Edward L. Bernays and The Rise of Public Relations Counseling Business (jan 1, 1913 – jan 1, 1989)

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The nation’s first public relations firm, the Publicity Bureau, was founded in Boston in 1900 and specialized in general press agentry. The first Washington, D.C. agency was begun in 1902 by William Wolff Smith, a former correspondent for the New York Sun and the Cincinnati Enquirer. Two years later, Ivy Lee joined with a partner to begin his own counseling firm.
The most significant counselor this side of Ivy Lee was Edward L. Bernays, who began as a publicist in 1913 and was instrumental in the war bonds effort. He was the nephew of Sigmund Freud and author of the landmark book Crystallizing Public. In addition to contributing as much to the field as any other professional in its history. Bernays was a public relations scholar. He taught the first course in public relations in 1923 and was also responsible for “recruiting” the field’s first distinguished female practitioner, his wife Doris E. Fleischman. Fleischman, former editor of the New York Tribune, was a skilled writer, and her husband was a skilled strategist and promoter. Together they built Edward L. Bernays, Counsel on Public Relations into a top agency. In many ways, Fleischman was the “mother” of public relations, paving the way for a field that is today dominated by talented women. Due to his background, Bernays was fascinated by a wide range of psychological theories and practices beginning to emerge in society. One of his major contributions to the practice of public relations was transforming the practice from a purely journalistic-based approach to one underpinned by psychology, sociology, and social-psychology to reach individuals in terms of their unconscious desires, fears, and needs.

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