Edward L. Bernays
| Edward Bernays | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Edward Bernays November 22, 1891 Vienna, Austria-Hungary |
| Died | March 9, 1995 (aged 103) Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Occupation | Public relations, advertising |
| Notable work | Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923), Propaganda (1928), Public Relations (1945), The Engineering of Consent (1955) |
| Spouse(s) | Doris E. Fleischman |
| Children | Doris Bernays, Anne Bernays |
| Parent(s) | Ely Bernays Anna Freud |
| Relatives |
Martha Bernays (aunt) Sigmund Freud (uncle) Isaac Bernays (great-grandfather) |
Edward Louis James Bernays (/bərˈneɪz/; German: [bɛɐ̯ˈnaɪs]; November 22, 1891 − March 9, 1995) was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations". Bernays was named one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century by Life magazine. He was the subject of a full length biography by Larry Tye called The Father of Spin (1999) and later an award-winning 2002 documentary for the BBC by Adam Curtis called The Century of the Self.
His best-known campaigns include a 1929 effort to promote female smoking by branding cigarettes as feminist "Torches of Freedom" and his work for the United Fruit Company connected with the overthrow of the Guatemalan government in 1954. He worked for dozens of major American corporations including Proctor and Gamble and General Electric, and for government agencies, politicians, and non-profit organizations.
Of his many books, Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923) and Propaganda (1928) gained special attention as early efforts to define and theorize the field of public relations. Citing works of writers such as Gustave Le Bon, Wilfred Trotter, Walter Lippmann, and his own double uncle Sigmund Freud, he described the masses as irrational and subject to herd instinct—and outlined how skilled practitioners could use crowd psychology and psychoanalysis to control them in desirable ways.
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