The Strategy of Desire

Dichter argues that persuasion must never appeal to reason, because human motivation is overwhelmingly irrational and unconscious. The book rejects the premise that rational appeals are morally superior or practically effective, insisting instead that depth interviewing and psychoanalytic interpretation can uncover the hidden drives governing consumer choice and civic behavior alike. Dichter's framework positions motivational research not as manipulation but as a necessary science of behavioral change. He explicitly counters the critique advanced by Vance Packard in The Hidden Persuaders, reframing the same techniques Packard condemned as tools for social progress—whether selling products or persuading Americans to accept bigness, join the Air Force, or embrace racial tolerance.

The book is a direct rebuttal. Packard's 1957 bestseller had portrayed Dichter and the Institute for Motivational Research as purveyors of dangerously manipulative techniques, probing consumer psyches to sell products people did not need. Dichter's 1960 book acknowledges Packard's critique as its occasion and argues that the debate over motivational research should not be about whether persuasion happens—it always does—but about its goals. A New York Times review published in September 1960 described the book as Dichter's 'lengthy reply' to Packard, noting that Dichter urged the State Department to sell America abroad using the same techniques he applied to liquor and detergents. The review's critic found the argument alarming and the evidence unpersuasive, a reception that set the tone for the book's contested status.

The method is depth interviewing combined with psychoanalytic interpretation, applied to consumer attitudes toward products and civic issues. Dichter's innovation was treating everyday objects—glass, metals, textiles, fruit—as carriers of emotional and symbolic meaning that respondents could not articulate directly. Rather than asking consumers why they bought something, motivational research inferred latent motives from what they said and did not say. The book presents case material across domains: product choice, voter participation, religious tolerance, and racial understanding. Dichter argued that conventional survey research only reached the surface of appearances, while depth psychology could reach the irrational core where genuine motivation resides. This methodological claim is the book's spine, and it remains the most historically consequential aspect of Dichter's program.

Reception was sharply divided along disciplinary lines. A New York Times review in September 1960 dismissed the book as lacking literary grace and scientific rigor, comparing Dichter's evidence unfavorably to phrenology and warning that the end-justifies-the-means logic of the argument was morally bankrupt. Kirkus Reviews found the book neither readable enough for a popular audience nor technical enough for students, though it acknowledged Dichter's refusal to privilege rational over irrational motivation. A 1961 Journal of Marketing review treated the book more professionally, as a document of the motivational research movement. Perhaps the most striking contemporary response came from The Minority of One, which called it one of the decade's most important books while describing Dichter as a one-eyed man who had become king in a country of the blind.

The dispute concerns whether motivational research constitutes education or manipulation, and whether the distinction even matters if the persuasive goal is deemed beneficial. Dichter's position is that persuasion is always occurring and the only meaningful question is its purpose; he explicitly adopts the premise that the end justifies the means, arguing that understanding and modifying human behavior is necessary for progress. Critics found this evasion troubling. The New York Times reviewer observed that Dichter did not address the obvious follow-up: apart from whether the new knowledge is beneficial, who does the persuading and toward what ends? The Minority of One sharpened this into a political critique, arguing that Dichter served a Power Elite whose values were infantile and self-consuming. The book's refusal to question the goals of its clients remains its most durable controversy.

The book's method has aged unevenly. Dichter's psychoanalytic framework fell out of favor in marketing research as cognitive psychology and quantitative methods gained dominance from the 1960s onward, and his specific claims about product symbolism are rarely cited in contemporary consumer research. However, the underlying premise—that much decision-making is non-conscious—has been substantially rehabilitated by behavioral economics and dual-process theories of cognition. What has not aged well is the ethical posture: Dichter's indifference to whether products are 'absolutely good or bad' and his willingness to serve any goal that pays reads today as professionally naive at best. The book remains valuable primarily as a historical document of the moment when psychoanalytic persuasion reached its peak visibility and provoked its most enduring critique.