Mass media weaponize psychoanalytic depth psychology against consumers as ‘psychoanalysis in reverse’

Evidence

This was expressed felicitously by Leo Lowenthal when he coined the term ‘psychoanalysis in reverse’. The implication is that somehow the psychoanalytic concept of a multilayered personality has been taken up by cultural industry, and that the concept is used in order to ensnare the consumer as completely as possible and in order to engage him psycho-dynamically in the service of premeditated effects. A clear-cut division into allowed gratifications, forbidden gratifications, and recurrence of the forbidden gratifications in a somewhat modified and deflected form is carried through. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 241

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Lowenthal’s key term ‘psychoanalysis in reverse’ — the inversion of therapeutic insight into a manipulation technique.
• XREF: Echoes the reader’s existing material on how the music/culture industry exploits psychological vulnerabilities; also resonates with Reichian and Foucaultian accounts of knowledge-as-control. — connects to: The internal psychological space has been fully penetrated by the media landscape — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 880