Macropsychoanalysis : the economics of the unconscious

• Vivien LÉVY-GARBOUA
  Member, BNP-PARIBAS executive committee
  
• Gérard MAAREK
  Independent consultant
  

Summary

When two financial experts and famous economists use Freudian theory to throw some light on areas which have been left in the dark by the general equilibrium theory, the homo oeconomicus is necessarily hit. The narrow world of rationality can be clarified very differently when it is the result of the interaction of a life and death drives, or the clash of the instances of the collective unconscious modelled in Freud's "metapsychology". Characters such as the Prince, the Priest, the Professor and the Producer reveal the economic mechanisms of decision-making, crises or economic bubbles, enrich the understanding of these phenomena and open up new areas for reflection by decision-makers and analysts. 'They do not know that we are bringing them the plague,' Freud said to Jung when he arrived in New York. Compared with mainstream opinion, psychoanalysis has always been subversive. Let us hope that macropsychoanalysis will have as much success in economics as its predecessor had in America.

Summary translated from French by Rachel MARLIN.

• The entire article was written by Pascal LEFEBVRE.

To obtain this article, you can :

• download it in French (PDF help) using your password or contact ecopar@paris.ensmp.fr (Reference VA060707).