Ernest Dichter, Motivation Research and the ‘Century of the Consumer’

Abstract

The autumn of 1938 was stormy and violent. All over the world, there was an air of anticipation, an atmosphere also filled with anxiety and uncertainty. Commentators in East and West divined change, disruption and upheaval. In Europe, many people desperately clung on to the hope of ‘peace in our time’ as Nazi Germany had enforced a political union with Austria (Anschluss) and now threatened to invade Czechoslovakia. In November, hundreds of synagogues and the shops and homes of thousands of Jewish people in Germany were burnt to the ground in murderous riots orchestrated by the Nazi regime. In the same year, the concentration camps Mauthausen and Neuengamme were opened. In late September, the notorious ‘Long Island Express’ hurricane struck Connecticut, New York, Long Island and Massachusetts. It damaged or destroyed 57,000 homes and buildings, knocked down 3 billion trees and left a path of devastation in which nearly 700 people lost their lives.