On money & feces I first read Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History'' (Wesleyan University Press, 1959) soon after it came out. My uneducated undergraduate mind just loved it. It was my first exposure to Freud, I believe. Also to Jonathan Swift, who wrote, "Celia, Celia, Celia shits!." And the psychologist Ferenczi. Later I was surprised to read the same idea in Keynes' Treatise on Money.
Keynes. Treatise, vi: p. 258 (Beginning of Chapter 35). He uses the title, "auri sacra fames," (the cursed greed for gold) a reference to Pliny (23-79 AD) and also mentioned by Marx. He then mentions a Freudian explanation for the love of gold. auri sacra fames means the sacred mystique of gold. 258: "auri" footnote mentions a work by Ferenczi. Ferenczi, Sandor. 1914. "The Ontogenesis of Interest in Money." In Sex in Psycho-Analysis (Contributions to Psycho-Analysis) (NY: Basic Books, 1950): pp. 319-31. 321-2: "Observation of the behaviour of children and analytic investigation of neurotics ... shews that children originally devote their interest without any inhibition to the process of defaecation, and that it affords them pleasure to hold back their stools. The excrementa thus held back are really the first 'savings' of the growing being, and as such remain in a constant, unconscious inter-relationship with every bodily activity or mental striving that has anything to do with collecting, hoarding, and saving." -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu michaelperelman.wordpress.com
