The Century of the Self: Episode 3

The Century of the Self
by Adam Curtis

The evening begins with a social hour and optional pot luck supper at 6:00 pm,
followed by the film at 7:30 pm, followed by a discussion at the end of the film.

Episide 3: A Policeman is Inside our Heads

Episode Three of this extraordinary intellectual masterpiece by Adam Curtis begins in the 1960s with a radical group of psychotherapists challenging 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 episode 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 realized 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.

Wheelchair accessible around the corner at 411 28th Street

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