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Edward Bernays and the birth of public relations



Edward Louis James Bernays (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". He combined the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud.

He felt this manipulation was necessary in society, which he regarded as irrational and dangerous as a result of the "herd instinct" that Trotter had described. Adam Curtis's award-winning 2002 documentary for the BBC, The Century of the Self, pinpoints Bernays as the originator of modern public relations, and Bernays was named one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century by Life magazine.







Shown here is a noon chart for Edward Bernays. The most prominent aspect in this chart is the Sun opposite a conjunction of Neptune-Pluto.  Neptune is associated with dreams, fantasies and a lack of boundaries that  opens one to being deceived by  suggestions. Pluto is the ogre in “black boots” out to control others. The combination is, therefore, perfect in the chart of someone like Bernays who understood the power of advertising and propaganda.  With Jupiter squaring his Neptune-Pluto conjunction he was able to achieve great success with this combination.





Joseph Goebbels, German Nazi propagandist in charge of all public communication media was born in  1897 just 6 years after Bernays and also had his Sun in hard aspect to a Neptune-Pluto conjunction . It is said that Goebbels was a secret admirer of Bernays who was a Jew. As a master of the power (Pluto) of suggestion (Neptune) he helped Hitler bring the Nazis to power in 1933 and remains in history as one of the monsters of the Third Reich.




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