In the Theory of Moral Sentiments, in outlining a case in which a rich landowner ends up employing laborers through his spending on luxury, Smith illustrates that the hand helps the wealthy, in spite of their “insatiable desires,” to share some of their wealth with the poor. ![]() Smith construes the economic invisible hand as the influence that leads individuals who pursue a private interest to promote the public good without realizing it. ![]() Later, this hand becomes an economic hand, mentioned first in the Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759 and then again in The Wealth of Nations in 1776. Hirschman’s The Passions and the Interests – the reproduced illustration of a celestial, immaterial hand squeezing a human heart beneath the motto, “Affectus Comprime” or, in Hirschman’s translation, “Repress the Passions!” A psychoanalytic image if there ever was one.Īs Adams indicates, when Smith first mentions the hand in a treatise on astronomy (in an essay unpublished during his lifetime but probably written before 1758), it was a mythological image - the hand of Jupiter moving celestial bodies in the heavens. Adams points to an especially evocative version of the hand cited in A.O. Literary scholars note that around the time of Smith’s usage, invisible hands were popping up in gothic novels to slam doors and otherwise move the human plot along. Nevertheless, as Adams reminds us, the invisible hand image was circulating long before Smith used it in works ranging from Homer to Voltaire to indicate ghostly or divine forces that intervene in human affairs. He points out that as images go, the invisible hand is an odd one. “No other image so pervades, so dominates, the modern world,” asserts Adams. In Adams’ view, the invisible hand is not only a key idea in economics, but “the most important image of the last 250 years” - as paramount to capitalism as the hammer and sickle image is to communism. But in his book For Love of the Imagination: Interdisciplinary Applications of Jungian Psychoanalysis, psychoanalyst and psychology professor Michael Vannoy Adams shows how Jung’s special attention to images - to making them conscious and understanding their meaning and influence - can help us glean what lies in the shadow of contemporary capitalism.Īdams’ starting point is Adam Smith’s image of the invisible hand, that legendary representation of the unseen force that arranges the economically self-serving actions of individuals into collective benefits. The name of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, redolent of mystical and esoteric concerns, would probably sound particularly out of place at an economic conference. ![]() Brown and Herbert Marcuse gained wide appeal with their dives into the hidden recesses and unconscious motivations of economics, but as Sigmund Freud began to fall out of favor with academics in the 1960s, psychoanalytic approaches have been pushed aside or rebranded – despite the fact that a great deal of recent scientific research supports Freud’s concept of the unconscious.Īs we grapple today with economic systems that seem ever more destructive to human wellbeing, might it be time to reconsider whether psychoanalysis has something useful to say about the dismal science? More than half a century ago, thinkers like Norman O. That makes it fertile ground for those who study human psychology.Ĭontemporary discussions of economics and psychology focus mostly on behavioral economics, while psychoanalysis, the branch ostensibly dedicated to heightening awareness of the unconscious, has made far fewer appearances in the conversation. Economics presents itself as a rational science dealing with objective measures and quantitative approaches, but astute observers have long recognized its suffusion with magical, fantastic, irrational, and unconscious elements.
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