Marketing on the couch

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to relate my experience with psychoanalytic thought, its application in my personal life, in my work as a consultant marketing researcher for management, and as a marketing professor. I was a student at the University of Chicago in the late 1940s and early 1950s when psychoanalysis was riding high as a theory of human behavior and a form of psychotherapy. As a doctoral student in the interdisciplinary Committee on Human Development, I had a course with Bruno Bettelheim on fundamentals of psychoanalytic theory. He was irritated by a woman knitting in class and said, ‘‘You must realize that knitting is symbolic masturbation.’’ She was not daunted and asserted, ‘‘Professor Bettelheim, when I knit, I knit, and when I masturbate, I masturbate!’’ This experience fed my interest in symbolic behavior that had already been spurred by reading in the field of general semantics and taught me to think about these matters in a discriminating way. Bettelheim’s book (1976), The Uses of Enchantment, is a wonderful example of thoughtful (Freudian!) analysis of the conscious and unconscious meanings of fairy tales. I found it a model of instruction in the application of psychoanalytic thinking to cultural phenomena and consumer behavior. It informed the article I wrote about the use of projective techniques called ‘‘Dreams, Fairy Tales, Animals, and Cars’’ (Levy, 1985). The Social Service Administration program on campus was psychoanalytically oriented. I took a class there also and wrote a paper about fire setting among children. I surveyed the literature and found no insights except in psychoanalytic studies. Most other comments were superficial, saying that children were attracted to fire because it is warm and active. I called this the theory of sheer delight. The most helpful article was by Freud (1932), titled ‘‘The Acquisition of Power over Fire.’’ I wrote: