I first ran into the work of Edward Bernays about a year after switching to PR as a career. I had grown frustrated. No one had a framework for thinking about what we were doing. There seemed to be no theory, no methods and no principles for solving the problems we encountered each day on the behalf of our clients.
Then in early 2001, during a presentation to a prospective client, I heard someone mention Bernays as the "father of public relations." I immediately when to Amazon, and bought copies of Bernays' first two books: "Crystallizing Public Opinion" and "Propaganda," each written the in 1920s. Both were out of print.
My first copies were photocopies bound by staples. (Fortunately the books are now back in print, thanks largely to progessives who want to position Bernays as one of history's great villains.)
I immediately embraced Bernays' notion of PR as an applied social science. I found my peers to be far less enthusiastic. They preferred "winging it" to approaching PR intellectually and systematically.
I also soon learned that the public relations profession had long ago distanced itself from Bernays and his theories. Many in PR mistake Bernays' pragmatism for cynicism. They find it uncomfortable and thus reject it.
While you may argue with some of his tactics (such as the use of front groups rather than true third-party experts), and with the details of his theories (which, after all, were developed very early in the history of the social sciences), it is short-sighted to discard his most fundamental concept: That it is the role of the public relations counsel to ethically and morally apply the social sciences on behalf of our clients.