Release Date

Premiered

The Century of the Self Season 1 released on March 17, 2002.

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Seasons

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S01E01 Aired March 17, 2002

Happiness Machines

The story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud's ideas to manipulate the masses. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn't need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires.

S01E02 Aired March 24, 2002

The Engineering of Consent

The programme explores how those in power in post-war America used Freud's ideas about the unconscious mind to try and control the masses.

S01E03 Aired March 31, 2002

There Is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads. He Must Be Destroyed

In the 1960s, a radical group of psychotherapists challenged the influence of Freudian ideas in America. They were inspired by the ideas of Wilhelm Reich, a pupil of Freud's, who had turned against him and was hated by the Freud family. He believed that the inner self did not need to be repressed and controlled. It should be encouraged to express itself.

S01E04 Aired April 07, 2002

Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering

How both the Labour Party in Britain and the Democrats in America have sought to gain power through use of the focus group, invented by psychoanalysts to fulfil desires of the inner self.