Context of Practice: Seminar 1 - Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis 

• The study of the dynamic unconscious - the things we repress from our childhood that don't fit into societies way of thinking
• Oedipus Complex - repressed desires (based on a greek myth)
• Castration Anxiety - boys fear castration by mother and side with father
• Penis envy - girls think they have been castration by mother and then tend towards father 
• Phallus is power
• Freud would argue a lot of our decisions are made from our suppressed memories and feelings
• Edward Bernays - turned advertising to manipulation of desires

ID -  consciousness, biological instincts - primal urges - see something/want it/get it e.g.. children are mainly IDS, no sense of society norms (want sweets, go toilet wherever etc.)

Ego - pre - conscious / personality 

Superego - unconscious voice controlling your ID, rational and irrational, repressed feelings and urges, the rules of society e.g.. shame, guilt

The Century of The Self Part  1 of 4 one: Happiness of Self

• Freuds cousin Edward Berneys
• First person to use the theory to control peoples desires
• Used it in advertising to manipulate people to buy into there inner most desires
• Beginning of the all consuming self that dominates our world today
• Freuds ideas were seen as embarrassing and looking into someones feelings was a threat to there control
• He questioned emotions which people weren't able to express in order to maintain respect
• There empire would of fallen apart
• 1914 - war - people acting primitive and didn't no how to control it
• Propaganda for the war
• 1926 - Berneys went with the president to the peace conference in Paris
• Propaganda presented the president of America as a hero of the people
• Berneys went into public relations 
• Set out to experiment with the rich - start women smoking which was taboo
• Cigarettes were symbolic to the penis and if you showed it challenging the mens power it would get women to smoke as they would then have a penis
• 'Torches of Freedom' - public event where suffragettes lit up and this phrase was shown
• Women smoked - idea they were more powerful and independent
• Link products to desires and feelings even though it was irrational
• Not just purchasing something, emotionally involved in purchasing
• Feel better with it than without it
• Mass production of products
• Working class - products displayed as something they need e.g. shoes/stockings
• Transform them from a needs to a desires culture
• A new type of custom in department stores where all mass produced products where to be sold
• Product placement in films with items of clothing
• Sell cars as a sign of male power
• What you buy to express your inner self to others
• Consumerism created stock markets and encouraged people to buy shares 
• 1924 - president contacted Berneys - persuaded 34 famous film stars to visit the white house - first time government was related with public relations
• Freuds work was published for the first time by help of Berneys and his money in order to help him out of bankruptcy
• Suggested he promotes himself in America - article in cosmopolitan on womens state in the home - Freud was outraged
• Freud realised he had underestimated how dangerous humans physic could be
• Journalists and intellectuals 
• Basis mechanism of the mass mind was irrational
• Berneys claimed he was first to manage the irrational thoughts of the masses by products
• Run of mass democracy was through consumerism and maintain a stable society/economy

Key:

- were able to control and have influence in government which policies and rules are formed

- boost the economy in capitalism in order to get profit, able to sell all the production of products by changing needs to wants

- mass control of the people, easier to direct people towards areas of consumerism and idealisms

- government scared of dangerous irrational instinct of humans and being overthrown as all these wars were demonstrating it happening elsewhere - products keep us docile and a sense of happiness from our purchasing

1950s - smoking was so popular by women that it reversed to feminine act 

Marlboro Man - masculine image of a cowboy, instinctual, primal, freedom and wild.

Silk Cut Campaign - late 80s/ealry 90s

Saatchi & Saatchi 

Code of Practice: products no longer allowed to be associated with -

• glamour
• sport
• success in business
• masculinity or femininity 
• 'Advertisements should not seek a actively persuade people to start smoking'

Campaign before:

• See cigarettes
• Shown through experience, lifestyle aspirations
• Price
• Brand name - expensive, smooth, luxurious

Silk has female connotation could be considered in a negative way

Silk cut are a low tar cigarette and the danger is the brand gets associated with a weak or effeminate image

Used psychoanalysis theory

Sigmund Freud 

Eros - life instinct - have child, have sex, live a good life, be successful

Thanatos - death instant - desire to kill, self destruction, mess everything up

Links with smoking:

Rationally we no it will kill you but irrationally we still smoke

Sex  - oral fixations (nipple substitute), vagina dentata, penis envy , Oedipus 

Blowing and sucking on bagpipes - act of cigarettes - metaphor for sexual reference to oral sex

Vagina dentata as the traps seek out mens phallus who are being paraded around

Conscious level - silk with a rip in it

Unconscious level - vagina represented in the silk with a tear and the folds of the material, penis represented possibly in a knife or scissors for the death aspect e.g. thrusting in/power

Hitchcock film 'Psycho' - women stabbed and filled in the shower

  

Women's legs open - vagina dentate but shown through scissors 

WebRep

currentVote

noRating

noWeight