Introduction

For Freud and Lacan, the early form of the signifier originally represented the death or killing of an animal, an enemy, or the leader of the group. The function of psychoanalysis for social and cultural theory instead is to clarify the register and status of the specific jouissance involved in symbolic and economic objects of exchange, in consumption and production, and in the excess that drives the capitalization and organization of the system, for the Other and the subject. Language, cultural forms and structures, and the law are not simply Imaginary or cover over the truth of rapacious relations of domination. For Keynes, economic decisions are intuitive, emotional, and irrational. People tend to reach irrational conclusions about money, and this has been called the “money illusion” or money as a fetishistic commodity or object of worship. Fairness is linked to the function of culture of regulating the drives and the animal spirits resulting in some form of self-discipline.