Anna Freud speaking: Lets say a word about dreams. We all have thoughts which we never knew we had. They are too uncomfortable or too incompatible with our adult self to be remembered. Yet they are often disturbing rumbling under the surface like lava in a volcano. The dream is the royal road to these thoughts. The royal road to the unconscious.
This is the story about how Sigmund Freud's ideas about the unconscious mind were used by those in power in post war America to try and control the masses. Politicians and planners came to believe That Freud was to suggest that hidden deep within all human beings were dangerous and irrational desires and fears. They were convinced that it was the unleashing of these instincts that had led to barbarism of Nazi Germany. To stop it ever happening again, they set out to find ways to control this hidden enemy within the human mind.
At the heart of the story are Sigmund Freud's daughter Anna and his nephew Edward Bernays who had invented the profession of public relations. Their ideas were used by the US government, big business and the CIA to develop techniques to manage and control the minds of the American people. Those in power believed that the only way to make democracy work and create a stable society was to repress the savage barbarism that lurked just under the surface of normal American life.