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In describing the origin of the term Public Relations, Bernays
commented, "When I came back to the United States [from the war], I
decided that if you could use propaganda for war, you could certainly
use it for peace. And propaganda got to be a bad word because of the

Germans ... using it. So what I did was to try to find some other words,
so we found the words Counsel on Public Relations".
Ivy Lee, who has been credited with developing the modern news

release (also called a "press release"), espoused a philosophy consistent
with what has sometimes been called the "two-way street" approach to
public relations in which PR consists of helping clients listen as well as
communicate messages to their publics. In the words of the Public

Relations Society of America (PRSA), "Public relations helps an
organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other." In practice,
however, Lee often engaged in one-way propagandizing on behalf of

clients despised by the public, including Standard Oil founder John D.
Rockefeller. Shortly before his death, the US Congress had been
investigating Rockefeller's work on behalf of the controversial Nazi

German company IG Farben.
Bernays was the profession's first theorist. Bernays drew many of
his ideas from Sigmund Freud's theories about the irrational,

unconscious motives that shape human behaviour. Bernays authored
several books, including Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923),
Propaganda (1928), and The Engineering of Consent (1947). He saw
public relations as an "applied social science" that uses insights from

psychology, sociology, and other disciplines to scientifically manage
and manipulate the thinking and behavior of an irrational and "herdlike"
public. "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized

habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic
society," he wrote in Propaganda, "Those who manipulate this unseen
mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the
true ruling power of our country."

In the 1890s when gender role reversals could be caricaturized, the
idea of an aggressive woman who also smoked was considered
laughable. In 1929, Edward Bernays proved otherwise when he

convinced women to smoke in public during an Easter parade in
Manhattan as a show of defiance against male domination. The
demonstrators were not aware that a tobacco company was behind the

publicity stunt.