ABSTRACT
Sigmund Freud's seminal paper of 1908 is a short contribution, a "communication", as he describes it, rooted in clinical observation rather than in theoretical preconception. S. Warner explores Freud's personal relationship to money, his struggle to manage his financial responsibility, his inclination to borrow more money than he repaid his resentment towards being in debt, in his mind with his father's "generous improvidence". There is something about this personal dimension, about this apparent mix of deprivation and entitlement, and prevented him from becoming more involved psychoanalytically with money and its role in the unconscious. Freud explores the relationship between money and faeces through quick cultural references, and understands their identification in the unconscious mind to be based on the very contrast between them in terms of value: "most precious substance", and "refuse". Nevertheless, these some brief contributions provide the solid foundation on which a psychoanalytic understanding of money and its role in our internal lives can rest.
