Ernest Dichter Papers - Hagley Museum and Library

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HISTORY (cont’d) Accession 2407 ERNEST DICHTER PAPERS Packaging: The Sixth Sense? (1975), Total Self-Knowledge (1976), Getting Motivated (1979), and How Hot a Manager Are You? (1987). Attempts to explain his work to his oldest grandson Sasha resulted in a series of Sacha books on psychological concepts for children published in Paris in the mid-1970s. Ernest Dichter died of heart failure in the Hudson Valley Hospital Center near Peekskill, N.Y., on November 21, 1991. His work is perpetuated by Dichter Research AG, successor to the old Zurich office, and the Ernest Dichter Institut. Motiv-, Marketing- Kommunikationsforschung GmbH & Co. KG in Frankfurt. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Dichter’s work has been rediscovered by a new generation of historians of consumer culture. Although Dichter saw himself as first and foremost a psychologist, a balanced account of his life must concede some points to his critics. It would appear, perhaps reflecting his earlier devotion to literary studies, that, whatever his other gifts Dichter was also a sometimes-brilliant artist whose medium was the symbolic element of advertising and whose methods had a large intuitive component. That is, Dichter used his training in psychology and logic, his personal experiences, and those of his subjects to craft explanatory narratives that were highly plausible if not always completely convincing. There is an anecdote that Nestlé finally balked at hiring him, saying in effect, that since the premises and conclusions of his reports were the same, it made no sense to pay for what was in the middle. Of course, there was nothing really new here. Seers, poets, artists, and their kin have been coining intuitive readings of situations into pithy images and phrases since the dawn of human history, and traders, merchants and manufacturers have depended upon intuitive readings of their customers’ emotional needs and have tried to turn luxuries into necessities ever since commerce began. From that perspective, Dichter did not so much venture into unexplored territory as develop a style, a distinctive voice in a long-running conversation. It is perhaps appropriate that automatic Internet translation software renders the name of his German successor literally as “Ernest Poets Institute.” Dichter’s wish to be taken seriously as a social philosopher will always be compromised by his participation in commerce, but perhaps equally so by his deep immersion in the messiness of everyday life, both his own and that of his subjects. Unlike professional therapists, Dichter made no pretense of curing the psychically damaged of their traumas nor of elevating humanity onto some straight and narrow path. At the same time, the charges of Vance Packard and other moralizers seem overblown in 10
HISTORY (cont’d) Accession 2407 ERNEST DICHTER PAPERS that Dichter’s actual effectiveness is not that easy to measure among a host of other factors. It is difficult if not impossible to prove that Dichter all by himself successfully and knowingly tempted people into activities he knew to be harmful, something he himself went to some lengths to deny and disprove. He did, however, use his authority to validate some kinds of irrational, emotional and messy behavior, and although he urged the channeling of animal appetites for food, sex, security, control, and emotional gratification towards moderate and socially benign ends, this in itself is enough to condemn him in the eyes of those who for whatever reason have a hard time with messiness in general. To use the vocabulary of the clergy he professed to despise, Dichter sought to help people live with their sinfulness and acknowledged the futility of trying to stamp it out. As someone who first directly experienced the baneful effects of a society organized around totalizing myths of “blood and soil,” and master race/untermenschen polarizations, and later those of unbridled hedonism and “let it all hang out,” Dichter remains pertinent as an example, if not a guide, to our continuing “creative discontents.” Situated in the murky, ambiguous no-man’s land somewhere between self-denial and self-indulgence, privation and excess, the ideal and the material, repression and license, asceticism and sensuality, will and appetite, dichotomies that have shaped human thought and action for ages, Dichter and his subjects remain contentious, engaging and relevant (The above essay draws heavily upon Daniel Horowitz’s “The Birth of a Salesman: Ernest Dichter and the Objects of Desire,” which is perhaps the fullest account of Dichter’s life and work thus far, and also upon Dichter’s own letters and manuscripts.) GENERAL SCOPE AND CONTENT NOTE Ernest Dichter’s papers were donated to the Hagley Museum and Library by the Dichter family. After closing his offices in the Croton-on-Hudson “Castle” in 1982, Dichter placed his library of research studies, publications and other writings with Mercy College, where he taught marketing. However, when Mercy College sought permission in 1990 to microfilm them and have carte blanche to destroy the originals to save space, Dichter repossessed them. He was working with a dealer to sell them to another library but was unable to make satisfactory arrangements before his final illness. These materials, plus Dr. Dichter’s remaining business correspondence and notes, were removed 11
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