Edward Bernays called it "the engineering of consent" in 1947.
Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, is widely credited with founding modern public relations as a profession. In 1923, Bernays published Crystallizing Public Opinion, the first book to describe the practice of influencing public perception as a systematic discipline requiring professional expertise.1 In the same year, he taught the first university course on public relations at New York University.
Ivy Lee, a journalist turned press agent, had earlier helped establish the practice. In 1906, Lee issued what is considered the first modern press release, a statement to newspapers on behalf of the Pennsylvania Railroad after a train accident.2 Lee's innovation was to provide facts to journalists rather than suppress them, framing transparency as a strategy.
Bernays took the practice further. Drawing explicitly on Freud's theories of the unconscious, he argued that public opinion could be shaped by appealing to irrational desires and unconscious motivations rather than rational argument. In 1928, he published Propaganda, in which he wrote that the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.3
In 1929, Bernays orchestrated the "Torches of Freedom" campaign for the American Tobacco Company, hiring women to smoke cigarettes while marching in the New York Easter Parade and framing the act as a feminist statement. Sales of cigarettes to women rose sharply.4
In 1947, Bernays coined the phrase "the engineering of consent" in an article for The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, describing the practice of shaping public attitudes through planned campaigns using social science research.5
The Public Relations Society of America was founded in 1947. By 2023, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics counted approximately 278,000 public relations specialists in the United States.6 The profession Bernays invented by combining Freud's psychology with corporate strategy now operates in every industry, every government, and every institution large enough to care about how it is perceived.