ABSTRACT
Money has rarely been considered as worthy of study by psychologists, perhaps because it seems to be a matter first and foremost for economists and financiers. The various structural or conjunctural phenomena weaken two quite distinct levels of money's symbolic function: namely, money's functioning as a sign and its functioning as a signifier. The same goes for money in the case of the adult, or excrement in the case of the child, as for language: the law and value of symbolic exchange always emanate from the other. In private firms, it is the pursuit of money that, "governs" organizational behaviour, while in the public sector, this role is taken, on the contrary, by the management of already "acquired" money. More generally, by meticulously observing the day to day reality of organizations, it becomes apparent that money, that seeming-Other, allows subjects – for reasons of psychical economy – to ignore the true other that is the pivot of organizational action.
