Thursday, July 13, 2017

Edward Bernays Compensatory Substitutes Why we want stuff?

"It is chiefly the psychologists of the school of Freud who have pointed out that many of man's thoughts and actions are compensatory substitutes for desires which he has been obliged to suppress.  A thing may be desired not for its intrinsic worth or usefulness, but because he has unconsciously come to see in it a symbol of something else, the desire for which he is ashamed to admit to himself. A man buying a car may think he wants it for purposes of locomotion.  He may really want it because it is a symbol of social position, an evidence of his success in business, or a means of pleasing his wife."
 

(Propaganda, Edward Bernays)

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