The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- Why We're All Freudians Now -- (Chapter VIII, Part 32)

But perhaps the main reason 'we're all Freudians now' is because of the insidious way his doctrines conquered America—and consequently, the rest of the world.

A must-see BBC series called The Century of the Self by Adam Curtis starts off by profiling the man who founded PR. Edward Bernays also happened to be the nephew of Sigmund Freud.

Born in Vienna in 1891, his family emigrated to New York, where Bernays made his name drumming up public support for the US to enter World War One.

When postwar inflation wiped out much of Uncle Sigmund's savings, Freud wrote to his nephew for help, and Bernays arranged for his works to be published in America.

A SUBSTITUTE PENIS?

While hyping his uncle and making him palatable to the public, Bernays also capitalized on his theories, advising corporations on how to convince people to buy things they didn't need.

Aptly enough, one of his first big commercial breaks used Freud's misogynistic notion of penis envy to harm women: he convinced them to smoke.

'Today, legally, politically and socially, 
womanhood stands in her true light. 
AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE has cast aside the ancient prejudice that held her to be inferior.
Gone is that ancient prejudice against cigarettes...'

Up until then, smoking was still taboo for American women.

So Bernays consulted one of his uncle's acolytes, who told him—you guessed it—that cigarettes were phallic symbols.

To get women to smoke, Bernays needed to get them to viewing cigarettes as symbols of power—et voila! they would have their very own penis substitutes.

Of course, a cigarette is no more phallic than an ice-cream cone: in fact, it probably has more dis-similarities than similarities to a penis. I, for one, wouldn't want a woman to try and light mine with a match.

Nevertheless, Bernays engineered a maiden 'media event' in 1929: he tipped off the press that some women's rights activists were planning to light up during a New York parade; in reality, the photogenic young flappers were debutantes hired by Bernays.

The scam worked, and the media parroted his line that the 'suffragettes'' smokes were actually 'Torches of Freedom.'

'...Progress has been made.
We removed the prejudice against cigarettes
when we removed from the tobacco harmful corrosive ACRIDS.
Thus "TOASTING" has destroyed that ancient prejudice
against cigarette smoking by men and by women.'

Somewhat ironically—female cancer victims might even say deservedly—it was Uncle Sigmund's own nicotine habit that ultimately killed him.

Freud relied on the steady buzz of at least twenty cigars a day for literary inspiration, eventually contracting cancer of the jaw.

After the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938, Freud's high-placed friends and fortune enabled him to escape to London, where he fulfilled his wish to 'die in freedom' at the age of eighty-three.

Or have we?
A cigarette ad, c1971