ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by clarifying the term aesthetic attitude. The aesthetic attitude of the Latvian psyche may be helpful in forming a new, psychological one as it possesses similarities with scientific observation. The traumatized psyche asks for pausing, reflecting, and engaging in a conversation with the shadow–the dirt-cheap dragon that hauls the filth into the house of the psyche. The psyche needs the desiccation process for water-logged, unconscious complexes or the shadow contents of the psyche "to be given full expression". The phenomenon of the shadow economy is a form of self-destruction of the nation's well-being, in which the abandoned, injured "soul-child" of the people turns onto itself. The intriguing dichotomy of the Latvian ability to create beautiful events and to struggle with the shadow economy plaguing the country's well-being appears to make sense when reading the cultural text psychologically and understanding the history and corresponding inner events in the psyche.
