the product was the interior,
a luxury for the leisured class.
the first advertisement, a case study, a whisper,
your pain is not a symptom of the world,
but a code to be cracked in a rented room.

he sold them a new origin story,
not one of blood or soil or capital,
but of a childhood scene, a repressed wish,
a personal myth to explain the hollow
in their well fed, well bred lives.

the invoice was the hour, the couch the showroom.
the brand was the signature on a script for longing.
for the price of your inheritance,
you can inherit yourself.
he did not heal the sick, he created a new need.

the rich boys bought it. oh, they bought it.
they traded guilders and guilt for a named complex,
a diagnosis that dignified their despair,
turning class anxiety into a oedipal triangle,
a family romance, a thing to be solved alone.

this was the first great pr campaign for the i.
a land grab in the psyche, enclosed and sold back
to the heirs of the very factories that broke the world.
a brilliant diversion, look inward, not outward.
analyze your dream, not the dreamer’s wage.

the therapeutic ethos began here,
not as a healing, but as a headline.
not as a cure, but as a caption under the portrait
of a young man, too rich to be anything but sad,
purchasing the right to say, i am my own.

and the network grew, from vienna to manhattan,
from the analyst’s couch to the influencer’s feed,
all selling the same lie in a new package,
that salvation is a self you can afford to buy.