ECONOMICS, PAIN AND MASOCHISM

Umbr(a), A Journal of the Unconscious, 2012, p. 129-142, 2012

The Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, 1986

In 1915 Sigmund Freud labeled one of his metapsychological points of view the " economic" (ökonomischen) standpoint (Freud, 1915A). He had earlier identified the term " economic" with the quantitative aspects of his developing theory (Freud, 1887-1902), and he period ically used it in a variety of contexts. It is not clear why Freud chose this term to characterize an aspect of his theory. Freud never offered an explanation nor is there any definitive one in the psychoanalytic literature. That the question has never seriously been raised probably reflects the fact that psychoanalysts and economists no longer read one another's literature. Suggestions have been made by Riesman (1950), Rieff (1959), and Erikson (1955) that Freud was influenced in some Zeitgeist manner by the economics of the time which emphasized the maximization of pleasure or profits in a world of scarcity. There are striking similarities and a fundamental consistency between the early ideas of Freud that developed into his economic viewpoint and the highly distinctive model of individual economic behavior that emerged from the Austrian uni versities about the same time. It is as if Freud wished to recognize the consistency and make use of the original and unique contributions of the " new" Austrian economists of his day. D r. Shull is Professor o f E conom ics at H unter C ollege, N ew Y ork C ity. D r. W arn er is S en io r A ttending Psychiatrist at the Institute o f P hiladelphia H ospital and D ean o f the P hiladelphia A cadem y o f Psychoanalysis. T his p ap er w as presented at the W in ter M eeting o f the A m erican A cadem y o f P sychoanalysis, N ew Y ork C ity , D ecem ber 9 , 1984. T his pap er has benefitted from the review and helpful com m ents o f P rofessor H erbert G ey er o f H u n ter C olleg e, C ity U niversity o f N ew Y ork.

Neoclassical Economics assumes that economic agents are independent and optimizing. The achievements of Psychoanalysis concerning the development of mind and human interactions, on the contrary, indicate that considering an individual as independent and optimizing is incorrect, as everyone, since birth, is mentally interconnected with other agents. In this research we firstly deal with and criticize the Neoclassical economics concepts of Independence and Optimization; then, on the basis of the psychoanalytic model of the mind, we draw a new definition of Competition.

Economic theory, since the time of Smith and Hume, has been operating with a model of homo oeconomicus as an autonomous, rational, self-interested calculator of cost-for-benefit. This presumed rationality of 'economic man' supposedly guarantees, in turn, the fundamental rationality of the 'self-regulating', 'efficient' market. Classical political economy, neoclassical economics and neoliberalism have all operated with this model. But the recent 'global financial crisis' was yet another reminder-if one were needed-that the psychology of markets and financial dealers can seem far from rational. Even Alan Greenspan had to admit of the 2008-9 financial 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, both individual and collective. Freud, Ferenczi, Jones and Abraham were just the earliest psychoanalytic theorists to decode monetary transactions and relationships into their presumed unconscious motives. And yet, 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. This essay stages a confrontation between two discourses, psychoanalysis and economics, which for much of their history have been mutually indifferent and mutually opaque. By confronting the implied subjects of these discourses with each other's models of reason or sanity in money matters, rather than of irrationality or psychopathology, it questions the equation of economic rationality with individuated self-interest while seeking to deconstruct the century-old dichotomy between homo oeconomicus and homo psychologicus.

The title of the present essay is an allusion to Lyotard's " Emma: Between philosophy and psychoanalysis " (1989). The main subject of my discussion, within the context of philosophy and psychoanalysis is philosophy of money, and more particular cultural phenomenology of money. The common place and issue that bridges the coast between philosophy and psychoanalysis, from one side, and cultural phenomenology, from the other, is the embodiment and the so called 'mind body problem'. Within my research interest and field the embodiment apply to money. This essay takes up the question of money in the spirit of the Marx-Freud tradition, as the first part of the essay-Marx's The Fetish Character of Money and Foucault's 'Money is simulacrum'-is concerned with Marx and the second part is devoted to Sigmund Freud's attitude about money. The connection between Marx and Freud, provided here, is through Norman O. Brown's Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History, (1985). Brown's concern is the notion of embodiment. He is one of the most interesting philosophers and commentators of Marx and Freud, who returned 'the sacred' to the analysis of 'money' and demeaned both equally. For Brown, 'money' and 'the sacred' were both sublimated products of a revulsion from the body. And such sublimation, whether aimed at god or mammon, is " the denial of life and the body…. The more the life of the body passes into things, the less life there is in the body, and at the same time the increasing accumulation of things represents an ever fuller articulation of the lost life of the body. " (Norman O. Brown, 1985: 297). In the third part of my essay I follow the postmodern perspective, discussing in short some of Jean-Franзois Lyotard's works. As Claire Nouvet, asserts in her The Inarticulate Affect: Lyotard and Psychoanalytic Testimony (2003), " Philosophy rarely, if ever, engages psychoanalysis. It is then all the more noteworthy when a philosopher takes the risk of such an engagement. Jean-Francois Lyotard took this chance repeately and in different modes. " (Nouvet,

2022

In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud introduced the death drive hypothesis, according to which “the aim of all life is death”. I trace the genealogy of this hypothesis in order to understand it as a moment in the history of modern Western societies. First, I present Freud's metapsychology, and in particular its “economic” dimension, the death drive being central to this dimension. Secondly, I retrace the history of the concept of energy and of the formulation of the laws of thermodynamics in the nineteenth century. Energetics and thermodynamics are shown to have been important to the Freudian economic dimension. Further, I show that for nineteenth-century scientists, the concern for energy reflected a socio-economic preoccupation with the matter of scarcity. Lastly, I argue that Freud's relationship to energy, as expressed in the death drive hypothesis, also reflected a certain relationship of Western countries to scarcity in the era of the second industrial revolution.

Cadernos Junguianos, 2024

Although macroeconomic processes are present in collective and individual life, with their significant socio-historical effects and consequences, they have not received due attention from analytical psychology, remaining dissociated and on the margins of analytical elaborations. This article is the result of research since 2018 on economic topics that resulted in the discovery of the Swiss economist prof. Eugen Böhler and his partnership with C. G. Jung as early as 1938 when Jung joined the ETH and especially from 1955 to 1961 when he produced essays and books involving the myths. Critical of the abstract and rational models that still permeate economic discussions today, Böhler was the one who introduced the presence of unconscious factors to understand the complexity of economic factors. Böhler sought tirelessly move out of from Logos towards Mito (Mythos). We understand, along with M. D. Ronca and Y.Demierre, that Eugen Böhler was the first Jungian Economist.

Recherches en psychanalyse, 2012

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Springer eBooks, 2018

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