|
|
1. The Depth Approach
This
book is an attempt to explore a strange and rather exotic new area of
American life. It is about the large-scale efforts being made, often with
impressive success, to channel our unthinking habits, our purchasing
decisions, and our thought processes by the use of insights gleaned from
psychiatry and the social sciences. Typically these efforts take place
beneath our level of awareness; so that the appeals which move us are often,
in a sense, "hidden." The result is that many of us are being influenced and
manipulated, far more than we realize, in the patterns of our everyday
lives.
Some of
the manipulating being attempted is simply amusing. Some of it is
disquieting, particularly when viewed as a portent of what may be ahead on a
more intensive and effective scale for us all. Co-operative scientists have
come along providentially to furnish some awesome tools.
The use
of mass psychoanalysis to guide campaigns of persuasion has become the basis
of a multimillion-dollar industry. Professional persuaders have seized upon
it in their groping for more effective ways to sell us their wares --
whether products, ideas, attitudes, candidates, goals, or states of mind.
This
depth approach to influencing our behavior is being used in many fields and
is employing a variety of ingenious techniques. It is being used most
extensively to affect our daily acts of consumption. The sale to us of
billions of dollars' worth of United States products is being significantly
affected, if not revolutionized, by this approach, which is still only
barely out of its infancy. Two thirds of America's hundred largest
advertisers have geared campaigns to this depth approach by using strategies
inspired by what marketers call "motivation analysis."
Meanwhile, many of the nation's leading public-relations experts have been
indoctrinating themselves in the lore of psychiatry and the social sciences
in order to increase their skill at "engineering" our consent to their
propositions. Fund raisers are turning to the depth approach to wring more
money from us. A considerable and growing number of our industrial concerns
(including some of the largest) are seeking to sift and mold the behavior of
their personnel -- particularly their own executives -- by using psychiatric
and psychological techniques. Finally, this depth approach is showing up
nationally in the professional politicians' intensive use of symbol
manipulation and reiteration on the voter, who more and more is treated like
Pavlov's conditioned dog.
The
efforts of the persuaders to probe our everyday habits for hidden meanings
are often interesting purely for the flashes of revelation they offer us of
ourselves. We are frequently revealed, in their findings, as comical actors
in a genial if twitchy Thurberian world. The findings of the depth probers
provide startling explanations for many of our daily habits and
perversities. It seems that our subconscious can be pretty wild and unruly.
What the
probers are looking for, of course, are the whys of our behavior, so that
they can more effectively manipulate our habits and choices in their favor.
This has led them to probe why we are afraid of banks; why we love those big
fat cars; why we really buy homes; why men smoke cigars; why the kind of car
we draw reveals the brand of gasoline we will buy; why housewives typically
fall into a hypnoidal trance when they get into a supermarket; why men are
drawn into auto showrooms by convertibles but end up buying sedans; why
junior loves cereal that pops, snaps, and crackles.
We move
from the genial world of James Thurber into the chilling world of George
Orwell and his Big Brother, however, as we explore some of the extreme
attempts at probing and manipulating now going on.
Certain
of the probers, for example, are systematically feeling out our hidden
weaknesses and frailties in the hope that they can more efficiently
influence our behavior. At one of the largest advertising agencies in
America psychologists on the staff are probing sample humans in an attempt
to find how to identify, and beam messages to, people of high anxiety, body
consciousness, hostility, passiveness, and so on. A
Chicago
advertising agency has been studying the housewife's menstrual cycle and its
psychological concomitants in order to find the appeals that will be more
effective in selling her certain food products.
Seemingly, in the probing and manipulating nothing is immune or sacred. The
same Chicago ad agency has used psychiatric probing techniques on little
girls. Public-relations experts are advising churchmen how they can become
more effective manipulators of their congregations. In some cases these
persuaders even choose our friends for us, as at a large "community of
tomorrow" in Florida. Friends are furnished along with the linen by the
management in offering the homes for sale. Everything comes in one big,
glossy package. Somber examples of the new persuaders in action are
appearing not only in merchandising but in politics and industrial
relations. The national chairman of a political party indicated his
merchandising approach to the election of 1956 by talking of his candidates
as products to sell. In many industrial concerns now the administrative
personnel are psycho-tested, and their futures all charted, by trained
outside experts. And then there is the trade school in
California
that boasts to employers that it socially engineers its graduates so that
they are, to use the phrase of an admiring trade journal, "custom-built men"
guaranteed to have the right attitudes from the employer's standpoint.
What the
persuaders are trying to do in many cases was well summed up by one of their
leaders, the president of the Public Relations Society of America, when he
said in an address to members: "The stuff with which we work is the fabric
of men's minds." In many of their attempts to work over the fabric of our
minds the professional persuaders are receiving direct help and guidance
from respected social scientists. Several social-science professors at
Columbia University, for example, took part in a seminar at the university
attended by dozens of New York public-relations experts. In the seminar one
professor, in a sort of chalk talk, showed these manipulators precisely the
types of mental manipulation they could attempt with most likelihood of
success.
All this
probing and manipulation has its constructive and its amusing aspects; but
also, I think it fair to say, it has seriously antihumanistic implications.
Much of it seems to represent regress rather than progress for man in his
long struggle to become a rational and self-guiding being. Something new, in
fact, appears to be entering the pattern of American life with the growing
power of our persuaders.
In the
imagery of print, film, and air wave the typical American citizen is
commonly depicted as an uncommonly shrewd person. He or she is dramatized as
a thoughtful voter, rugged individualist, and, above all, as a careful,
hardheaded consumer of the wondrous products of American enterprise. He is,
in short, the flowering of twentieth-century progress and enlightenment.
Most of
us like to fit ourselves into this picture, and some of us surely are
justified in doing so. The men and women who hold up these glowing images,
particularly the professional persuaders, typically do so, however, with
tongue in cheek. The way these persuaders -- who often refer to themselves
good-naturedly as "symbol manipulators"-- see us in the quiet of their
interoffice memos, trade journals, and shop talk is frequently far less
flattering, if more interesting. Typically they see us as bundles of
daydreams, misty hidden yearnings, guilt complexes, irrational emotional
blockages. We are image lovers given to impulsive and compulsive acts. We
annoy them with our seemingly senseless quirks, but we please them with our
growing docility in responding to their manipulation of symbols that stir us
to action. They have found the supporting evidence for this view persuasive
enough to encourage them to turn to depth channels on a large scale in their
efforts to influence our behavior.
The
symbol manipulators and their research advisers have developed their depth
views of us by sitting at the feet of psychiatrists and social scientists
(particularly psychologists and sociologists) who have been hiring
themselves out as "practical" consultants or setting up their own research
firms. Gone are the days when these scientists confined themselves to
classifying manic depressives, fitting round pegs in round holes, or
studying the artifacts and mating habits of Solomon Islanders. These new
experts, with training of varying thoroughness, typically refer to
themselves as "motivation analysts" or "motivation researchers." The head of
a Chicago research firm that conducts psychoanalytically oriented studies
for merchandisers, Louis Cheskin, sums up what he is doing in these candid
terms:
"Motivation research is the type of research that seeks to learn what
motivates people in making choices. It employs techniques designed to reach
the unconscious or subconscious mind because preferences generally are
determined by factors of which the individual is not conscious. . . .
Actually in the buying situation the consumer generally acts emotionally and
compulsively, unconsciously reacting to the images and designs which in the
subconscious are associated with the product." Mr. Cheskin's clients include
many of America's leading producers of consumer goods.
These
motivational analysts, in working with the symbol manipulators, are adding
depth to the selling of ideas and products. They are learning, for example,
to offer us considerably more than the actual item involved. A Milwaukee
advertising executive commented to colleagues in print on the fact that
women will pay two dollars and a half for skin cream but no more than
twenty-five cents for a cake of soap. Why? Soap, he explained, only promises
to make them clean. The cream promises to make them beautiful. (Soaps have
now started promising beauty as well as cleanness.) This executive added,
"The women are buying a promise." Then he went on to say: "The cosmetic
manufacturers are not selling lanolin, they are selling hope. . . . We no
longer buy oranges, we buy vitality. We do not buy just an auto, we buy
prestige."
The
reason why I mention merchandisers more frequently than the other types of
persuader in this exploration is that they have more billions of dollars
immediately at stake and so have been pouring more effort into pioneering
the depth approach. But the others -- including publicists, fund raisers,
politicians, and industrial personnel experts -- are getting into the field
rapidly, and others with anything to promote will presumably follow.
Since
our concern here is with the breed of persuaders known in the trade as the
"depth boys," much of the book is devoted to describing their subterranean
operations. For that reason I should add the obvious: a great many
advertising men, publicists, fund raisers, personnel experts, and political
leaders, in fact numerically a majority, still do a straightforward job and
accept us as rational citizens (whether we are or not). They fill an
important and constructive role in our society. Advertising, for example,
not only plays a vital role in promoting our economic growth but is a
colorful, diverting aspect of American life; and many of the creations of ad
men are tasteful, honest works of artistry.
As for
the new operators in depth, some of them try for good reason to pursue their
operations quietly. I frequently came up against a wall in trying to get
direct information from companies known to be deeply involved in depth
probing. In two cases in which officials of such companies had been candid
with me they later called and confessed they had been talking out of turn.
They asked me not to identify them or their companies or products, and I
have respected their requests for anonymity. Others, particularly from the
research organizations, were so frank and detailed about their findings and
operations that while I admired their candor I at times wondered if they had
become insensitive to some of the anti-humanistic implications of what they
were doing. Some were so co-operative in providing me with remarkable case
material and explanations that I now find it embarrassing to try to relate
in cold print some of what they told me. However, I shall do so and hope
they will not be too offended. In justice perhaps I should add that the
trade journals of the persuaders occasionally publish soul-searching
commentaries on some of the manipulative practices of colleagues.
The
motivational analyst and symbol manipulator pooling their talents, and with
millions of dollars at their disposal, make a fascinating and at times
disturbing team. Results of their maneuvers indicate they are still quite a
way from being infallible. Many of them are quick to admit their techniques
are still not precise. But startling beginnings are being made.
These
depth manipulators are, in their operations beneath the surface of American
life, starting to acquire a power of persuasion that is becoming a matter of
justifiable public scrutiny and concern.
It is
hoped this book may contribute to the process of public scrutiny.
Vance Packard
Hidden Persuaders
Politics and the Image Builders
Molding "Team Players"
The Engineered Yes
Creating Positive Thinkers
The Packaged Soul?
The Question of Validity
The Question of Morality
History of Banking Fraud:
The Coming Battle
By M. W. WALBERT
The Coming Battle
documents from Congressional records, newspaper reports and writings by
the founding fathers and others a chronology of events long forgotten that
shaped our fledgling nation from 1776 to 1899. Read about the manipulation
of our money and its supply, the intentional creation of recessions,
depressions and panics, manipulation of the stock markets, and the
demonetization of silver.
Secrets of the Federal Reserve
by Eustace Mullins
Eustace Mullins' carefully
researched and documented treatise picks up from Walbert's expose' of
control of the money supply and the economy and
brings it to the mid 1980's.
The
World Order
by Eustace Mullins
How control of the world's money has inexorably led to an ever tighter
grip on control of the world's people.
Uranium Wars by Leuren Moret
How control of the world's people has inexorably led to wider use of
depopulation methods which include spreading radioactivity in food,
water, air, and the human genome.
Taking Back Your Power
by Allen Aslan Heart
WHAT CAN YOU DO? Stop playing THEIR game. Take back
your power. Stop paying taxes that are not legal or lawful. Stop paying
bills you don't really owe. Stop using THEIR money. There ARE ways if you
open your mind and look for the gaps in their fences that keep the sheeple
in their pasture. Are you chattel or a real person? You are the one who
makes that choice.
Our experienced
debt elimination service professionals have been
helping people with
debt elimination,
tax freedom, and
credit repair for over
ten years. To contact them
click here.
This
Real Debt Elimination
information is
for the purpose of education and broadening horizons ONLY.
See
Real Debt Elimination links
© 2007, Allen Aslan Heart / White Eagle Soaring of the Little Shell Pembina Band, a
Treaty
Tribe of the Ojibwe Nation
|
