Ernest Dichter

Ernest Dichter was an American psychologist and marketing expert known as the "father of motivational research". Dichter pioneered the application of Freudian psychoanalytic concepts and techniques to business — in particular to the study of consumer behavior in the marketplace. His ideas significantly influenced advertising practices during the twentieth century. Dichter promised the "mobilisation and manipulation of human needs as they exist in the consumer". As the United States entered the 1950s, a decade marked by heightened commodity fetishism, Dichter offered consumers moral permission to embrace sex and consumption and forged a philosophy of corporate hedonism, which he thought would make people immune to dangerous totalitarian ideas.

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