Bernays, Edward

Edward L. Bernays, who was born in 1891 in Vienna, Austria, and died in 1995 in the United States, was one of the founding fathers of public relations. He invented the name for an emerging profession in 1920. In 1923, he taught the first course in public relations at New York University, he wrote the first book—Crystallizing Public Opinion—on public relations, he published the first article on public relations in an academic journal—“Manipulating Public Opinion: The Why and the How,” and he published in The American Journal of Sociology—the same year. He concluded that article with the following paragraph:

He saw a broader social mission for the new social technology in a pluralist society. He defined it very simply: “Public relations means exactly what it says, relations of an organization, individual, idea, whatever, with the publics on which it depends for its existence” (Bernays, 1986, p. 35). For that reason, “Public relations counsel functions on a two way street. He interprets public to the client and client to public” (Bernays, 1986, pp. 35–36). Bernays envisioned public relations as a profession: “By definition, profession is an art applied to a science, in which the primary consideration is public interest, not pecuniary motivation” (Bernays, 1986, p. 36). Although his 1998 biography by Lary Tye is entitled The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays & the Birth of Public Relations, Bernays was an articulate opponent of “image making” (Bernays, 1986, p. 53):

On p. 67 this argument is repeated in a short statement: “Public relations deals primarily with advice on action, based on social responsibility” (Bernays, 1986). For that reason he was a promoter of public relations research, education, and licensing. He saw public relations as being a social technology that can be used for either good or bad purposes—and as such in need of regulation.

Edward Bernays was born in 1891 in Vienna and celebrated his first birthday on the ship with which his parents immigrated to the United States. He was a double nephew of Sigmund Freud (his father Eli Bernays was married to Ana Freud, sister of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis; Sigmund Freud was married to Eli's sister, Martha Bernays). After graduating from Cornell University, in 1913 he traveled to Europe to meet his famous uncle. When back in the United States, Bernays corresponded with Freud and helped him with translations of his works from German into English. James E. Grunig and Todd Hunt wrote that it was because of his relations with Freud that Bernays became interested in social sciences and that he was probably the first “intellectual” (Grunig & Hunt, 1984, p. 77) in the public relations profession. This is how Bernays saw his

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