Century Of The Self E3: There Is Policeman Inside All Our Heads He Must Be Destroyed

There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed
Wednesday 1 May 7pm-8pm

In the 1960s, a radical group of psychotherapists challenged the influence of Freudian ideas in America. They were inspired by the ideas of Wilhelm Reich, a pupil of Freud's, who had turned against him and was hated by the Freud family. He believed that the inner self did not need to be repressed and controlled. It should be encouraged to express itself.

Out of this came a political movement that sought to create new beings free of the psychological conformity that had been implanted in people's minds by business and politics.

This programme shows how this rapidly developed in America through self-help movements like Werber Erhard's Erhard Seminar Training - into the irresistible rise of the expressive self: the Me Generation.

But the American corporations soon realised that this new self was not a threat but their greatest opportunity. It was in their interest to encourage people to feel they were unique individuals and then sell them ways to express that individuality. To do this they turned to techniques developed by Freudian psychoanalysts to read the inner desires of the new self.

Century Of The Self 1 Happiness Machines
Century Of The Self 2 Engineering Consent
Century Of The Self 3 There Is Policeman Inside All Our Heads He Must Be Destroyed
Century Of The Self 4 Eight People Sipping Wine