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This chapter argues that the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud provide a useful methodology for the study of government secrecy. The chapter makes two specific points. First, Freud viewed the human mind as a highly complex censoring device, which systematically censors certain types of information that embarrasses the patient, while it makes available without impediment more innocuous types of information that flatter the patient's image. It is argued that governmental bureaucracies work like this too, as they systematically censor information that is embarrassing to the state and state officials, while they make available information that flatters the state. Secondly, Freud's theories provide insight into how researchers can cut through systematic censorship and gain access to hidden information. Specifically, Freud shows that patients periodically slip and release censored information to the psychoanalyst. Similarly, state officials too will slip and will accidentally release information to historical researchers who study public policies.

The question of how we know when censorship occurred has several sides. Problems of evidence of censorship do not only arise from practical obstacles, but also from its very nature as a knowledge-related phenomenon. Scarcity and abundance of information about censorship may be determined by the extent of the censors’ success or by uneven research efforts. These factors often make it complicated to demarcate censorship from similar restrictions and to identify patterns and trends in the relationship between power and freedom. The present chapter looks into this epistemological problem by mapping the set of concepts governing and surrounding censorship in the particular field of history. It draws up a mini-dictionary with definitions of 26 key concepts related to, larger than, and different from the censorship of history. As these definitions are interrelated, the set in its entirety forms a taxonomy.

Although the state of Israel is a democracy, military censorship has been in use since its establishment in 1948 and is still imposed. The chapter analyzes the theoretical and practical grounds for military censorship in Israel based on an agreement between relevant parties: the government, the army, the media, and the public. Analysis of Israeli military censorship reveals that military censorship is not necessarily the enemy of the media and the public's right to know. On the contrary and paradoxically, we show that in Israel's case, military censorship not only performs its task of preventing the publication of information that threatens the national security, at times it sustains the country's freedom of the press, freedom of information, and the public's right to know.

This, the ninth annual survey of American history reference sources, comprises reviews of twenty 1985 imprints. The largest categories are bibliographies and encyclopedias (in which there are, respectively, five and four entries), followed by atlases, collective biographies, and dictionaries (two each), and one each of the following: a chronology, a directory, a document collection, a reference guide, and a statistical compendium.

Volume 19, Research in Social Problems and Public Policy begins with David N. Gibbs’ chapter, “Sigmund Freud as a theorist of government secrecy.” Drawing on Freud's psychological theories from his works Civilization and its Discontents and A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Gibbs observes:one of Freud's most important insights is his view of the human mind as a highly complex censoring mechanism, which systematically censors certain types of information, while it leaves uncensored other types of information.

Government secrecy is often portrayed as antithetical to transparency¹ as well as an affront to the general right to know, citizen participation, administrative oversight, and democracy itself.² Furthermore, government secrecy is connected to “much broader questions regarding the structure and performance of democratic systems” (Galnoor, 1977, p. 278), and in instances, is “more dangerous to democracy than the practices they conceal” (Fulbright, 1971).³ This condition has led to what Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (1987) describes as a secrecy state, whichhas extended the secrecy system far beyond its legitimate bounds. In doing so, the target is far less to prevent the disclosure of information to enemy governments than to prevent the disclosure of information to the American Congress, press and people. For governments have discovered that secrecy is a source of power and an efficient way of covering up the embarrassments, blunders, follies and crimes of the ruling regime. (p. 5)

Part of the “JDoc at 60” series, this paper aims to discuss, evaluate and compare writings on the state of libraries in Continental Europe in the 1940s and the 1990s.

Four papers published in Journal of Documentation, three from 1945 and one from 1994, are analysed and compared, and their significance discussed.

Finds that there are similarities and differences between the situation facing European libraries at the end of the 1939‐1945 war, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Both historical and current policy perspectives are included.

This paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of the origins of Spanish public relations from the end of the nineteenth to the early twentieth century. Although the term “public relations” was an export to Europe by the end of the second world war (with some exceptions), its philosophy had already been practised in some countries, and countries not always under a democratic regime, as the Spanish case shows.

The approach taken is a literature review of the first Spanish communication journals, oral interviews with the pioneers in the field and documentary research of the unpublished professional archive of the first Spanish agency, established in 1960.

The first “public relations” campaigns did not appear until the very late 1950s. However, a closer look reveals the existence of precedents in the first half of the century though under other names such as “educational” and “prestige” advertising, or “propaganda” campaigns. Despite being considered as isolated experiences, they prove the phenomenon precedes the name of “public relations”.

This paper places special emphasis on two lines of emergence for public relations. First, the profession in Spain naturally evolved and stemmed from advertising and, due to historical reasons, it was also related to communicative initiatives known as “propaganda”. Second, once the practitioners heard about the American term “public relations”, the precedents seemed to be ignored and were replaced by the influence of other countries' experiences, thanks to the wide vision of the pioneers.

There is little research on the origins of public relations in Spain and none on the precedents. This paper fills in some of the gaps.