The Freud Museum on Psychoanalysis, Money and the Economy

 




 Since the time of Adam Smith and David Hume, economic theory has been operating with a model of Homo oeconomicus as a rational, autonomous, self-interested calculator of costs and benefits. This presumed rationality of ‘economic man’ supposedly guarantees, in turn, the fundamental rationality of the ‘self-regulating’ market. Classical political economy, neoclassical economics and neoliberalism have all operated with this model.

But the recent ‘global financial crisis’ is yet another reminder (were one needed) that the psychology of markets and financial dealers can be far from rational. Even Alan Greenspan had to admit of the 2008-9 global crash: "Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity (myself especially) are in a state of shocked disbelief." Or, as the economist Ian McDonald has put it: ‘Homo oeconomicus, that cool calculator of self-interest, couldn’t possibly have been so incautious in protecting her or his wealth.’

From its inception, psychoanalysis has viewed the psychology of money as profoundly irrational - as a realm of illusion, neurosis, phantasy and psychopathology. Seeing gold as a shiny, de-odorized, solid version of faeces (a precious substance for an infant). Psychoanalysts explored the libidinal currents and anxieties that simmered beneath the drive to acquire wealth. Novelists of the recent financial maelstrom, such as Sebastian Faulks, have described sociopathic aspects of the psychology of financial dealers. Financial journalists have described how greed and fear distorted markets and undermined economic stability. Meanwhile, psychoanalysis itself has been notoriously reluctant to speak frankly of its own economics as a profession and business - of how ‘filthy lucre’ is the indispensable stuff of its own transactions.
 
The Freud Museum will be hosting a public panel discussion on Thursday 1 July, 6.30pm at Conway Hall, London on ‘The Psychology of Money and the Global Financial Crisis’.  For more information and full details of the panel (including Will Hutton,  Oliver James and Susie Orbach) click here. This kicks off a 3 day international conference on the subject of economics and psychoanalysis supported by Birkbeck College and the Australian Research Council.