The term ‘economy’ enters the depth-psychology corpus along several distinct but overlapping axes. Its most philosophically rich treatment derives from the Greek oikos — the household — a root that Moore and Sardello exploit to reconnect economic life to soul, community, and the animate world. For Moore, economy is irreducibly communal, carrying the ‘soul of communal life’ precisely because it exceeds rational control, sharing the unpredictability of eros and disease. Sardello presses further, interrogating ‘economism’ as a pathology of the soul that mistakes self-serving production for the deeper truth of labor — that we work, in fact, for others. Hillman relocates the unconscious itself inside ‘the Economy,’ arguing that contemporary psychology has exhaustively exposed private life while leaving the business world — the true warp and woof of behavioral patterns — critically unexamined. The Bhagavad Gita commentary of Easwaran distinguishes ‘asuric’ from ‘sattvic’ economics, importing a moral-psychological taxonomy into material life. Derrida’s marginal deployment of ‘economy’ — in the Freudian register of deferral and the restricted versus general economy — marks yet another vector: psychic economy as the architecture of trace, reserve, and difference. Von Franz employs the term to describe the Self’s sovereign regulation of the complex household of the psyche. Across these positions, economy functions not as a technical category but as a site where soul, power, community, and unconsciousness converge.
the total economy of complexes… the whole economy of the household is ruled by another center, namely the Self… the whole economy of the personality is ordered and guided
Von Franz employs ‘economy’ as a technical psychological term for the Self’s sovereign regulation of the inner household of complexes, making it structurally analogous to household governance in the classical sense.
, Creation Myths, 1995thesis
Economy (nomos) is concerned with the ways in which we get along in this world home and with the family of society. Money is simply the coinage of our relationship to the community and environment in which we live.
Moore grounds economy etymologically in the Greek oikos and reconnects it to soul and communal life, arguing that money carries the full complexity — and shadow — of collective existence.
, Care of the Soul Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition: A Guide, 1992thesis
it is the Economy where the contemporary unconscious resides and where psychological analysis is most needed… We can’t get away from the Economy.
Hillman argues that the Economy has displaced private life as the primary site of the contemporary unconscious, making it the essential object of psychological analysis.
, Kinds of Power: A Guide to Its Intelligent Uses, 1995thesis
To the extent that we fulfill the demand which the division of labor involves, providing for the good of others, we are on the path beyond economism. But to the extent that the demand is unfulfilled… we are bound to economism.
Sardello diagnoses ‘economism’ as the soul’s failure to transcend self-serving labor, framing the division of labor as a moral-psychological threshold between egoism and genuine communal care.
, Facing the World with Soul: The Reimagination of Modern Life, 1992thesis
In an asuric economy… an industry does not exist for the sake of producing something useful. It exists to make money… Sattvic economics… is ‘economics as if people mattered.’
Easwaran applies the Gita’s moral-psychological categories to distinguish predatory ‘asuric’ economic logic from a soul-centered ‘sattvic’ economics oriented to human welfare and holistic cost-accounting.
, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975thesis
Money, says Norman O. Brown, is the soul of the world… it is possible to find soul when we shift from money as quantity to money as quality, from money as noun to money as verb.
Sardello identifies the gift — pure expenditure without calculable return — as the living, soul-bearing element within the otherwise mechanical body of economic process.
, Facing the World with Soul: The Reimagination of Modern Life, 1992supporting
all the oppositions that furrow Freudian thought relate each of his concepts one to another as moments of a detour in the economy of difference.
Derrida reads Freud’s psychic apparatus through the concept of an ‘economy of difference,’ in which every term is constituted by deferral, reserve, and the circuitous movement of the trace.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982supporting
general economy does not cease to pass into the restricted economy of the source in order to permit itself to be encircled.
Derrida deploys Bataille’s distinction between restricted and general economy to interrogate Hegelian Aufhebung as an inexhaustible ruse that re-captures absolute expenditure within a bounded circuit.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982supporting
governments extend their willingness to manipulate social life for the benefit of the economy, whatever the effects may be on psychosocial integration.
Alexander argues that free-market economy systematically undermines psychosocial integration by subordinating cultural and relational life to growth-oriented economic engineering.
, The Globalisation of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit, 2008supporting
Adam Smith’s classical economics… wrote the divine out of individual psychology and thus out of economics altogether, replacing the sacred element with propositions concerning human nature.
Sardello traces the desacralization of economic thought from Protestant restraint through Adam Smith, showing how the elevation of self-interest to a universal principle severed economics from its psychological and spiritual ground.
, Facing the World with Soul: The Reimagination of Modern Life, 1992supporting
Only in a planned economy in which the whole nation has rationally mastered the economic and social forces can the individual share responsibility and use creative intelligence in his work.
Fromm connects economic structure directly to psychological freedom, arguing that rational collective mastery of economic forces is the precondition for authentic individual spontaneity and creative agency.
, Escape from Freedom, 1941supporting
Book I: Economy — Section I: Livestock and Wealth… Section II: Giving and Taking… Section IV: Economic Obligations
Benveniste’s structural organization of Indo-European vocabulary around economy — encompassing gift, exchange, debt, and valuation — establishes the deep linguistic roots of economic concepts within ancient social and ritual life.
, Indo European Language and Society, 1973aside
money… means that wealth (and the pursuit of wealth) has no limit, so that men accumulate money and land, enslave others, and destroy the polis.
Seaford traces the paradox of monetary economy in Solon — simultaneously the source of unlimited accumulation and, as universal measure, a potential principle of limit and civic order.
, Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy, 2004aside
The shouting power of body-budgeting circuitry has serious implications for the financial world.
Barrett notes that the brain’s affective body-budgeting system — not rational deliberation — drives economic decision-making, with significant consequences for financial behavior.
, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, 2017aside