This segment introduces Sigmund Freud's American nephew, Edward Bernays, and explains how he virtually became the founder of Public Relations. Bernays, employed as an adviser to President Woodrow Wilson during the First World War, was behind promoting the idea that the America was fighting not to restore the old empires, but to bring democracy to all of Europe. After witnessing Wilson's extreme popularity at the post-war 1926 Paris Peace Conference, Bernays decided to employ the same type of propaganda (rebranded as "Public Relations") he had developed during the war to herd the populace toward mass consumerism.
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From the BBC...
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.
Bernays was one of the main architects of the modern techniques of mass-consumer persuasion, using every trick in the book, from celebrity endorsement and outrageous PR stunts, to eroticising the motorcar.
