OUGD501 // Seminar // Psychoanalysis

The seminar will link to design and consumerism within society.

PSYCHOANALYSIS

is the unconscious mind which is Dynamic. The understanding of the mind and how it works is what psychoanalysis looks into.

The main person to study Psychoanalysis was FREUD who interpreted dreams and worked with hysteria patients to look into Psychoanalysis at a much deeper level.

Psychoanalysis is used to access our unconscious mind to discover reasons for why we do what we do (conscious). It is a way to understand our development:

- Super ego - relationship to other people. It is controlling and holds us back from doing things that the ID wants us to do. Represses feelings back to the ID

- Ego - operating at a conscious level. Understanding our personality at face view

- ID - Animalistic, where our desires are formed and the ID makes us want to meet these desires immediately. Its our human instincts. 

Young children can be seen as walking ID's as they have feelings of deeper meaning right from being born, they will try and do anything without thinking about it because that is how they learn. As they are still developing their super ego doesn't control them and stop them doing things the ID wants them to do.

OEDIPUS COMPLEX // PENIS ENVY // CASTRATION ANXIETY

Mother & father relationship is the only thing seen by young children as they are growing up. What the children see is that the only difference between the mother and father is that the father has a penis, so it is seen as representing power, because the mother doesn't have one.

Male child - sees mother as being castrated - removing power symbolically

Female child - see that they don't have penis, so will never have the same symbolic power as the father.

After discussing what the lecture was about and elaborating on this we watched a short documentary:

The Century of the Self - Adam Curtis

This is a documentary about EDWARD BERNAYS and how he used Psychoanalysis to change society.

I made notes on the documentary to help my understanding of it

- human nature

- people in power used the idea of Freud to control the society

- It was an unknown technique only Bernays knew about it

- Bernays was the the first person to manipulate the masses

- How did he make people want what they didnt need?

- Satisfying the desire of humans - making them think that they need something

- Freuds idea was seen as impossible and not accepted

- His idea meant looking at everything around the person, which would break down all barriers at that time.

- Bernays was to represent wives in America and promote this.

- If you could use propaganda in war then it could be used in peace

- Bernays became a councillor in America - change the way people thought by manipulating the unconscious

- As his first test he wanted to persuade women to smoke

- Cigarettes were a symbol of power and related back to idea of the power of the penis

- If women were to smoke it would change the symbol of power and start to challenge it

- Women will take this symbol of power and use the cigarettes as their own 'penis'

- The cigarette was seen as the torches of freedom

- Bernays managed to persuade women across USA and all over the world to smoke and it became socially accepted.

- They thought that if they smoked it would make them more powerful and accepted.

- This idea worked on linking products to desire as you can control what a person wants by manipulating the ID and making them think that they need the product to feel better or to gain something.

- Over the war mass production increased along with capitalism, this production grew so much that an overproduction of products were made, as there was so much products to be sold the society needed to change its idea of buying when they needed it, to wanting and desiring the products. To do this they changed how they advertised products and showed how practical they were and nothing else. They linked the products into lifestyle and sexuality, attaching the goods to people irrational thoughts and desires (linking back to the ID) which in turn made them think that there desires can be filled by buying the products. This way of advertising made a passive and obedient society, changing the way they thought about products made them desire a product and when they got it they were happy because they thought they had a good life now they had the product. It was all down to social control, which Bernays achieved.

- This whole change made USA a consumer country

- Once they had changed the mind about products and good, they moved onto shares and politics, integrating politics into the society, so anyone could buy shares.

- Freud became bankrupt and turned to his nephew Bernays to get him our of it. Bernays managed to get Freuds work published in USA, which in turn had an effect on publicists.

- In the same time, Freud became pessimistic and moved to the Alps away from people, to study group behaviour which he wrote about. 

- In 1928 Houver was elected and at this time Consumerism was America's life

- Houver believed that if you can stimulate an irrational mind, you can run a business on it.

Moving onto advertising in the way that it made people want to buy the products. Here we have taken to look at cigarettes as it was a big thing back then.

SILK CUT CAMPAIGN - Saatchi & Saatchi - 80s-90s

At this time there was a lot of rules about what you could and couldn't do within advertising. For cigarettes you couldn't associate tobacco with:

- glamour // sport // success in business // masculinity & femininity // 'advertisements should not seek to actively persuade people to start smoking'

The older advertisements before Saatchi & Saatchi re designed them worked on:

- everyday life

- expense

- relaxation

- lifestyle

Problems to overcome:

- associated with weak effeminate image

- silk represents a more feminine look, not appealing to both men and women

Advertisements:

- silk with a cut in it

- royal purple colour - luxury

- expense - bed sheets

- cut represents vagina

- presence of something that cut the silk is the presence of the penis

- power of the penis - dark elements.

- psycho film reference

- murder of a young girl by a man

- power of the man

- suck and blow on the bagpipes reference to the cigarette and to the penis

- animal trap refers to castration.

TASK

10 important points raised in the documentary:

- Bernays used Freuds psychoanalysis ideas to make people buy products.

- Bernays first experiment for the use of psychoanalysis, was persuading women to smoke. This was later referred as 'torches of freedom' - the cigarettes.

- Bernays realized that if you can use propaganda in war you could use it times of peace.

- Bernays didn't want to be associated with the propaganda as it was tainted because of nazi's using propaganda. He called his company the 'public relations council'.

- The Lehman brothers wanted Bernays to make the mentality of the public to shift from buying what they needed to buy what they desired.

- Bernays was the first person to use product placement by getting the actresses he worked with and was involved with to wear the dresses that were in the shops.

- The stock market was created because of consumerism, which Bernays took advantage of by persuades the general public to buy shares in banks that he was involved with.

-  President Hoover wanted to improve the publics view of him, so he asked for Bernays help. He did this by getting celebrities to visit the White house, once the paparazzi got hold of this information, the  newspapers headlines were "president entertains celebrities" which improved Hoovers image in the general publics eye.

- Bernays got Freuds work published in America, because he was bankrupted. Freuds work made the Americans scared,  they didn't like the ideas he was writing about. The Americans started to believe that it was wrong to have one leader and the democracy needed a re think if it was possible for it to be run on there subconscious thoughts.

- New American president wanted a happy brainwashed society and to make all people "Constantly moving happy machines". He wanted the Americans to be a dormant/obedient society so they believed there dreams and ambitions had been filled by telling them what they desired.

One image that is/was in the mass media that relates to the nature of consumerism, desire & unconscious:

SKYY VODKA

The advertisements for Skyy Vodka are very sexual which straight away refer to the sexuality and sexual lust within the ID of our unconscious.

The image on the left explores this even further. The man is not visible in the image apart from his arm and legs, the women is very close to them man and looking down on him in a very sexual way. The vodka bottle and glass in the forefront are positioned in a way that resembles that of the man and women, referring to the sexual nature of the relationship between the man and woman. The man is also holding out is glass for more, he is the one in control and making the orders, the woman is serving him and serving his other needs.

The image on the right is referring back to the castration complex. Again the man i only seen from waist down, but this is exaggerating more on the penis area, the stance he is in and the positioning of the man shows he is in control. The women on the other hand is laid underneath him, again showing that the male is above and higher than women. The women is wearing very little clothes and you can see she is looking up at the male, she is very vulnerable in the position and lack of clothes, this i see is referring to the way in which males would see women and how 'they should be'. 

In both images there are links to femininity, they both are symbolising that women are the ones which are 'lacking'. The women are shown to be visually appealing and displayed in a provocative manner, this is for the viewers pleasure and a way in which males think of a female as a sexual object which is far fetched.