I am teaching a public relations course in the fall. One of the dominant narrratives of the beginnings of PR as an industry is that it was heavily influenced by Freudian ideas about the importance of subconscious emotional impulses.
Of course Freudian psychology has been heavily criticized so I am looking for a nice, scholarly treatment of the problems of Freudian psychology that second year, non-psych students would be able to grasp. Is there anything out there you know of? Thank you.
https://www.verywellmind.com/sigmund-freud-biography-1856-1939-2795544 Freud was a very important human being with a sharp mind. There is much good to say about him.
You're starting in the wrong place - one self-aggrandising public relations consultant claimed that Uncle Sigmund had shaped his and US public relations practice but there's no evidence that this was the general case. Suggest you go further back into PR history scholarship to see that the field developed from publicity and informational beginnings in churches, entertainment (especially circuses) and industry (especially railways). Books and papers by Karen Miller Russell, Margot Opdycke Lamme, Cayce Myers, Mordecai Lee, and Karla Gower are worth reading for US perspectives, while Amy Thurlow, Jean Valin and Fraser likely point to governmental communication beginnings in Canada. I could recommend 'North American Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices' published by Palgrave in 2017 but that would be a conflict of interest.
