Today I completed a 4-part BBC documentary on “how Freud Idea of self has changed the world? “. For those who don’t know even the ABC of Psychology, don’t read the blog, and for “who are”, revel in this.
We all know about Freud, and his controversial book “Interpretation of dreams”, but what I did not know before, was how Freud ideas of self were used to manipulate, change and even used by corporations and politicians across the century for their selfish purpose. And what I did not know is that still, Freud idea is used by politicians and corporate to sell themselves. A cursory view at newspaper or even the hoardings will reveal how the ideas of id-ego-superego are put at work.
The first idea that sinks in my head is the idea of humans as irrational beings. It is not that I am irrational or you are irrational; it is that the corporation and politicians look masses as irrational beings, which are driven by their unconscious desires. And in order to win them, you have to appeal not to their rationality but on the contrary to their irrationality, which is their unconscious desires. Here are some examples, how these ideas are used
1. BJP hindutva, Raj Thackeray’s “Marathi Manus” and Hitler “Nazi”, all appealed to the hidden unconscious and irrational fear about the outer group. What they did are doing is to create a deep resentment to the people out of the group (Jews, Bhaiya and Muslims) and deep libidinal type devotion to their leader, or the ideology.
2. 99.9% ads , except dog food, features skinly clad women , which appeal to mans innate unconscious sexual drives, notably AXE , Soap or Car ads.
3. Sugary soda water is a multi billion industry, the product , which do not have any nutritional values, but merely sells because it is being endorsed by celebrities, and people do buy, because …….(you think)
4. And if they don’t get celebrity, for example Pepsi dumped Shahrukh, so they have resorted to “youngistaan ad campaign”, and they are now selling it by appealing that if you are young, then you need to drink pepsi , this is what it means appeal to the values. And one more example is “sprite, baaki sab bakwaas campaign”, which appeal that, if you drink sprite , you would be cool. Well, this is how you sell , an utterly idiotic product, by appealing to people unconscious irrational emotions.
Now there is another thing call brand, and brand image. Now this is a very peculiar idea of our time, and a thing which should make our predecessor laugh at us. Now previously , a person was known by his work, but now with the advent of branding or with the selling of idea of “brand image = self image”, we now brand a person , by the product he wore, for example, if I need a watch, then I have a variety to choose from, but each company watch carries an image, for example an HMT watch will mean different thing, then when I wear a “rolex’ watch. The idea is of branding, but both these watches do the same function. And if we think about this IDEA as a whole, it comes out to be “perfectly irrational”.
It is not that we have made it up ourself, but it is how corporate does it. For example, recently I visited a bata showroom to buy a formal shoes. And there I saw two variety of brand – one was our bata, and the next was HUSH PUPPIES, which was their new brand. About asking, why they are selling the same product , with two different brand names and at different price (hush puppies were expensive), there manager, upon quibbling ,told that Bata is looked as “UNCLE SHOES”, and hence in order to sell to the youth, they need to come out of new range , and with new name, and hence we have “HUSH PUPPIES”.
Well , surely irrationality at work