ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book introduces a range of psychoanalytic perspectives on the work of Adam Smith to illuminate the important psychological content embedded in his work, identify the salient issues within this content and evaluate their significance to the structure of morality and social relations. It then examines Smith's attitude and understanding of the instincts (what Smith calls passions or sentiments) and his antipathy to them. The book provides the interactive understandings that come from the branch of psychoanalytic study that speaks to the mutual interactions between people, and applies these understandings to Smith's sympathetic interactions between the spectator (observer) and the agent (observed). It then explores the reciprocal effect of markets on morality and morality on markets, looking at Smith's original ideas in this area, and from the perspective of evolutionary psychology and adaptive defenses.
