Scripts for Wealth Addiction

• A Binding Burden of Ever-Worsening Affect by Jim Duffy, 5/19/97
  
  

There is no doubt that Slater was accurate in his analysis of wealth addiction, just as Thorsten Veblen had been some years earlier in his writings on Conspicuous Consumption. I suspect that you and I will have little effect on society unless we can get others to think in terms of their affective lives. Over the 30+ years I've been in the practice of psychiatry, I've had the pleasure of working in therapy with several men who were on the way "up" to great wealth. As stigmata of wealth they wore season tickets to more than one professional sports franchise, engaged the "best" interior designer to establish collections that made them look like connoisseurs, and dressed elegantly. When they really began to feel comfortable with their wealth, they got rid of the season tickets, sold the collections at a loss (although they tended to collect things that really interested them), and wore whatever they damn pleased on all occasions. And this operates at all levels of society. You can find counter-shame collectors of almost any commodity.

Therapy works. Most of those who collect or achieve in order to reduce ongoing chronic shame find their interest in these pursuits waning as self esteem rises based on their actual understanding of themselves.

But back to the thrust of your observation. The concept of wealth addiction has little or no power to change people because it is too intellectual. We understand narcotic addiction, have lately come to understand sexual addiction, and are far from being able to understand wealth addiction. Everyone who has worked in addiction counseling has observed that obesity is hard to treat because everybody has to eat. Well, everybody has to earn, and the differences between "normal" earning and earning in the pursuit of public esteem are subtle until one is ready to study them. Finally, I suspect that the average person (that's us, by the way) envys the finery of the wealthy and likes to use these successful people as models for the "personal best" pole of the shame/pride axis.

But thanks for the kind words about the book, and thanks even more for your astute use of the concepts we've tried so hard to elucidate.

• A Nice Addition to Your Book's Observation by Jim Duffy, 5/27/97