Outside the Prickly Nest: Revisiting Doris Fleischman

Abstract

Historians have learned much in the past decade about Doris E. Fleischman and her partnership in marriage and in public relations with Edward L. Bernays, and they have tended to agree that despite Bernays's high profile, Fleischman was indispensable to the success of the Bernays firm. This study expands on that research by examining Fleischman's work in the context of public relations ideas and principles. Relying on primary sources that included four speeches that had not been discussed heretofore, it was found that although there was duplication between her and Bernays's work, there were also evident shifts in Fleischman's thinking about public relations, including a sense that she was as much of a public relations pioneer as Bernays was, without, perhaps, his drive for self-promotion.