Engineering Of Consent

“The engineering of consent”, second episode of the BBC series “The century of the self”, is focused on the topic of mass society’s control seen from the point of view of Anna Freud. The dilemma is still between “control and trust”. The main argument offered is that people are driven by inner irrational forces. Therefore, for an healthy democracy, those instincts have to be controlled and eventually repressed. Anna Freud thought that the way to govern mass society was to teach people how to repress the “human barbarism”, that threatened democracy. Her main strategy is that of conformism, of linking the desires of the individual to the desires of society. The documentary provides also Herbert Marcuse’s point of view. Marcuse considered the true evil to be in society itself and its control of the unconscious. In his opinion,

Anna Freud, that was carrying on and expanding her father’s studies, stated that the best way to protect democracy was to: “Strengthen the ego against the unconscious.” Consequently, the role of psychology changed: the purpose was now to conform society, drive people to accept social rules, in order to repress the unconscious and eventually create the perfect citizen. As a result of that, the challenge was now to find the means to accomplish this task. The first step was the creation of the so called “Psychological helping centres”, established to help war veterans to repress their unconscious fears and recover from the shocks they experienced. The government was worried about the consequences that violent and mentally unstable soldiers could have done to the society. As a second step, the US government decided to open marriage guidance offices and finally to introduce psychological analysis for families. The long-term purpose was to understand “the irrational secret self of the american people”, in order to create model citizens and