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1. The media you are interested in exploring 2. The psychological aspect you are interested in exploring regarding yourchosen media3. 3-4 journal articles (not newspaper articles) you found that address yourproposed paper topic. These references must be different from thereadings assigned for the course. Print and attach the articles with yourpaper proposal. 4. Any questions you have regarding the paper Topic Idea #1: Subconscious Roles of Guilt and Shame in the Decision Making Process of the Consumer Topic Idea #2: Living in the Wake of a Post Cold War Economy: The Ontogenesis of Sex In Advertising After the Death of a Wartime Sellers’ Market Topic Idea #3 (Possible I could combine these two topics to create a more heavily thesis driven paper, although this might be a little bit overkill for this particular assignment; the topic idea is based around a transference of the concepts discussed involving the origin of embedding sex into advertising and the socio-economic factors that prompted the rife breeding ground for such.. all the while drawing parallels between past and current/future economic states to make sense of the new idea while discussing the idea of economic consumption[spending] in its current hybrid, modernized form [so I would argue, at least]- a model in which consumer decisions are based equally on desire as they are on a competing & inhibitory force brooding in the consumer’s subconscious. The primary new elements of consumer psychology being considered are guilt and shame. As the desire driven consumerism that was birthed from post cold war culture is contrasted to the economy of today, with consideration of new technologies and the internet, in order to explain the proposed update for a model of consumer psychology as a logical extension of previously accepted psychological models, the paper should alternate between Freudian roots and modern concepts in psychology. The reason for this is because the concept proposed is oriented around the Freudian root concepts that were reincarnated, or adapted perhaps by Dichter, into the world of western marketing as the American economy was changing in the mid twentieth century; it does not suppose an entirely different basic theory on the human psychological condition, yet does consider things brought to light by modern advances in peripheral fields such as cognitive and neuroscience as they are relevant to the concepts being considered). 1. Media interested in exploring: The media most relevant to this subject will be advertising and marketing in general, although it is possible it can stray into other territories like social media. This depends on how in depth the paper goes and to what degree I attempt to suppose some common psychological archetype as present in either varying demographic bodies or if in an entirely secular way. Most likely the farthest I would go in dissecting population groups is the difference between male and female mindsets and not venture into further territories like race or anything of the likes. _______________________________________________ In the middle of the twentieth century, as the war raged on and the economy’s demand for items exceeded its supply, such a scarcity-of-goods-based model of exchange yielded little need for practicing businesses to understand the psychology of those consuming their products. When the people spending money in an economy are in a rationing mindset and there is a relative scarcity of available goods, retailers are not worrying about how to sell surplus goods because they don’t have any, and businesses have no anxiety concerning whether or not they will be making their money back. When a business does have more supply than there is demand for it, a need for innovation is born, a type of innovation that changes the fabric of a society, a psychological innovation. In the case of being overstocked with goods, a business will want to figure out some sort of way to embed a sense of intrinsic motivation into those who are at liberty to spend their hard earned money on that surplus stock there is no need for, whatever the product; especially if coming out of a sellers market economy like we have been considering as it is a lingering habit to be pragmatic and frugal with ones money. The inner- workings of an economy like this that have yet to experience any sort of explosive birth of competitive branding of goods are tight and predictable, leaving little room for the unknown. This sense of predictability leaves us with the vision of practical exchange across the board, one in which consumers need make very few decisions about what they are buying; they simply need to buy necessities and surplus money will most likely be saved. Say someone needed to buy bread for example; compared to modern day, the consumer will not face an aisle with 10 different types of bread having different brand names, they will simply face an aisle with bread, the only decision to be made being the quantity they want to buy of such a product. Considering this scenario, let us draw a connection between the lack of a need to understand consumer psychology as mentioned earlier and a shopping experience that warrants little to no room for petty decision making on behalf of the consumer. In this sort of economy we can expect rational choices to be made by the part of the self Freud calls the ego. This ‘economy of scarcity and need’ is simple and to the point, and any advertising for items in such an economy need only appeal to and consider the logical faculties of consumers, perhaps as simple as telling someone where to go to find the product they are already gauranteed to buy. “Conversely, he [Dichter] argued, in an economy of ‘abundance and desire’ rather than ‘scarcity and need,’ consumer motivation is largely subliminal: the id[instead of the ego goes shopping—or, at least, it needed to be persuaded to go shopping by a marketing technique designed to generate that scarcest and most valuable resource in an economy of surplus production: namely, desire itself,the desire to spend.” The homo oeconomicus model of the typical shopper is suddenly outdated when this happens and a new type of shopper is suddenly forged from the fire; I hesitate to say a new shopper is born because the desire-centred model of consumption that drives this new type of shopper to shop did not come about naturally, first it had to be summoned from the depths of peoples being, it had to be created. As consumers had been used to shopping with the rational ego sense of themselves, the notion of letting the ID take over and shop was inherently foreign to such folk, that is until advertisements and the power of group psychology came together and introduced a deeper layer of the consumer self to a world of new possibility, one in which logic can be abandoned and replaced with raw human desire. Somehow pleasure had to be incorporated into spending, as opposed to considering the use value of something, which becomes even more important when an economy is powered by laborers doing repetitive jobs that can also strip one of a sense of unique identity. The sense of self-satisfaction from ones work is displaced when a persons job becomes less fulfilling because of monotony and repetition of roles where numerous people are doing the same job, deriving people of a much needed sense of purpose. When that sense of purpose from working is taken away and the fruits of labor are solely monetary, it is natural for one to desire a way to use that money to acquire the sense of satisfaction and purpose which is necessary for the mental well- being of the worker. Here we witness one degree of separation between labor and purpose / satisfaction, which I will contend leaves one with the need for first order subliminalness in advertising in order to close the gap between labor and satisfaction; while wages are held in cash they are existing in a state of limbo because they have not yet fulfilled their purpose of providing the worker with satisfaction, since satisfaction is not received from the work itself in the increasingly industrialized economy. The lingering presence of desire for satisfaction at this stage has now created a fertile grounds in the workers psyche that will readily want meaning in advertising, making them sensitive to subliminal efforts. With advertising existing for commodities and products, which are the exact things one can spend money on in this new surplus economy, I would contend the reason subliminal advertising is so effective is twofold: the consumers at the time wanted meaning in advertisements because they wanted the products they bought to fulfill that which they did not receive from working. This happens as a way for the brain to trick itself into feeling it has been fulfilled with relevant primary psychological needs, as advertisements successfully exploit the energy of satisfaction and pleasure at the most basic of levels- sexually- and embed it into portrayal of the product, if not the product itself via consideration of a few primary theoretical philosophies about the nature of ‘things’ themselves which we will soon look at. The paper would go on to look at writings by Sigmond Freud concerning things like imitation, identity, and group psychology, etc.., as well as theories from Baudrillard and other writers on the topic. I can not decide if I want to keep the subject matter contained to using Freudian theories about sex and Dicther’s appropriations of them or venture to really consider guilt and shame as well, or use the framework of the prior set of ideas as a means of looking at concepts like guilt and shame… I am going to attach a few excerpts / passages from the works I am looking to cite thus far.

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