Doktryna Bernaysa : Demokracja, między propagandą a public relations - MIROSŁAW LAKOMY (Autor) (Akademia Ignatianum w Krakowie, 2019)
https://wydawnictwo.ignatianum.edu.pl/doktryna-bernaysa.htm
Publikacja recenzowana
Giving this publication to the reader, it should be stated that it is almost a comprehensive description of the doctrine of Edward Bernays. It can be interesting for both public relations practitioners, researchers of this issue and students. Its main advantage is paying special attention to the now widespread problem of public opinion manipulation and the source of this phenomenon, which – according to the author – lies in the Bernays doctrine rigidly coupled with Freudianism. Its origins should be sought during World War I and extremely active and innovative propaganda solutions conducted by competing parties. The British ideas proved to be the most effective, thanks to which in 1917 the United States joined the war as its ally. To this end, the Committee on Public Information (so- called the Creel Committee) was organized there, whose task was to convince American public opinion to participate in this conflict. One of the CPI members was Edward Bernays, who used this period to gain new experiences, which he later creatively developed and continued in a period of peace. To this end, he was inspired by the concepts of Gustave Le Bon, Wilfred Trotter, Everett Dean Martin, Walter Lippmann and above all his uncle – Sigmund Freud. Their common thesis was the belief that there was a specific mind of the “crowd” that is fairly easy to manipulate. According to the mentioned social psychologists, this was to result from the individual’s instincts. In addition, the “mass” follows the process of “contagion” or imitation, and the suggestion causes that people in the crowd become “slaves of unconscious activities”. Hence, intellectual inferiority in comparison with an isolated individual, loss of moral responsibility, impulsiveness, credulity, exaggeration, intolerance, blind obedience to the leader, and mystical emotionality become noticeable in the “crowd”. Sigmund Freud emphasized these issues slightly differently. He did not make a distinction between “people”, “mass”, “mob”, and “citizens”. In his opinion, this “barbarity” was a permanent feature of community life. He was extremely skeptical about the concepts of “intelligent citizen” coined by Jean-Jacques Rousseau or “aware proletarian” (Karl Marx). The essence of his concept was the idea that in the “crowd” there is an increase in affect and inhibition of thinking and identification with the leader. In his opinion, the barbaric inclinations of the “crowd” are the result of a hypnotic stimulus sent by his emotional environment and the protective indeterminacy of the “masses” entwining the uncritical (easily suggestible) part of each individual mind. Freud argued that one should always refer to the hidden personal emotions of the individual to explain explicit public actions. The discoveries made by the aforementioned precursors of collective psychology instilled in the minds of Edward Bernays the belief that the average citizen does not make rational decisions, that liberalism relies on a kind of Freudian mixture, thanks to which mass societies are susceptible to manipulation and democratic culture can “dissolve” in a state submission to the power of meritocracy. Hence, probably his idea, described in the first book Crystallizing of Public Opinion, to create advisory bodies in the form of public relations agencies. This term appeared for the first time on this occasion, but as it turned out, the author treated it interchangeably with the concept of propaganda, which he proved in a monograph titled Propaganda. In turn, in the article “Manipulating Public Opinion: The Why and The How”, he completely openly admitted to using manipulation techniques in relation to public opinion. As he argued in Propaganda, if you left the “collective mind” alone, it could lead to chaos, so propaganda and manipulation, in his opinion, would prevent it.
Keywords: nauki o polityce i administracji