Man and money have a long, passionate relationship: love, lust, but also hatred and contempt for them. What else in our lives are we so ambivalent about? Perhaps it is difficult to find another object of such feelings.
It may seem paradoxical, but money softens relationships between people, says Ilana Reiss-Schimmel, author of Psychoanalysis and Money. Human civilization took a huge step forward when it invented money to protect it.
Money is an integral part of our daily life, making a living means making money. At the same time, everything is not easy in our relations with them: the consumer society deifies them, and the religious teachings curse them.
So what is money — a deity or a devil? Psychoanalysis, without condemning or idealizing them, allows you to take a fresh look at the feelings that money gives rise to in us, and understand yourself. After all, money is also the carrier of our fantasies — unconscious or those that relate to the very first months of human life.
“To understand the relationship that binds us to money means to understand a person,” says psychoanalyst Ilana Reiss-Schimmel.
Psychologies: Why do we love money so much?
Ilana Reiss-Schimmel: The feeling of possession is an integral part of our existence. The baby does not think about his being, he develops in the sphere of possession — maternal caress, warmth, food and drink that she gives him … or suffers from the absence of a mother. In adulthood, this problem is transferred to money — the subject in which the very essence of possession is concentrated.
In addition to the rational function, money for each of us has a special significance that we are not aware of. The causes of such human manifestations as pathological greed or the desire for hoarding cannot be understood without linking them to the fear experienced in childhood of losing or not getting something. To some extent, our relationship to money is shaped by fantasies experienced in the early stages of psychosexual development.
A stingy man who cares about money is more like a child who, sitting on the potty, stubbornly refuses to do what is expected of him.
Freud talked primarily about the relationship between money and the anal stage.1but didn’t explain everything. The fact is that at the earliest, oral stage, the infant feels most acutely that he is helpless. The dependent position makes him dream of an inexhaustible «breast» that will constantly supply him with food. For him, this is a kind of paradise.
This kind of infantile dream of the oral stage manifests itself in those who are pursuing wealth and coveting gigantic sums. They unconsciously perceive money as the equivalent of that very “eternal breast”. And the miser who cares about money is more like a child who, sitting on the potty, stubbornly refuses to do what is expected of him — this stubbornness protects him from the imaginary threat of being devastated by losing his «product».
Why is it embarrassing to talk about money? Where does the guilt about having them come from?
Let us dwell on just one of the reasons that is characteristic of our Western culture: monotheistic religions castigate money because it can become a kind of archaic deity. From the point of view of psychoanalysis, the explanation can be expanded. Thus, a baby greedily sucking milk is afraid of being punished for his greed. And an adult who has retained this type of fantasy may fear being cursed for his insatiable desire for money.
Does our relationship with money depend on our relationship with other people?
Yes. For example, the tradition of bargaining in the bazaar is not just a game, but the expression of fantasies of domination and submission. Either we need to sell something, in which case we must give in to the desire of the buyer, or we are in dire need of something, in which case we will have to surrender to the seller. In this case, everyone seeks to outwit the opponent and is afraid that he will be outwitted.
This type of relationship is rooted in the archaic relationship between mother and child, when the child, feeling completely dependent, dreams of changing roles. He seeks to subjugate his mother, to subdue her to his will.
Being a kind of intermediary, money makes us perceive the other as our own kind, as an equal.
When, having reached a certain psycho-emotional maturity, we understand that the other does not pose a threat to us, we are ready to accept that the price of things is set beyond our desire and has the force of law. Thus, market relations cease to be bargaining.
Interestingly, during periods of crisis, bargaining and barter in kind serve as harbingers of regression in social relations. This happens because commodities lose a certain value: their price is determined solely by the relation of forces. So we need to protect this achievement of civilization — monetary relations.
Do you think money is a wonderful invention of mankind?
Yes! Being a kind of intermediary, money makes us perceive the other as our own kind, as an equal. It may seem paradoxical, but money does not allow us to expropriate other people’s property. In addition, the emergence of the institution of wages suppresses the free use of labor. You can disagree with the size of the salary, but not with the principle itself.
A person “makes a living”, that is, “earns money”. Where does this identification of life and money come from?
The expression «earning a living» originated with a market society in which a person rents out his labor power and receives a salary in exchange.
In the feudal era, such an expression did not exist. If you are a vassal, then you had to provide a certain set of services to your master, and others had to provide services to you. If you were not part of this system, you simply could not provide for your existence.
Today we are beginning to realize that what we have does not define who we are.
In primitive society, too, they did not «earn a living»: there were things that had to be done in order to have the right to food and shelter. Everywhere and at all times, work has been an indispensable part of life in society. Surprisingly, the fact that we receive a certain amount as compensation for the work done increases the degree of our freedom, because theoretically we can do whatever we want with this money.
Why is it so hard for us to ask for a raise?
We can talk about the fear of «sanctions» — the loss of the favor of the authorities, dismissal. But if a person experiences a real sense of guilt when he asks for a raise in his salary, then the reasons should be sought in the confusion of the images of the boss and the father: the possible anger of the parent is felt as a threat to life.
Is salary becoming synonymous with our value?
It seems to me that society is already overcoming such a view, we are beginning to move towards an understanding of human existence in itself, outside of what a person has. And this is just the beginning: perhaps, over time, there will be less and less work, which means it will become more and more difficult to earn a living. Will we then deny the value of millions of people who will not have a job? It’s impossible.
Today we are beginning to realize that what we have does not define who we are. The value of a person cannot be measured by money, but the system of monetary relations is one of the necessary conditions for such an understanding of a person.
1 «Libido». Humanitarian, Academy of Humanitarian Studies, 1996; F. Tyson, R. Tyson «Psychoanalytic theories of development». Cogito Center, 2006