ABSTRACT
Nearly a hundred years ago, Freud noted that most people approach matters of money with ‘inconsistency, prudishness, and hypocrisy’. Little has changed since then. It is still difficult for people to talk about their realities, fantasies, feelings, and aspirations involving money in a peaceful manner. Freud listed parsimony as a major trait of the obsessional personality. He traced the reluctance such individuals show in parting with money to the pleasure felt by the anal-phase child in retaining feces. The flamboyant overspending of money in manic states and the delusional dread of poverty associated with profound depression are well-recognized monetary manifestations of psychopathology. Many individuals resort to spending sprees in states of anxiety. Shopping serves as a distraction from inner turmoil and the act of buying becomes a reassurance against passivity and ego-impotence. The spending of money deceives them as to the want of freedom of their libido and relieves them for a short time of painful feeling of sexual insufficiency.
