wondered if he could use propaganda tactics employed for war during peacetime.

President Woodrow Wilson

Upon returning to America, Bernays set about this idea. The word “propaganda” had begun to carry some baggage, so he had some associates assist him in coming up with a new term - “public relations”. He set up a “public relations counsel” in an office in New York City. Here, he turned to the writings of his uncle Freud, hoping to employ his ideas on activating subconscious human desires to achieve certain outcomes.

One of his most dramatic experiments in this was to persuade women to smoke. Until then, smoking was seen as taboo for women. Bernays was approached by George Hill, the head of the American Tobacco Company. He had previously been working for Hill’s rival, Liggett and Myers, and running ad campaigns mocking Lucky Strike cigarettes, which were produced by the American Tobacco Company.

When he began working for the American Tobacco Company, Bernays was tasked

with increasing sales of Lucky Strike cigarettes among women. His first strategy

was to encourage women to smoke cigarettes instead of eating, and claim cigarettes brought about thinness. He began by promoting the ideal of thinness itself, using photographers, artists, and media outlets to promote a female body image of an incredible thin ideal woman. Medical authorities were then found to promote the choice of cigarettes over sweets, and home-makers were told that keeping cigarettes were a social necessity.

One of the “hogan diet Geese could make a woman thin.

This campaign succeeded, but a taboo remained on women smoking in public. Bernays consulted fellow Jewish psychoanalyst Abraham Bril, a student of Freud who translated his works into English and was the first practicing psychoanalyst in America. They decided to go with the idea of cigarettes representing male power and authority, and that smoking them would give women more authority as well. Bernays pulled a stunt where he paid women to smoke cigarettes at a parade, after telling local media some female

suffragettes were planning to smoke as an act of protest. The staged story was a massive in Bormaye’ organiued stunt success in the media, and ripples of women began smoking prominently across the country. Bernays worked on countless other endeavors throughout his long and storied career.

He even advised political clients, such as Calvin Coolidge Herbert Hoover, and more.

During World War Il, he advised the US Information Agency, as well as the Army and the Navy.

Freud and Bernays’ incredible contributions and work in the field of neurology, psychoanalysis, propaganda, and public relations are far more vast than the sample on this table.

You can learn more by watching the 2002 BBC Documentary “The Century Of Self”, or some of the other resources available at

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