Discussion of Henry Krystal's Article, A Psychoanalytic Contribution to the Theory of Cyclicity of the Financial Economy

Dr. Krystal has offered a psychoanalytic explanation of stock market crashes and depression in the financial economy—by extrapolation from the study of one very masochistic patient.

This is the sort of psychoanalytic impressionism that fills me with dismay. To jump from the analysis of one man to conclusions about a highly complex set of variables (i.e., the economy) is patently unscientific. We simply are not entitled to make assumptions about the dynamic interaction in a dyadic relationship and thence make that the basis of conclusions about modular groups of 10, 100, 1,000, etc. Therefore, the basic experimental model and methodology from which he works is unacceptable to me.

I would refer him to Naylor and Gianturco's recent article on “Computer Simulation in Psychiatry”1 which deals with the difficulties in setting up such basic models upon which to test hypothetical psychologic assumptions.

There are other aspects of Krystal's interesting paper that additionally arouse contention. He postulates that economic aggression, acquisitiveness and prosperity produce unconscious guilt and a need for expiation, with resultant self-punishing economic cycles of depression. I am not as willing to ascribe postwar prosperity to guilt-free consumption after the expiatory suffering of war. Might it not, more importantly, be a reaction to prolonged deprivation and to a renewed pleasure-life cathexis?

Contrary to what the author suggests, socialist

states are not all immune to economic depression. They have frequently been much less prosperous than capitalist societies and are often chaotically bureaucratic and depressing cultures where the opportunity for independence and attainment of personal ambition (whether it be oral or genital) is distinctly limited or frustrated.

As for the patient cited, I am most impressed with the great denial of reality, which in effect appears to be his psychotic defense again