After watching the episodes about Freud , Bernays and Reiche I felt very enlightened. I found it interesting how acceptance in society was and still is a huge issue. I liked Anna Freud’s bias in conforming was her motive to in her research and study,how she felt that conforming the inner self and changing the outside environment would help the ego. I think that is an ideal situation but it obvious wasn’t enough to help the masses out like Reiche’s movement ( if you can call it that ). The idea that conformity was bad works in our diverse society. This country has many cultures for social conformity to work. I like how sociologist after Rieche really propagated this idea of not conforming and standing up and being an individual. Individualism was what post-industrial societies were moving toward on a professional state level. This is wear people became individualized and specialized in their profession. Socialogist like Marx and Durkheim held close this idea of social unity. Like Freud , conformity made is easier to interact with other people, be happier and fulfill your state duties. In Europe we see this today with a number amount of unions that work together to benefit the masses and change laws. The individualistic ideology came to play in the 60′s -70′s where people had enough conformity. sociologist began looking into this and found the results outstanding. Living in a very work orientated society , the idea of social individualism only makes sense. People can’t be conformed in this type of diverse society. The idea of conformity was looked down upon in a political light because of the scare of communism. Even President Reagen preached individualism. This seemed to work in the masses in the US. And with this new kind of self-liberation, corporations began to market people in categories that helped sell products to different types of people. Maybe this is where labeling and stereotyping began ? I think the a combination of Freud’s idea of conformity and later socialist like Reiche with the idea of “Self-liberation” is a healthy way of living. I found these episodes very interesting and educational. There was so much more I did not touch upon that was present in the episodes but this is the basic idea of the film.
P.S. I like how corporations need sociologist and an immense understanding of the people to really prosper. Very interesting how Bernays used his uncle Freud’s advice to really aid in the selling of products for corporations by changing society ( liberty girls/lucky strikes).
