The Century of the Self (Season 1)

The Century of the Self (2002) is Adam Curtis' four-part BBC documentary, and you can watch it online on iFILM. It traces how the science of the unconscious was turned into a method for steering whole populations.

One family runs through the whole story. Sigmund Freud mapped the hidden drives behind human behaviour; his nephew Edward Bernays took that map and built modern public relations on it, teaching corporations and governments to sell goods and policy by reaching for desire instead of reason. Consumer society on both sides of the Atlantic grew out of that shift, with Freud's daughter Anna and his great-grandson Matthew carrying the thread forward.

Curtis assembles the argument from archive footage and talking-head interviews, arriving at an uneasy claim: the self-directed, contented consumer may be far easier to manage than democracy cares to admit. It stays one of the BBC's most discussed nonfiction works and a strong way into the director's signature style. Stream The Century of the Self (2002) online on iFILM.