Freudnancialism – a portmanteau of “Freudianism” and “financial”

Freudnancialism is a system of understanding that seeks to reduce the explanation of all things to their primary financial components in order to comprehend their economic inter-workings and the resulting effects on behavior; doing so in the same manner as the Freudian reduction of all psychological phenomena into interrelations among the Daddy-Mommy-Me elements of the “holy” family.

The theory holds that the economic paradigm stretches throughout modern life and serves as the fundamental matrix within which psychological events transpire.

Freudnancialism combines the representative and symbol/signifier processes of Freudianism with the concepts of financialization, which refers to the general penetration of financial capitalism into modern economic life, and financialism¹, which explores the depths and complexity of modern finance in suggesting that the real economy plays a secondary role to the financial economy that serves as the real economy’s critical infrastructure.

Prominent themes within Freudnancialism include:

• Fear of loss/ruin;
• Gambling compulsions;
• Risk tolerance;
• Poverty, particularly as it pertains to childhood;
• Financial literacy/education;
• Critical thinking/attention skills (incl: attention schema theory);
• Planning and forethought aptitude;
• Self control

1. Financialism: A (Very) Brief History – by Ezra Wasserman Mitchell – Shandong University – Creighton Law Review ↩︎