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Don't settle for anything less then you can be,
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make your life a masterpiece!
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This is a series about how Sigmund Freud's ideas
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about the unconscious mind
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have been used by those in power to control the masses
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in an age of democracy.
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Last week's episode showed how Freud's ideas spread throughout America
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in the 1950s.
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They were promoted by his daughter Anna, and by Freud's nephew Edward Bernays
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who invented public relations.
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He brought Freud's theories into the heart of advertising and marketing.
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A man like you!...I mean... with a curl like this!...
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What they both believed is that underneath all human beings
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was a hidden irrational self
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which needed to be controlled, both for the good of the individuals
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and the stability of society.
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But the Freuds were about to be toppled from power by opponents
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who said they were wrong about human nature.
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The inner self did not need to be repressed and controlled,
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it should be encouraged to express itself.
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Out of this would come a new type of strong human being and a better society.
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But what in fact emerged from this revolution was the very opposite.
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An isolated, vulnerable and above all greedy self.
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Far more open to manipulation by both business and politics
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than anything that had gone on before.
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Those in power would now control the self not by repressing it,
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but by feeding it's infinite desires.
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The Century of the Self
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Part Three
There Is A Policeman Inside Our Heads.
He Must Be Destroyed!
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What goes on here is the liberation of feeling..
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In other word, feelings, not just memories that have been supressed
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for example screaming, crying, anger...
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if that person is really angry, than they're gonna let it out..
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No!...No!...I kould kill you!...
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I'm an old man...Listen! If I can get all that strenght to do this,
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young people would get, if they get those feelings...
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In the 1950s a small group of renegade psychoanalysts
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began a new form of therapy.
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They worked in small rooms in New York City
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and encouraged their patients to express their feelings openly.
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I want help!...I do....
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It was a direct attack on the theories of the Freudian psychoanalysts
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who had become rich and powerful teaching Americans
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how to control their feelings.
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Dr. Alexander Lowen - Experimental Psychotherapist 1950s: In Freud's work you see
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they were afraid of the feelings.
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What they wanted was contained people very proper
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doing the right thing and living the proper life.
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That's what they wanted.
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And not an intense emotional life.
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Freud wasn't emotional himself, I mean he's an intellect Freud.
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I was an intellect too, I know, but I'm also more than that now.
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The leader of this group was a man hated by Freud and his family.
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He was called Wilhelm Reich.
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Reich lived an isolated life in a house he had built for himself
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in the remote mountains near the Canadian border.
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Reich originally had been a devoted disciple of Freud's in Vienna in the 1920s
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but he had challenged Freud over the fundamental basis of psychoanalysis.
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Freud argued that at heart that human beings were still driven
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by primitive animal instincts.
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The job of society, was to repress and control these dangerous forces.
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Reich believed the complete opposite.
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The unconscious forces inside the human mind, he said, were good.
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It was their repression by society that distorted them.
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That was what made people dangerous.
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Morton Herskowitz - Student of Wilhelm Reich 1949-52: Reich and Freud had two fundamentally differing views
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about what was essential human nature.
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At its core Freud saw an uncontrolled violent war-like
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raging inferno of emotions.
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Reich said these things are not the way human beings are originally destined to be,
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they're the result of not permitting the original impulse to express itself.
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The underlying natural impulse Reich argued was the libido, sexual energy.
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If this were released than human beings would flourish.
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But this idea brought him into direct conflict not only with Sigmund Freud,
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but with Freud's daughter Anna, who believed that the sexual forces in humans
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were dangerous if not controlled.
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Lore Reich Rubin - Daughter of Wilhelm Reich:
My father thought that you should liberate the libido and have freedom.
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And he developed a theory rather early that neuroses were due to
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lack of good orgasm or any orgasm.
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And Anna Freud you know was a virgin, and this was very important
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because she never had a sexual relation with a man,
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and here was this man preaching that the way to health was through orgasm,
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and here was this woman who had been analyzed by her father
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because she was masturbating.
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So here's this woman who's opposed to sexuality really
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and here's this man who's preaching sexual freedom
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and there was bound to be a clash, wasn't there?
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The conflict came to a head at a conference in 1934 in Switzerland.
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Anna Freud who had by now become the acknowledged leader
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of the psychoanalytic movement forced Wilhelm Reich out.
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She destroyed his career.
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Lore Reich Rubin - Daughter of Wilhelm Reich:
She got rid of him, very definitely.
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And I guess part of what I am doing is getting rid of her.
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Can you explain?
Well, I think that Anna Freud shouldn't get away
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with what she did, that it should be known.
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Maneuvering to get him kicked out of the International Psychoanalytic Association.
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So you're taking revenge?
You might say so, or wronging a right
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- No, righting a wrong. You better cut that one out.
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Isn't that called a Freudian slip?
Yes it is.
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Reich fled to the United States and built his home and a laboratory.
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His ideas became grandiose to the point of madness.
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He was convinced that he had discovered the source of libidinal energy.
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He called it 'orgone energy' and Reich built a giant gun
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which he said could capture this energy from the atmosphere
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and concentrate it onto clouds to produce rain.
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He also said that the gun could be used to destroy UFOs
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which threatened the future of the world.
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In 1956 Reich was arrested by the federal authorities
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for selling a device that he said used orgone energy to cure cancer.
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Reich was treated as a madman.
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He was imprisoned and all his books and papers were burned
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at the order of the court.
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A year later Reich died in prison.
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To the Freudians it seemed as if their main threat
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had been removed forever.
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But they were wrong.
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What the Freudians didn’t realize was that
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their influence in American society was also about to be challenged.
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And in a way that would lead not only to their decline
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but to the dramatic resurgence of Reich's ideas
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in America and throughout the capitalist world.
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The consumer is king.
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His whim makes or unmakes manufacturers, whole-salers and retailers,
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whoever wins his confidence , wins the game
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whoever loses his confidence is lost..
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By the late 1950s psychoanalysis had become deeply involved
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in driving consumerism in America.
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Most advertising companies employed psychoanalysts.
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And as last week's episode showed, they had created new ways
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to understand consumers' motives, above all with the focus group
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in which consumers free associated their feelings about products.
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Out of this came new ways to market products by appealing
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to the hidden unconscious desires of the consumer.
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But in the early 60's a new generation emerged who attacked this.
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They accused American business of using psychological techniques
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to manipulate people's feelings
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and turn them into ideal consumers.
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Robert Pardun - Student Activist early 1960's: Advertising was manipulation
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it was a way to get you to do something that didn't come out of you,
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it came out of somebody else.
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Somebody else said 'this year you should be wearing
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powdered pink shirts with matching powdered pink buck shoes'
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and I said Why? That's not who I am, that's who somebody else is.
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They wanted you to be somebody who would buy their stuff.
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This whole feeling of being somebody else's tool,
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I don't want to be that. I don't want to be somebody else's man.
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I want to be me.
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In the mid 60's a protest movement began on America's campuses.
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One of the student's main targets was corporate America.
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They accused the corporations of brainwashing the American public.
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Consumerism is not just a way of making money
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it had become the means of keeping the masses docile
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while allowing the government to purse a violent and illegal war in Vietnam.
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The students' mentor was a famous writer and philosopher called Herbert Marcuse.
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Marcuse had studied psychoanalysis
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and was a fierce critic of the Freudians.
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They had he said, helped to create a world
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in which people were reduced to expressing their feelings
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and identities, through mass produced objects.
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It resulted in what he called one-dimensional man -
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conformist and repressed.
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he psychoanalysts had become the corrupt agents of those who ruled America.
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Herbert Marcuse - Interviewed 1978:
It was one of the most striking phenomena
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to see to what extent the ruling power structure
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could manipulate manage and control not only the consciousness
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but also the subconscious and unconscious of the individuals.
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And this took place on a psychological basis
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by the controls and the manipulation of the
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unconscious primal drives which Freud stipulated.
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Think about, they're american people out there...
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They're all brainwashed, kiddies..They're all brainwashed..
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It's like I'm looking to a movie and and you're saying "Kill me!"
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Following the logic of Marcuse's argument, the new student left
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set out to attack this system of social control.
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It was summed up in the slogan
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'There's a policeman inside all our heads - he must be destroyed'.
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And that policeman was going to be destroyed
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by overthrowing the state and the corporations that had put him there.
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One group, "The Weatherman" began a series of attacks
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on companies that they said both controlled people's minds
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through consumer products and made the weapons being used in Vietnam.
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Bernadine Dohrn - Founder of Weatherman Revolutionary Group:
There's no way to be committed to non-violence
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in the middle of the most violent society that history has ever created.
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I'm not committed to non-violence in any way.
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Linda Evans - Member of Weatherman Revolutionary Group:
We want to live a life that
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isn't based on materialistic values,
and yet the whole system of government
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and the economy of America is based on profit;
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on personal greed and selfishness.
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So that, in order to be human, in order to love each other
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and be equal with each other and not place each other in roles
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we have to destroy the kind of government that keeps us
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from asserting our positive values of life.
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But the American state fought back violently.
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At the democratic convention in Chicago in 1968
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the police and the national guard were unleashed to attack
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thousands of demonstrators.
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It was the start of a phase of ruthless repression
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of the new left in America.
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It culminated in the killing of four students at Kent State University
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18 months later.
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In the face of this, the left began to fall apart.
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Robert Pardun - Student Activist early 1960's:
We had met the force of the state.
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It was much bigger and stronger and more powerful than we've realized.
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And at that point, what seemed to happen was that
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there was a change in tactics.
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Confronted by this violent repression, many in the new
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left, began to turn to a new idea.
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If it was impossible to get the policeman out of one's head
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by overthrowing the state instead one should find a way of getting inside
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one's own mind and remove the controls implanted there
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by the state and the corporations.
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Out of this would come a new self, and thus a new society.
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Stew Albert - Founding member of Yippie Party:
People who had been politically active
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were persuaded that if they could change themselves
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and be healthy individuals
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and if a movement grew up just aimed that people changing themselves
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then at some point all that positive change going on -
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well you could say quantity would become quality -
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and there would be sort of a spontaneous transformation of society.
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But political activism was not required.
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Robert Pardun - Student Activist early 1960's:
It's about making a new you.
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That if enough people changed the way they were
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that the society would change.
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So the personal would become political.
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Without changing the personal,
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you didn't stand a chance of changing the political.
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Coming up against the state power of the United States was not an option.
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They outgunned us.
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And to produce the new self, they turned to the ideas and techniques
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of Wilhelm Reich.
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Since his death a small group of psychotherapists
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had been developing techniques based on Reich's ideas.
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Their aim was to invent ways that would allow individuals
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to free themselves from the controls implanted in their minds by society.
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Their center was a tiny old motel on a remote coast of California.
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It was called the Esalen Institute.
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The dominant figure at Esalen was a psychoanalyst called Fritz Perls.
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Perls had been trained by Reich and had developed a form of group encounter
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in which he pushed individuals to publicly express the feelings inside them
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that society had said were dangerous and should be repressed.
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Fritz Pearls Workshop Esalen Institute 1960s It's a basic fear of that thing inside me, like a little demon in there...
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It doesn't come out very often..It's really hard to get it over..
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Now, put that thing inside you on that chair and talk to it!
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Michael Murphy - Founder of Esalen Institute:
Perls used to call this getting on the hot seat
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in front of a group.
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If this were the hot seat and you were Perls you would guide me
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into this process of self-enactment, self revelation,
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of staying present to all the parts of yourself and noticing it
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and then taking ownership of this.
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-That's the demon?
-Yes.
-I can come out...I can come right out of him...
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-And I can... push him aside...
-You! Say You!
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-I can push you aside..
-Yeah!
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There's a demon with each one of us...
-I can make you all cry..
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I can make you all feel terrible..maybe even forever..
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I can make this mouth here do things and say things...
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I can almost distroy anyone... each one of you..if I get out...
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There isn't one of you that I would spear...
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Not even you!..
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-Yeah..How do you feel now?
-I feel better, i mean, umm...
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I feel very honest..
-Yeah.. And you notice the increase of power?
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In other words, taking ownership of who you are
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and how you act and how you feel,
your whole beeing in a world
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in other words giving you autonomy. Owning your freedom.
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I'm frightening! When I have my power, I'm frightening!
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-Say "I've frightened you with my power!"
-I've frightened you with my power!
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-Now... did you feel power in your hands, in your muscles?
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Wake up!
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???
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It was not a funny movement! That's what i wanted to do and I did it!
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00:19:14,241 --> 00:19:16,829
What Perls and other who were at Esalen believed
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was that they were creating ways that allowed individuals
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to express their true inner selves.
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I wanted them to applaud for me!
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Out of this they believed would come new autonomous beings,
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free of social conditioning.
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To the left, defeated in the wake of Chicago,
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it was an enormously attractive idea.
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These techniques could be used to unleash a new powerful self
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strong enough to overthrow the old order.
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In the late sixties and early seventies
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thousands flocked to Esalen.
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Only a few years before it had been an obscure fringe institute.
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Now it became the center of a national movement for personal transformation.
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The human potential movement.
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Michael Murphy - Founder of Esalen Institute:
So it became magnetic.
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People wanted to join this stream of exploration.
287
00:20:15,744 --> 00:20:19,244
Within about seven years there were 200 hundred of these centers in America
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looking mainly to Esalen for the leadership.
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-I feel so liberated!
-Really? That's fantastic!..
290
00:20:28,247 --> 00:20:30,671
And it took on a big political agenda.
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You could not separate personal transformation
from social transformation.
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The two go together.
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00:20:37,680 --> 00:20:40,981
As the movement grew the leaders of Esalen
decided to try and use
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00:20:40,981 --> 00:20:44,609
their techniques to solve social problems.
295
00:20:44,828 --> 00:20:46,686
They began with racism.
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They organized an encounter group for white and black radicals.
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Both groups would be encouraged to express
their inner racist feelings
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which had been instilled in them by society.
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By doing this they would transcend those feelings
300
00:20:59,485 --> 00:21:01,592
and encounter each other as individuals.
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George Leonard - Encounter Group Leader Esalen Institute 1960s:
I started a series of encounters called
302
00:21:05,703 --> 00:21:09,188
'racial confrontation as transcendental experience'.
303
00:21:09,434 --> 00:21:12,550
We thought that we wanted to get that kind of black/white confrontation
304
00:21:12,550 --> 00:21:15,962
so you could really get down to see what was between the two races
305
00:21:15,962 --> 00:21:18,152
not by backing off and trying to be polite
306
00:21:18,485 --> 00:21:24,173
but by going right into the belly of the beast,
of this beast of racial prejudice.
307
00:21:24,173 --> 00:21:27,986
And these were extremely dramatic,
these were the toughest workshops
308
00:21:28,374 --> 00:21:31,155
ever convened at Esalen Institute.
309
00:21:31,388 --> 00:21:36,813
-I'm looking at you whitie, you've got clothes on! You've got shoes on!
-You're so sure, lookin' at me, huh?
310
00:21:37,063 --> 00:21:41,565
-You've got the goddamned police in the neighbourhood! -Really? They're not my police!
311
00:21:41,565 --> 00:21:44,296
-You've got a governor, you've got a mayor!
-Oh, really?
312
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-You've got the president,... you've got ambasadors! -Oh, really? You can vote too!
313
00:21:47,613 --> 00:21:51,146
-We've got death in Vietnam.. That's the benefits of slave labour!
314
00:21:51,146 --> 00:21:54,921
-You've got bilders, sky-scrappers, that you dominate and control
315
00:21:55,123 --> 00:22:00,284
- economically and politically! And tell me that it's not yours!...
-It's yours too!...
316
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Then the blacks got together and attacked the whites.
317
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And they just let us have it.
318
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What they called it was peeping somebody.
319
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Peeping somebody means peeping into their secrets.
320
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Into their phoniness and so forth.
321
00:22:14,045 --> 00:22:18,844
Like the white liberal, oh they really,
really got onto the white liberal.
322
00:22:19,128 --> 00:22:22,081
Don't give me that shit while I breathe.. You're a goddamned liar,
323
00:22:22,315 --> 00:22:24,673
you white-pink son of a bitch you!..
324
00:22:24,673 --> 00:22:26,844
Yeah, i donno why you came, none of you here
325
00:22:26,844 --> 00:22:32,423
You don't own a black buck, huh! You're looking for us to?...huh?
-Back off!
326
00:22:32,662 --> 00:22:36,223
Huh? What did you come here for? You're sitting here with your legs
327
00:22:36,223 --> 00:22:39,314
all gatewide open, showing your drools...Now, what did you come here for?
328
00:22:39,314 --> 00:22:42,787
The black/white encounter groups were a disaster.
329
00:22:42,787 --> 00:22:46,817
The black radicals saw it as an insidious attempt to destroy their power.
330
00:22:47,347 --> 00:22:49,962
By trying to turn them into liberated individuals,
331
00:22:50,271 --> 00:22:53,692
Esalen was removing the one thing that gave them power and confidence
332
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in their struggle against racism;
333
00:22:56,294 --> 00:22:58,914
their collective identity as blacks.
334
00:22:59,370 --> 00:23:03,965
-So take this! You're reason for being here is different from my reason!
335
00:23:04,889 --> 00:23:07,546
So the human potential movement turned to another social group
336
00:23:08,264 --> 00:23:11,158
they believed would benefit from personal transformation.
337
00:23:13,511 --> 00:23:17,168
Nuns. And this time they were more successful.
338
00:23:18,794 --> 00:23:21,591
The Convent of the Immaculate Heart in Los Angeles
339
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was one of the largest seminaries in America.
340
00:23:24,594 --> 00:23:27,145
A group of radical psychotherapists approached the convent.
341
00:23:28,295 --> 00:23:31,014
They wanted to try out their techniques for personal liberation
342
00:23:31,284 --> 00:23:35,826
on individuals whose identities were defined by a series of external rules
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00:23:35,826 --> 00:23:37,872
which they had deeply internalized.
344
00:23:38,676 --> 00:23:42,116
The convent, anxious to appear modern,
agreed to the experiment.
345
00:23:44,503 --> 00:23:48,286
Dr. William Coulson - Nuns' Encounter Group Leader:
And we did weekend encounter workshops
346
00:23:48,286 --> 00:23:50,924
for several hundred Immaculate Heart nuns.
347
00:23:51,235 --> 00:23:54,564
Nuns who were reserved, and they tended to be more reserved than
348
00:23:54,564 --> 00:23:59,719
other normal people were told: don't be so reserved, let it all out,
349
00:23:59,973 --> 00:24:03,243
you are a good person you can afford to be who you really are,
350
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you don't need to play the role of a nun,
351
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you don't need to keep downcast eyes.
352
00:24:08,505 --> 00:24:11,314
Prudence is an oversold virtue.
353
00:24:11,970 --> 00:24:15,128
Immaculate Heart novice nun - Interviewed during psychotherapy experiment:
You are trying to assert yourself,
354
00:24:15,347 --> 00:24:18,410
trying to find out who you are, who you are becoming, at the same time
355
00:24:18,651 --> 00:24:21,174
you are trying to live a life of dedication of service
356
00:24:21,174 --> 00:24:24,025
and you are trying to make all of these things fit into who you are,
357
00:24:24,025 --> 00:24:29,461
and it's such a turmoil at times that you just blow a gasket
358
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and do silly crazy things.
359
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Running around the orchard and stealing oranges and
360
00:24:35,497 --> 00:24:38,025
taking Cokes out of the refrigerator, crazy things.
361
00:24:38,025 --> 00:24:40,724
Another nun:
I felt like I was being a hypocrite
362
00:24:40,724 --> 00:24:43,757
and I wanted people to respect me for what I was, not for what I was wearing
363
00:24:43,757 --> 00:24:45,870
and so I'm glad for the change.
364
00:24:46,253 --> 00:24:51,052
-You feel frightened but you go on.
-Oh yeah I'm scared to death but it's worth it.
365
00:24:51,725 --> 00:24:53,934
The experiment began to transform the convent.
366
00:24:54,678 --> 00:24:58,178
The nuns voted to discard their habits in favor of ordinary clothes.
367
00:24:59,371 --> 00:25:02,191
The psychotherapists had found they had awoken other forces.
368
00:25:03,031 --> 00:25:06,568
Dr. William Coulson - Nuns' Encounter Group Leader:
One of the things we unleashed was sexual energy,
369
00:25:06,568 --> 00:25:10,820
the kind of thing the church had been very good at restraining
370
00:25:11,029 --> 00:25:13,167
was no longer to be restrained.
371
00:25:13,399 --> 00:25:16,071
One sister who was a member of the community
372
00:25:16,320 --> 00:25:20,215
she got the idea that she could be freer than she had been before
373
00:25:20,215 --> 00:25:24,152
and she seduced one of her classmates and then seduced
374
00:25:24,693 --> 00:25:29,478
the mistresses of novices who was an older woman very reserved
375
00:25:29,727 --> 00:25:34,655
and her program of freeing this older woman was sexual.
376
00:25:34,946 --> 00:25:37,898
She drove her to the store and when they drove back
377
00:25:38,261 --> 00:25:40,322
and when they drove into the garage
378
00:25:40,669 --> 00:25:43,571
she leaned over and gave her a big kiss on the lips
379
00:25:43,803 --> 00:25:47,574
and thereafter the sister who had perhaps never been kissed before
380
00:25:47,574 --> 00:25:49,571
was ready for more.
381
00:25:50,228 --> 00:25:53,324
The effect of the experiment on the convent was cataclysmic.
382
00:25:54,045 --> 00:25:57,384
Within a year, 300 nuns, more than half the convent,
383
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petitioned the Vatican to be released from their vows
384
00:26:01,004 --> 00:26:04,131
and six months later, the convent closed its doors.
385
00:26:05,075 --> 00:26:07,469
All that was left was a small group of nuns,
386
00:26:08,013 --> 00:26:10,887
but they had become radical lesbian nuns
387
00:26:11,107 --> 00:26:13,514
the rest gave up the religious life.
388
00:26:13,824 --> 00:26:18,027
-They gave up being nuns?
-They did, yeah, they became persons..
389
00:26:21,045 --> 00:26:23,887
By the late 60s, the idea of self exploration
390
00:26:23,887 --> 00:26:26,356
was spreading rapidly in America.
391
00:26:26,558 --> 00:26:29,314
Encounter groups became the center of what was seen as
392
00:26:29,314 --> 00:26:32,933
a radical alternative culture based on the development of the self
393
00:26:32,933 --> 00:26:35,410
free of a corrupt capitalist culture.
394
00:26:36,923 --> 00:26:40,828
I just want to free them,.. to be ourselves..
And that's for love, for experience...
395
00:26:40,828 --> 00:26:46,515
A positive way of life...We don't say that you're wrong..
396
00:26:46,756 --> 00:26:49,704
We just want to be free, to be what we want to be and
397
00:26:49,704 --> 00:26:53,485
what we find ourselves to be, as we continue the search ourselves...
398
00:26:54,297 --> 00:26:57,642
And it was beginning to have a serious effect on corporate America
399
00:26:58,036 --> 00:27:01,703
because these new selves were not behaving as predictable consumers.
400
00:27:02,983 --> 00:27:04,936
The life insurance industry in particular
401
00:27:04,936 --> 00:27:07,704
was concerned that fewer and fewer college students were buying life insurance
402
00:27:07,926 --> 00:27:10,678
when they left university.
403
00:27:10,879 --> 00:27:15,632
They asked Daniel Yankelovich, America's leading market researcher to investigate.
404
00:27:15,850 --> 00:27:18,079
He had studied psychoanalysis.
405
00:27:18,602 --> 00:27:23,036
Daniel Yankelovich - Yankelovich Partners Market Research Inc:
The life insurance business
406
00:27:23,036 --> 00:27:26,914
more than any other business at the time was built on the protestant ethic.
407
00:27:26,914 --> 00:27:32,663
You only bought life insurance if you were
a person who sacrificed for the future.
408
00:27:32,865 --> 00:27:37,014
If you lived in the present you had no need for life insurance.
409
00:27:37,268 --> 00:27:44,000
So they had some sense that maybe the
core values of the protestant ethic
410
00:27:44,223 --> 00:27:49,098
were being challenged by some of these
new values that were beginning to appear.
411
00:27:49,761 --> 00:27:52,991
And I was really astonished at what I found.
412
00:27:53,738 --> 00:27:59,896
The conventional interpretation was that it had to do with political radicalism.
413
00:28:00,865 --> 00:28:05,681
But what was clear to us was that that was a mask, a cover.
414
00:28:06,440 --> 00:28:11,067
The core of it, had to do with self expressiveness...
415
00:28:12,572 --> 00:28:16,175
This preoccupation with the self and the inner self,
416
00:28:16,393 --> 00:28:20,430
that was what was so important to people, the ability to be self expressive.
417
00:28:21,630 --> 00:28:23,896
Wow! What a feeling!..
418
00:28:28,645 --> 00:28:32,024
Yankelovich began to track the growth and behavior of these new expressive selves.
419
00:28:34,496 --> 00:28:38,906
What he told the corporations, was that these new beings WERE consumers
420
00:28:38,906 --> 00:28:42,104
but they no longer wanted anything that would place them
421
00:28:42,104 --> 00:28:44,972
within the narrow strata of American society.
422
00:28:44,972 --> 00:28:49,111
Instead, what they wanted were products
that would express their individuality,
423
00:28:49,559 --> 00:28:52,641
their difference in a conformist world.
424
00:28:52,641 --> 00:28:56,343
They very things that US corporations did not make.
425
00:28:57,683 --> 00:29:01,810
Daniel Yankelovich - Yankelovich Partners Market Research Inc:
Products have always had an emotional meaning.
426
00:29:01,810 --> 00:29:10,143
What was new was individuality. The idea that this product expresses me
427
00:29:10,593 --> 00:29:14,706
and whether it was a small European car,
428
00:29:15,749 --> 00:29:18,286
the particular music system,
429
00:29:21,035 --> 00:29:23,627
your presentation of self, your clothing,
430
00:29:29,202 --> 00:29:33,766
these become ways in which people can spend their money
431
00:29:34,036 --> 00:29:37,127
in order to say to the world who they are.
432
00:29:39,806 --> 00:29:43,717
But the manufacturers, they had no idea what was going on, really,
433
00:29:44,525 --> 00:29:47,577
with consumers and in the market of life.
434
00:29:49,152 --> 00:29:52,516
Major advertising companies set up what they called operating groups
435
00:29:52,760 --> 00:29:56,339
to try and work out how to appeal to these new individuals.
436
00:29:56,965 --> 00:29:59,808
The head of one agency sent a memo to all staff.
437
00:30:00,591 --> 00:30:04,356
We must conform, he told them, to the new non-conformists.
438
00:30:05,052 --> 00:30:09,408
We must listen to the music of Bobby Dylan and go to the theater more.
439
00:30:09,895 --> 00:30:12,907
But the problem was, fewer of the self expressive individuals
440
00:30:12,907 --> 00:30:15,396
would take part in focus groups.
441
00:30:15,895 --> 00:30:18,456
The advertisers were left to their own devices.
442
00:30:18,778 --> 00:30:25,532
-There's a new cereal that tastes so right!
It makes you dance, it's a way out of sight!
443
00:30:25,747 --> 00:30:32,439
-It's tasty little squares of malted wheat
It's crispy and it's crunchy and it tastes so neat!
444
00:30:32,747 --> 00:30:35,501
-Faster, though... That's what I'm saying, use a folk-rock,
445
00:30:35,501 --> 00:30:37,530
with more rock than folk!
446
00:30:37,845 --> 00:30:40,342
And there was an even more serious problem.
447
00:30:40,561 --> 00:30:43,148
To make more products for people who wanted to express themselves
448
00:30:43,148 --> 00:30:45,846
would mean creating variety.
449
00:30:45,846 --> 00:30:48,961
But the systems of mass production that had been developed in America
450
00:30:49,325 --> 00:30:53,123
were only profitable if they made large numbers of the same objects.
451
00:30:53,926 --> 00:30:58,783
This had fitted perfectly with the limited range of desires of a conformist society.
452
00:30:59,523 --> 00:31:03,250
The expressive self threatened this whole system of manufacturing.
453
00:31:04,817 --> 00:31:07,408
And the threat was about to grow rapidly
454
00:31:12,940 --> 00:31:15,192
because an entrepreneur had invented a way
455
00:31:15,192 --> 00:31:18,424
of mass producing this new independent self.
456
00:31:23,018 --> 00:31:24,977
He was called Werner Erhard.
457
00:31:34,416 --> 00:31:39,417
Erhard had invented a system called EST - Erhard Seminar Training.
458
00:31:39,642 --> 00:31:42,409
Hundreds of people came for weekend sessions to be taught
459
00:31:42,409 --> 00:31:46,416
how to be themselves, and EST was soon copied by other groups
460
00:31:46,642 --> 00:31:49,099
like Exegesis in Britain.
461
00:31:50,035 --> 00:31:53,740
Many of Erhard's techniques came from the human potential movement.
462
00:31:53,962 --> 00:31:57,241
He criticized the movement for not having gone far enough.
463
00:31:57,818 --> 00:32:01,319
Their idea that there was a central core inside all human beings
464
00:32:01,543 --> 00:32:04,897
was he said just another limitation on human freedom.
465
00:32:05,728 --> 00:32:08,442
In reality there was no fixed self
466
00:32:08,442 --> 00:32:11,458
which meant that you could be anything that you wanted to be.
467
00:32:13,060 --> 00:32:16,427
Werner Erhard - Founder of EST:
The thesis of the human potential movement
468
00:32:16,427 --> 00:32:19,631
was that there was something really good down in there
469
00:32:19,631 --> 00:32:22,727
and if you took these layers off what you were going to wind up with
470
00:32:22,944 --> 00:32:27,499
was a kernel, a something that was innately self-expressive
471
00:32:29,403 --> 00:32:33,001
that was the true self that was going to be a wonderful thing.
472
00:32:33,259 --> 00:32:38,322
In actuality we found people who had gone to the last layer
473
00:32:38,541 --> 00:32:43,219
and took off the last layer and found that, what was left was nothing.
474
00:32:43,480 --> 00:32:46,809
-Allright! Push! Move! Do it!
475
00:32:46,809 --> 00:32:49,652
The EST sessions were intense and often brutal.
476
00:32:50,448 --> 00:32:52,908
The participants signed contracts agreeing not to leave
477
00:32:53,167 --> 00:32:55,870
and to allow the trainers to do anything they thought was necessary
478
00:32:56,108 --> 00:32:58,821
to break down their socially constructed identities.
479
00:32:59,323 --> 00:33:02,967
-You're gonna get to a sandwich there! Or I'm gonna win!
480
00:33:02,967 --> 00:33:06,012
If i push harder than you do, I'm gonna squash you!
481
00:33:06,012 --> 00:33:10,092
So you'd better push fast, now, hard ! Do it! That's it, do it!
482
00:33:10,293 --> 00:33:12,295
Yeah, push! Good! Good!
483
00:33:12,295 --> 00:33:16,731
Good! Again! Yes!
484
00:33:20,170 --> 00:33:23,572
Werner Erhard - Founder of EST -
The real point to the EST training
485
00:33:23,572 --> 00:33:27,454
was to go down through layer after layer after layer after layer
486
00:33:27,682 --> 00:33:31,734
until you got to the last layer and peeled it off
487
00:33:32,060 --> 00:33:36,156
where the recognition was that
488
00:33:36,481 --> 00:33:40,345
it's really all meaningless and empty.
489
00:33:56,576 --> 00:33:59,098
Now, that's existentialism's end point.
490
00:33:59,484 --> 00:34:01,546
EST went a step further,
491
00:34:01,874 --> 00:34:06,420
in that people began to recognize that it was not only meaningless and empty,
492
00:34:07,184 --> 00:34:08,735
but that it was empty and meaningless
493
00:34:08,956 --> 00:34:10,795
that it was empty and meaningless,
494
00:34:11,126 --> 00:34:13,442
and in that there's an enormous freedom.
495
00:34:13,895 --> 00:34:19,517
All of the constrictions, all of the rules that you placed on yourself,
496
00:34:20,361 --> 00:34:21,518
are gone.
497
00:34:22,238 --> 00:34:24,638
And what you are left with is nothing,
498
00:34:25,204 --> 00:34:29,112
and nothing is an extraordinarily powerful place to stand
499
00:34:29,440 --> 00:34:33,632
because it is only from nothing that you can create and
500
00:34:33,892 --> 00:34:37,284
from this nothing people were able to invent a life,
501
00:34:37,581 --> 00:34:40,113
allowing them to create themselves.
502
00:34:42,190 --> 00:34:44,758
-To invent themselves?
-To invent themselves.
503
00:34:45,196 --> 00:34:46,788
You can be what you want to be.
504
00:34:47,178 --> 00:34:49,992
I want you to start to make that sound
505
00:34:49,992 --> 00:34:56,831
and on that sound, create in people,
the world the way you want to create it
506
00:34:58,667 --> 00:35:02,550
Jesse Kornbluth - Journalist, New Times 1970s -
What Erhard did was to say
507
00:35:02,550 --> 00:35:08,208
that only the individual matters, that there is no societal concern,
508
00:35:08,416 --> 00:35:11,571
that you living a fulfilled life
509
00:35:11,866 --> 00:35:14,237
is all you need to be concerned about.
510
00:35:15,005 --> 00:35:18,945
EST people came out of those trainings feeling that
511
00:35:18,945 --> 00:35:22,852
it wasn't selfish to think about yourself,
it was your highest duty.
512
00:35:23,710 --> 00:35:31,037
So kiss me and smile for me Tell me that you'll wait for me
513
00:35:31,495 --> 00:35:36,762
Hold me like you'll never let me go
514
00:35:37,005 --> 00:35:40,164
John Denver - EST Graduate -
The training is two weekends
515
00:35:40,164 --> 00:35:42,405
and it was quite an incredible experience in my life,
516
00:35:42,405 --> 00:35:45,980
and I'll forever be grateful for the experience.
I got a great deal out of it.
517
00:35:45,980 --> 00:35:48,095
We really want to know who we are,
518
00:35:48,095 --> 00:35:50,562
there are things going on where we learn more and more about ourselves
519
00:35:50,562 --> 00:35:51,667
all the time,
520
00:35:51,905 --> 00:35:54,339
and to really find out what it is that makes us tick
521
00:35:54,339 --> 00:35:56,543
and how we are discovering ourselves.
522
00:35:59,415 --> 00:36:01,603
EST became hugely successful.
523
00:36:01,815 --> 00:36:05,400
Singers, film stars, and hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans
524
00:36:05,400 --> 00:36:07,797
underwent the training in the 1970s.
525
00:36:09,482 --> 00:36:13,011
But in the process the political idea that had begun the movement
526
00:36:13,011 --> 00:36:16,010
of personal transformation began to disappear.
527
00:36:16,949 --> 00:36:20,947
The original vision, that being through discovering and expressing yourself
528
00:36:21,374 --> 00:36:23,074
a new culture would be born,
529
00:36:23,570 --> 00:36:26,096
one that would challenge the power of the state.
530
00:36:29,703 --> 00:36:34,154
-We will not let them separate our culture from our politics!
531
00:36:34,154 --> 00:36:37,105
we are the people, we are all together! Fu*k 'em!
532
00:36:38,793 --> 00:36:42,346
What was now emerging was the idea that people could be happy
533
00:36:42,590 --> 00:36:47,232
simply within themselves and that changing society was irrelevant.
534
00:36:48,314 --> 00:36:50,797
One of the proponents of this was Jerry Rubin.
535
00:36:50,797 --> 00:36:55,911
In 1968 Rubin, as leader of the Yippies had led the march on Chicago.
536
00:36:56,348 --> 00:36:58,558
But now he had undergone EST training.
537
00:36:59,347 --> 00:37:04,677
Jerry Rubin - Founder of Yippie Party - Interviewed 1978 -
I was willing to die and I had a martyr complex
538
00:37:04,882 --> 00:37:09,641
in the sense that we all did, and I've given up that ideal, of sacrifice.
539
00:37:10,421 --> 00:37:17,099
I'm not as overwhelmingly moved by injustice as I was.
540
00:37:17,454 --> 00:37:20,327
And now we've reincarnated ourselves from within.
541
00:37:20,610 --> 00:37:22,687
Stew Albert - Founder member of Yippie Party -
Basically the politics were lost
542
00:37:22,925 --> 00:37:27,381
and totally replaced by this lifestyle
543
00:37:28,302 --> 00:37:32,549
and then the desire to become deeper and deeper into the self.
544
00:37:33,112 --> 00:37:35,967
By now a grandiose sense of the self.
545
00:37:36,313 --> 00:37:41,394
And my good friend and one of the original Yippie founders Jerry Rubin
546
00:37:41,802 --> 00:37:44,642
definitely moved in that direction
547
00:37:44,925 --> 00:37:50,550
and I think he was beginning to buy into
the notion that he could be happy
548
00:37:50,769 --> 00:37:53,564
and fully self developed on his own.
549
00:37:54,759 --> 00:37:56,803
Socialism in one person.
550
00:38:00,942 --> 00:38:03,923
-Whas he alone in that?
-Although that of course is capitalism...
551
00:38:04,410 --> 00:38:07,645
Werner Erhard - Founder of EST -
That's the whole joke.
552
00:38:09,020 --> 00:38:14,455
I think it's funny because people spend so much of their life
553
00:38:14,833 --> 00:38:18,803
being bedeviled by their past and being locked into their past,
554
00:38:19,020 --> 00:38:24,520
and being limited by their past,
and there's an enormous freedom from that,
555
00:38:24,987 --> 00:38:27,394
letting people create themselves.
556
00:38:31,806 --> 00:38:35,521
EST was only the most vivid and intense expression of an ideakl
557
00:38:35,521 --> 00:38:38,868
that was moving rapidly through all strata of American society.
558
00:38:39,708 --> 00:38:42,058
Books and television programs promoted the idea
559
00:38:42,306 --> 00:38:45,184
that one's first duty was to be one's self.
560
00:38:46,492 --> 00:38:49,336
And those monitoring this shift were astonished at the speed
561
00:38:49,336 --> 00:38:51,225
with which the idea was spreading.
562
00:38:52,132 --> 00:38:58,433
Daniel Yankelovich - Yankelovich Partners Market Research Inc. -
In 1970 it was a small percentage of the total population,
563
00:38:58,433 --> 00:39:00,619
maybe 3 to 5 percent.
564
00:39:00,960 --> 00:39:09,185
By 1980 it had spread to the vast majority
of the public up to 80 percent.
565
00:39:10,119 --> 00:39:12,587
-You asked the question: How do you get self-actualised?
566
00:39:12,587 --> 00:39:15,889
You take this day and you say: when I shave every morning
567
00:39:15,889 --> 00:39:18,337
I look in that mirror and I say to myself, I really say this, i say:
568
00:39:18,337 --> 00:39:22,213
Nobody is going to ruin this day for you, nobody!
569
00:39:22,433 --> 00:39:25,900
That this pre-occupation with the self and the inner self,
570
00:39:26,106 --> 00:39:30,922
traveled and spread throughout the society in the 1970s.
571
00:39:31,211 --> 00:39:34,924
He helped me to stop living in the past and start building from today
572
00:39:34,924 --> 00:39:39,590
and using my experiences in the past, to be a better person today and tommorow
573
00:39:40,010 --> 00:39:44,589
But then the problem becomes: how do you be self-expressive?
574
00:39:46,770 --> 00:39:49,812
And it was at this point that American capitalism decided
575
00:39:49,812 --> 00:39:53,842
it was going to step in and help these individuals to express themselves
576
00:39:54,667 --> 00:39:57,090
and in the process make a lot of money.
577
00:39:58,215 --> 00:40:01,095
The first thing they were going to do was to find a way of
578
00:40:01,095 --> 00:40:04,940
getting inside their heads to discover what these new beings wanted
579
00:40:04,940 --> 00:40:07,174
in order to be themselves.
580
00:40:07,469 --> 00:40:11,326
This came not from Madison Avenue but from one of the most powerful
581
00:40:11,326 --> 00:40:14,841
scientific research institutes in America.
582
00:40:15,090 --> 00:40:19,808
Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in California, worked for corporations and government.
583
00:40:20,066 --> 00:40:22,714
It had done much of the early work on computers
584
00:40:22,936 --> 00:40:25,402
and was also working for the department of defense
585
00:40:25,402 --> 00:40:28,114
on what would become the "Star Wars" project.
586
00:40:30,745 --> 00:40:34,841
In 1978 a group of economists and psychologists at SRI
587
00:40:35,113 --> 00:40:39,700
decided to find a way to read, measure, and fulfill the desires
588
00:40:39,700 --> 00:40:42,324
of these new unpredictable consumers.
589
00:40:43,441 --> 00:40:49,878
Jay Ogilvy - Director of Psychological Values Research, SRI 1979-88 -
The idea was to create a rigorous tool
590
00:40:49,878 --> 00:40:55,220
for measuring a whole range of desires, wishes, values,
591
00:40:55,427 --> 00:40:59,031
that prior to that time had been kind of overlooked.
592
00:40:59,252 --> 00:41:02,577
They say in business, you know,
'What gets measured, gets done'.
593
00:41:03,906 --> 00:41:07,033
We were basically telling manufacturers if you are really
594
00:41:07,033 --> 00:41:12,328
going to satisfy not just the basic needs but individuated wants,
595
00:41:12,567 --> 00:41:18,131
whims and desires of more highly developed human beings
596
00:41:18,378 --> 00:41:22,503
you are going to have to segment, you are going to have to individuate.
597
00:41:23,117 --> 00:41:27,786
To do this, SRI turned for help to those who had begun the liberation of the self.
598
00:41:28,594 --> 00:41:31,328
In particular, one of the leaders of the human potential movement,
599
00:41:31,705 --> 00:41:34,504
a psychologist called Abraham Maslow.
600
00:41:35,057 --> 00:41:37,878
Through the observing the work of places like Esalen,
601
00:41:37,878 --> 00:41:41,319
Maslow had invented a new system of psychological types.
602
00:41:42,380 --> 00:41:45,848
He called it the hierarchy of needs, and it described
603
00:41:45,848 --> 00:41:48,560
the different emotional stages that people had went through
604
00:41:48,785 --> 00:41:50,776
as they liberated their feelings.
605
00:41:50,776 --> 00:41:53,698
At the top was self-actualization.
606
00:41:53,904 --> 00:41:55,659
This was the point at which individuals
607
00:41:55,659 --> 00:41:59,287
became completely self-directed and free of society.
608
00:42:02,959 --> 00:42:06,058
The team at SRI thought that Maslow's hierarchy
609
00:42:06,058 --> 00:42:09,538
might form a basis for a new way to categorize society.
610
00:42:10,540 --> 00:42:15,291
Not by social class, but by different psychological desires and drives.
611
00:42:16,413 --> 00:42:20,021
To test this, they designed a huge questionnaire with hundreds of questions
612
00:42:20,223 --> 00:42:23,975
about how people saw themselves - their inner values.
613
00:42:24,542 --> 00:42:29,211
The questions were designed to see whether people fitted into Maslow's categories.
614
00:42:29,970 --> 00:42:33,384
Amina Marie Spengler - Director Psychological Values Research Program 1978-86 -
We were trying to find out what people really felt like.
615
00:42:33,384 --> 00:42:37,850
So we asked these really penetrating questions
and we hired a company
616
00:42:38,074 --> 00:42:41,210
that administers surveys to do them and
617
00:42:41,204 --> 00:42:43,735
they said they had never seen anything like it.
618
00:42:43,976 --> 00:42:47,704
Usually you have to send out a postcard and then in six weeks another postcard
619
00:42:47,907 --> 00:42:50,912
and then you have to call the people up, you know to get the return rates up,
620
00:42:51,141 --> 00:42:55,644
we had an 86 percent return and they only sent out a postcard.
621
00:42:55,850 --> 00:42:58,577
People loved filling out this questionnaire.
622
00:42:58,577 --> 00:43:02,502
We got several questionnaires back with a note attached saying:
623
00:43:02,502 --> 00:43:05,081
do you have any other questionnaires I can fill out?
624
00:43:05,081 --> 00:43:09,136
Because we were asking people to think about things that
625
00:43:09,136 --> 00:43:13,003
they had never thought about before and they liked thinking about them.
626
00:43:13,237 --> 00:43:19,832
Like what they felt inside, what motivated them,
what was their life about,
627
00:43:20,615 --> 00:43:24,331
what was important to them. It was sort of like, wow.
628
00:43:25,066 --> 00:43:27,256
The answers were then analyzed by computer.
629
00:43:27,801 --> 00:43:31,769
It revealed there were underlying patterns in the way people felt about themselves
630
00:43:32,105 --> 00:43:34,178
which fitted Maslow's categories.
631
00:43:34,440 --> 00:43:37,551
And at the top of the hierarchy were a large and growing group
632
00:43:37,761 --> 00:43:40,177
which cut across all social classes.
633
00:43:40,521 --> 00:43:43,647
The SRI called them the inner directives.
634
00:43:43,991 --> 00:43:46,962
These were people who felt they were not defined
by their place in society
635
00:43:47,273 --> 00:43:49,957
but by the choices they made themselves.
636
00:43:51,397 --> 00:43:55,084
But what SRI discovered was that these people could be defined
637
00:43:55,336 --> 00:43:59,584
by the different patterns of behavior through
which they chose to express themselves.
638
00:44:00,584 --> 00:44:02,569
Self expression was not infinite,
639
00:44:02,859 --> 00:44:06,057
it fell into identifiable types.
640
00:44:07,930 --> 00:44:11,850
The SRI team invented a new term for it - lifestyles.
641
00:44:12,650 --> 00:44:15,244
They had managed to categorize the new individualism.
642
00:44:15,929 --> 00:44:20,879
They called their system "Values and Lifestyles", VALs for short.
643
00:44:22,636 --> 00:44:25,622
At the forefront of this change are three new VALs groups,
644
00:44:25,886 --> 00:44:28,015
groups we call inner directed.
645
00:44:28,015 --> 00:44:31,102
These are people for whom personal satisfaction is more important
646
00:44:31,102 --> 00:44:32,711
than status or money.
647
00:44:32,711 --> 00:44:36,404
They tend to be self expressive, complex, and individualistic.
648
00:44:41,230 --> 00:44:45,588
Rob is an I-am-me. I am me's are searching for new values,
649
00:44:45,795 --> 00:44:49,062
breaking away from traditions and inventing their own standards.
650
00:44:49,062 --> 00:44:52,371
Rob even invented his own name - Rob Noxious.
651
00:44:52,838 --> 00:44:57,061
Jody is an Experiential. This is a group seeking inner growth
652
00:44:57,340 --> 00:44:59,299
through direct experience.
653
00:44:59,299 --> 00:45:02,963
Experientials are in one place much, this is the try-anything-once crowd,
654
00:45:02,963 --> 00:45:05,653
and all that activity takes goods and services.
655
00:45:05,653 --> 00:45:08,704
Their hobbies are hands-on and their possessions are simple
656
00:45:08,704 --> 00:45:10,812
but not always simply priced.
657
00:45:13,339 --> 00:45:16,153
Societally Conscious - I'm a bookseller, i sell books,
658
00:45:17,280 --> 00:45:23,217
I'm a businessman, but that doesn't necessarily mean that
659
00:45:23,217 --> 00:45:26,736
I believe in capitalism, it just happens to be what I am doing now.
660
00:45:28,051 --> 00:45:32,215
SRI created a simplified questionnaire with just 30 key questions.
661
00:45:32,590 --> 00:45:34,980
Anyone who answered them could be immediately be fitted
662
00:45:34,980 --> 00:45:37,831
into a dozen or so, of these groups.
663
00:45:39,158 --> 00:45:42,076
It allowed businesses to identify which groups were buying their products
664
00:45:42,393 --> 00:45:44,573
and from that how the goods could be marketed
665
00:45:44,803 --> 00:45:49,206
so they became powerful emblems of those groups inner values and lifestyles.
666
00:45:49,691 --> 00:45:51,656
It was the beginning of lifestyle marketing.
667
00:45:52,920 --> 00:45:57,499
Amina Marie Spengler - Director Psychological Values Research Program 1978-86 -
So it allowed people not just to look at people as demographics
668
00:45:57,499 --> 00:46:01,281
groups of age and income or whatever,
but to really understand
669
00:46:01,281 --> 00:46:03,502
the underlying motivations.
670
00:46:03,502 --> 00:46:06,906
I mean most of marketing was looking at people's actions
671
00:46:07,118 --> 00:46:10,327
and trying to figure out what to do,
but what we were doing was
672
00:46:10,327 --> 00:46:13,468
we were trying to look at people's underlying values
673
00:46:13,468 --> 00:46:16,408
so that we could predict what is their lifestyle,
674
00:46:16,640 --> 00:46:19,877
what kind of house did they live in, what kind of car did they drive.
675
00:46:20,081 --> 00:46:23,901
So the corporations were then able to sell things to them
676
00:46:24,151 --> 00:46:28,865
by understanding them, by having labels, by knowing what people looked like,
677
00:46:28,865 --> 00:46:31,098
by where they lived, by what their lifestyles are.
678
00:46:31,770 --> 00:46:36,162
If a new product expressed a particular group's values, it would be bought them.
679
00:46:36,635 --> 00:46:39,505
This is what made the Values and Lifestyles system so powerful.
680
00:46:39,900 --> 00:46:44,197
It's ability to predict what new products, self-actualizers would choose.
681
00:46:45,262 --> 00:46:47,884
This power was about to be demonstrated dramatically.
682
00:46:48,263 --> 00:46:51,312
VALs was about to show not just what products they would buy,
683
00:46:51,576 --> 00:46:54,977
but the politicians they were going to choose to elect.
684
00:46:56,148 --> 00:47:02,322
Ladies and gentleman, the next president of the USA - Ronald Reagan!
685
00:47:02,665 --> 00:47:05,291
In 1980, Ronald Reagan ran for president.
686
00:47:05,679 --> 00:47:08,665
He and his advisors were convinced they could win on a program
687
00:47:08,665 --> 00:47:10,718
of a new individualism.
688
00:47:10,718 --> 00:47:14,868
It would be an attack on 50 years of government interference in people's lives.
689
00:47:18,511 --> 00:47:23,356
Jeffery Bell - Speech writer for Ronald Reagan 1976-81 -
I wrote a speech about let the people make the basic decisions,
690
00:47:23,356 --> 00:47:26,376
get judges out of the way, get bureaucrats out of the way,
691
00:47:26,376 --> 00:47:28,629
get centralized government out of the way.
692
00:47:28,629 --> 00:47:31,513
I gave Reagan a choice of several titles for the speech,
693
00:47:31,513 --> 00:47:36,574
and the one he picked was Let the People Rule, Let the People Regain Rule,
694
00:47:36,574 --> 00:47:38,890
regain control over their own destiny
695
00:47:38,890 --> 00:47:42,420
away from a remote elite in Washington.
696
00:47:43,294 --> 00:47:48,326
I would like to think that the kind of leadership that I would exercise in Washington
697
00:47:48,606 --> 00:47:51,182
is not the kind of leadership that I would pretend
698
00:47:51,182 --> 00:47:54,168
that i can solve all the problems I've been discussing here
699
00:47:54,669 --> 00:47:57,326
but that together, you and I can...
700
00:47:57,326 --> 00:48:00,109
I would like to be, to take the lead
701
00:48:00,109 --> 00:48:03,267
in taking government off the backs of the american people
702
00:48:03,435 --> 00:48:05,407
and turning you loose...
703
00:48:07,369 --> 00:48:08,949
It was radical.
704
00:48:09,228 --> 00:48:14,168
Modern Republicans thought it was suicide, Jimmy Carter called it ridiculous,
705
00:48:14,370 --> 00:48:18,418
the press was extremely negative, but the odd thing was that
706
00:48:18,418 --> 00:48:23,266
it polled it very well in New Hampshire, the first primary state that we had to win.
707
00:48:24,065 --> 00:48:28,683
What was odd was there seemed to be a strange mosaic of support for Reagan's policies.
708
00:48:29,643 --> 00:48:32,418
The traditional pollsters could see no coherent pattern
709
00:48:32,669 --> 00:48:35,075
across class, age or gender.
710
00:48:36,507 --> 00:48:39,080
But those who had designed the Values and Lifestyles system
711
00:48:39,332 --> 00:48:41,326
believed that they knew why.
712
00:48:41,796 --> 00:48:44,544
They were testing their system in both America and Britain
713
00:48:44,796 --> 00:48:48,139
and they were convinced that both Reagan's and Thatcher's message
714
00:48:48,139 --> 00:48:52,503
about individual freedom would appeal to the group at the top of their hierarchy,
715
00:48:52,968 --> 00:48:57,670
the inner directeds, because it fitted with the way they saw themselves.
716
00:48:57,986 --> 00:49:01,846
Christine MacNulty - Program Manager - SRI Values and Lifestyles Team 1978-81 -
They were really concerned about being individuals,
717
00:49:01,846 --> 00:49:04,320
about being individualistic,
718
00:49:04,529 --> 00:49:08,695
and so in the early stages when we were looking at the messages
719
00:49:08,695 --> 00:49:11,954
that both Thatcher and Reagan were putting across
720
00:49:12,267 --> 00:49:17,729
we said they are using words that will really appeal to a lot of younger people
721
00:49:17,729 --> 00:49:22,733
and particularly to the people who are moving towards self-actualization.
722
00:49:22,938 --> 00:49:25,319
We called them the inner directed people.
723
00:49:25,547 --> 00:49:29,767
A lot of our colleagues said that's absolutely ridiculous
724
00:49:29,767 --> 00:49:34,438
because inner directeds are very socially aware,
very socially concerned,
725
00:49:34,898 --> 00:49:40,585
they'll never vote conservative, or they'll never vote for the Republicans,
726
00:49:41,167 --> 00:49:46,238
but we said if Thatcher and Reagan continue to appeal to them in this way
727
00:49:46,238 --> 00:49:47,771
they really will.
728
00:49:57,941 --> 00:50:00,834
The idea that the new self actualizing individuals
729
00:50:00,834 --> 00:50:04,955
would choose a politician from the right, not the left, seemed extraordinary.
730
00:50:06,051 --> 00:50:08,878
To test their prediction the values and lifestyles team
731
00:50:09,169 --> 00:50:12,412
did a survey of voting intentions and they correlated it
732
00:50:12,679 --> 00:50:14,959
with their new psychological categories.
733
00:50:15,678 --> 00:50:18,927
Christine MacNulty - Program Manager - SRI Values and Lifestyles Team 1978-81 -
When we said in our surveys
734
00:50:18,927 --> 00:50:22,647
who are you going to vote for, sure enough it was the inner directeds
735
00:50:22,647 --> 00:50:25,450
that said they were going to vote for Thatcher and for Reagan.
736
00:50:25,450 --> 00:50:30,418
And they made the difference in those elections. because of their voting for Thatcher and Reagan..
737
00:50:31,418 --> 00:50:34,011
And it really surprised my colleagues even within my own organization.
738
00:50:35,789 --> 00:50:37,929
It really showed the power of this approach
739
00:50:38,177 --> 00:50:42,673
because it's very difficult to identify inner directed on the street.
740
00:50:44,392 --> 00:50:47,787
These people who voted for Thatcher and Reagan, these inner directeds,
741
00:50:47,989 --> 00:50:50,280
came from any walk of life.
742
00:50:50,280 --> 00:50:53,588
It's really hardly correlated in social class at all.
743
00:50:54,730 --> 00:50:58,077
I mean if you just go along and look at age, sex, and social class,
744
00:50:59,014 --> 00:51:00,773
you would never pick them up.
745
00:51:01,243 --> 00:51:05,043
But if you really go along with a questionnaire that gets at their values
746
00:51:05,244 --> 00:51:10,997
then you can identify them very easily, and that was completely new.
747
00:51:12,656 --> 00:51:17,057
At the beginning of 1981, Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president.
748
00:51:17,588 --> 00:51:21,196
But he took charge of a country that was facing economic disaster.
749
00:51:22,086 --> 00:51:24,026
The terrible inflation of the 1970s
750
00:51:24,282 --> 00:51:27,153
destroyed much of America's traditional heavy industries.
751
00:51:27,464 --> 00:51:29,873
Millions were unemployed.
752
00:51:30,116 --> 00:51:33,010
But true to his campaign promises, Reagan told the country
753
00:51:33,246 --> 00:51:37,342
he would not step into help as all previous governments had since the war.
754
00:51:38,215 --> 00:51:44,062
These United States are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions.
755
00:51:44,839 --> 00:51:48,518
We suffer from the longest and one of the worst sustained inflations
756
00:51:48,518 --> 00:51:50,405
in our national history.
757
00:51:50,672 --> 00:51:53,948
Idle industries have cast workers into unemployment,
758
00:51:53,948 --> 00:51:57,031
human misery, and personal indignity.
759
00:51:57,031 --> 00:52:02,062
In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem;
760
00:52:02,749 --> 00:52:05,263
government is the problem.
761
00:52:06,121 --> 00:52:10,044
But America's ailing economy was about to be rescued not by government,
762
00:52:10,044 --> 00:52:13,427
but by the new groups market researchers had identified,
763
00:52:13,812 --> 00:52:16,251
the self actualizing individuals.
764
00:52:16,582 --> 00:52:20,533
They were about to become the motor for what would be called the new economy.
765
00:52:22,124 --> 00:52:25,272
You can be what you wanna be!
766
00:52:25,794 --> 00:52:31,734
-So, ..., what do you really want?
-A tasty product that's good for me...
767
00:52:32,024 --> 00:52:33,744
-What do you want that for?
768
00:52:34,251 --> 00:52:36,687
Renee M. Love Chairman and CEO Omega Group Inc. -
One technique is that we ask people the same question
769
00:52:36,687 --> 00:52:38,171
over and over again.
770
00:52:38,171 --> 00:52:41,427
We say what do you want, what do you really want, what do you want that for
771
00:52:41,427 --> 00:52:45,834
and they start to talk about it and they kind of get intimate with what's going on.
772
00:52:46,097 --> 00:52:49,126
What we're doing with that technique is unpeeling the onion.
773
00:52:49,719 --> 00:52:51,674
If you want to think of a person as having
774
00:52:51,674 --> 00:52:55,084
layers and layers and layers of protection, thoughts and belief,
775
00:52:55,084 --> 00:52:57,040
we want to get to the center core.
776
00:52:57,040 --> 00:52:59,836
In the wake of the invention of Values and Lifestyles
777
00:53:00,173 --> 00:53:03,189
a vast industry of psychological market research grew out.
778
00:53:04,679 --> 00:53:08,336
And the old technique of the focus group invented by the Freudian psychoanalysts
779
00:53:08,336 --> 00:53:11,649
of the 50s, was used in a new and powerful way.
780
00:53:12,862 --> 00:53:15,853
The original aim of the focus group had been to find ways
781
00:53:15,853 --> 00:53:19,805
to entice people to buy a limited range of mass-produced goods.
782
00:53:20,597 --> 00:53:22,878
But now focus groups were used in a different way,
783
00:53:23,118 --> 00:53:25,915
to explore the inner feelings of lifestyle groups
784
00:53:26,190 --> 00:53:29,778
and out of that invent whole new ranges of products
785
00:53:29,778 --> 00:53:34,029
which would allow those groups to express what they felt was their individuality.
786
00:53:35,410 --> 00:53:38,626
And the generation who had once rebelled against the conformity
787
00:53:38,626 --> 00:53:43,504
imposed by consumerism, now embraced it because it helped them to be themselves.
788
00:53:44,787 --> 00:53:49,067
Stew Albert - Founder member of Yippie Party -
What capitalism managed to do that was brilliant
789
00:53:49,067 --> 00:53:53,669
was to actually create products that people like me would be interested in.
790
00:53:53,669 --> 00:53:56,383
That people like Jerry Rubin would be interested in.
791
00:53:56,383 --> 00:54:01,009
Capitalism developed a whole industry at developing products
792
00:54:01,009 --> 00:54:03,663
that evoke a larger sense of self,
793
00:54:04,538 --> 00:54:08,964
that seemed to agree with us that the self was infinite,
794
00:54:08,964 --> 00:54:11,070
that you could be anything that you wanted to be.
795
00:54:11,070 --> 00:54:13,693
That took our philosophy and agreed with it.
796
00:54:14,021 --> 00:54:21,117
And than created products that supposedly helped you, aids, they helped you be this limitless self.
797
00:54:22,102 --> 00:54:25,445
The product sells you a way of life, a way of being.
798
00:54:26,341 --> 00:54:28,060
The products sells you values.
799
00:54:29,044 --> 00:54:35,119
You dress this way, you live in a house like this, you have furniture like this,
800
00:54:35,321 --> 00:54:37,125
you use this computer,
801
00:54:46,376 --> 00:54:49,780
you eat in these restaurants, there are values there.
802
00:54:49,995 --> 00:54:52,805
Hipness, coolness, so the notion that you could buy an identity
803
00:55:00,095 --> 00:55:03,921
would place the original movement notion that you were perfectly free
804
00:55:03,921 --> 00:55:05,888
to create an identity.
805
00:55:06,202 --> 00:55:08,129
And you were perfectly free to change the world
806
00:55:08,129 --> 00:55:10,262
and make the world anything that you wanted it to be.
807
00:55:10,542 --> 00:55:14,324
Well, what i wear is ..a statement..
808
00:55:16,514 --> 00:55:21,873
And this vast range of new desires fitted perfectly with changes in industrial production.
809
00:55:22,981 --> 00:55:26,075
Computers now allowed manufacturers to economically produce
810
00:55:26,380 --> 00:55:29,006
short runs of consumer goods.
811
00:55:29,452 --> 00:55:32,294
The old restrictions of mass production disappeared,
812
00:55:32,810 --> 00:55:35,546
as did the worry that bedeviled corporate America
813
00:55:35,766 --> 00:55:38,345
ever since mass production had been invented.
814
00:55:38,558 --> 00:55:40,654
That they would produce too many goods.
815
00:55:41,236 --> 00:55:44,736
With the new self consumer desire seemed to have no limit.
816
00:55:45,016 --> 00:55:50,449
Daniel Yankelovich - Yankelovich Partners Market Research Inc. -
In the United States the concern of companies was always
817
00:55:50,449 --> 00:55:53,328
that supply would outstrip demand.
818
00:55:53,550 --> 00:55:58,703
That we were producing too much and that there was not a market for it.
819
00:55:59,032 --> 00:56:02,075
You don't hear that kind of talk anymore
820
00:56:02,361 --> 00:56:07,736
because you've gone from a conception of a market of limited needs,
821
00:56:08,185 --> 00:56:10,258
and if you've filled them thei're filled,
822
00:56:10,485 --> 00:56:14,425
to a market of unlimited ever changing needs
823
00:56:14,425 --> 00:56:19,454
dominated by self-expressiveness, that products and services
824
00:56:19,674 --> 00:56:25,613
can satisfy in an endless variety of ways and ways that change all the time.
825
00:56:26,759 --> 00:56:31,038
And consequently economies have unlimited horizons.
826
00:56:33,269 --> 00:56:37,533
Out of this explosion of desire came what seemed a never ending consumer boom
827
00:56:37,533 --> 00:56:39,986
that regenerated the American economy.
828
00:56:42,237 --> 00:56:45,168
The original idea had been that the liberation of the self
829
00:56:45,395 --> 00:56:49,384
would create news kinds of people free of social constraint.
830
00:56:50,915 --> 00:56:53,506
That radical change had happened.
831
00:56:53,722 --> 00:56:57,800
But while the new beings felt liberated, they had become increasingly dependent
832
00:56:57,800 --> 00:57:00,365
for their identity on business.
833
00:57:02,040 --> 00:57:05,363
The corporations had realized that it was in their interest
834
00:57:05,363 --> 00:57:08,856
to encourage people to feel that they were unique individuals
835
00:57:08,856 --> 00:57:12,430
and then offer them ways to express that individuality.
836
00:57:12,805 --> 00:57:16,418
The world in which people felt they were rebelling against conformity
837
00:57:16,711 --> 00:57:20,866
was not a threat to business but it's greatest opportunity.
838
00:57:26,738 --> 00:57:30,178
Robert Reich - Economist and member of Clinton Cabinet 1993-1997 -
It was in a sense the triumph of the self,
839
00:57:30,431 --> 00:57:33,388
it was the triumph of a certain self indulgence,
840
00:57:33,388 --> 00:57:39,104
a view that everything in the world and all moral judgment
841
00:57:39,305 --> 00:57:44,434
was appropriately viewed through the lens of personal satisfaction.
842
00:57:44,913 --> 00:57:50,744
Indeed, the ultimate ending point of that logic is that there is no society,
843
00:57:51,605 --> 00:57:55,796
there is only a bunch of individual people making individual choices
844
00:57:55,796 --> 00:57:58,711
to promote their own individual well being.
845
00:58:05,306 --> 00:58:08,806
Next week's episode tells the story of how politicians on the left
846
00:58:09,057 --> 00:58:13,446
in both Britain and America, turned to the techniques developed by business
847
00:58:13,745 --> 00:58:15,776
in order to regain power.
848
00:58:16,651 --> 00:58:20,423
But what they didn't realize, was what had worked for business
849
00:58:20,423 --> 00:58:23,899
would undermine the very basis of their political beliefs.
850
00:58:24,339 --> 00:58:29,588
They would find themselves trapped by the greedy desires of the new self.