From Salvation To Self-Realization
From Salvation To Self-Realization
Advertising and the Therapeutic Roots of the Consumer Culture, 1880–1930
In this paper Lears traces the origins of early twentieth century consumerism in the United States. He suggests that the transformation that led to the emergence of a new consumerist ethos lays in several, mutually reinforcing processes. The sense of inauthenticity and fragmentation resulting from urbanization and industrialization together with the rise of professionalization of medicine gave rise o the “therapeutic ethos”. This ethos emphasized this-worldly self-realization through psychological and physical health. Rapidly developing marketing techniques of the time exploited, fed and diff used the therapeutic ethic. This way consumer culture can be understood as the outcome of parallel processes converging in the therapeutic ethos that gradually replaced the Protestant ethos of “salvation through self-denial”.