ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a novel take on financial markets, through a seminal contribution in the application of the standard frame of psychoanalytic understanding of human psychology in the realm of economic life. It is particular to psychoanalysis that it can offer insight into how the forces of unconscious phantasy, psychic reality, and changing states of mind enter into every human decision or interaction, or those that the authors habitually regard as unavoidable collective outcomes. As an illustration of the impact of phantasy in relationship to money beyond childhood, this chapter offers a novel take on financial markets, through a seminal contribution in the application of the standard frame of psychoanalytic understanding of human psychology in the realm of economic life. Building on the psychoanalytic understanding of how reality is experienced in different states of mind, the authors analyse the role of attitudes of mind and emotional responses to shaping outcomes in the financial markets.
