The Soul of Things by Ernest Dichter

	This booklet reproduces fragments from Ernest Dichter's Handbook of Consumer Motivations, a great book that has been out of print for many years. The Handbook is organized product by product like an encyclopedia of 1950s consumer culture with Dichter offering his peculiar off-the-cuff insights on such things as "chicken" and "raisins" and "shoe salesmen." It was Dichter's apparent ability to see the deeper significance of the mundane "thing" that made him a guru in the advertising world (and a target of Vance Packard's Hidden Persuaders). I've collected some of his insights here and paired them with creepy photos of advertising character collectibles. While much of what Dichter has to say is just plain funny, there is a serious, even heart-breaking, aspect to his work based in his experiences as a refugee from Nazi Germany. People find psychological solace in material things; material things become deadly to people. I printed up 20 of the booklets and distributed some of them to friends and folks who might appreciate them, though I still have a pile of them to scatter around. I apologize in advance for the eyestrain some of you will experience trying to read the text.
	Ernest Dichter's book, Strategy of Desire, is still in print. It is largely a response to Vance Packard (Dichter, to the end, expressed gratefulness to Packard for exposing his ideas to a larger audience!) and an attempt to organize his approach systematically (for better or worse...) Interest in Dichter has reawakened in the advertising field in recent years with the rise of  "Account Planning" and "Consumer Insight.".