Psychoanalysis of Economics*

At first a few words about the title. I think that there are no phenomena in human life which cannot be approached from the point of view of psychology. However, to be perfectly accurate one has to qualify such a statement when one approaches nature. As persons in nature we are acting in nature. At the same time, nature follows its own course. The way in which we adapt to nature and what we do with the problems nature puts before us belong to the realm of psychology. As we might say here is nature in the raw. When we do something to nature and the external world then the events of the outward world take a different course. This does not mean that from now on whatever may happen is the expression of our own psychology and action. We may furthermore say that many of our institutions, customs and habits of life, which have been created as the result of the cultural process have become independent the moment we have created them. We deal here with the “objective spirit” (Objectiver Geist) of the German philosopher Hegel. Hegel did not think that the cultural achievements are merely the result of actions of human beings in the external world but believed in a creative spirit which manifests itself according to its own laws in the different forms of cultural achievements. One should keep these ideas of Hegel's in mind since the dialectic materialism of Marx and Engels has been decidedly influenced by Hegel's conception. We