My Mother, My Father, My Money

Money and its loaded issues.

Simon Feuerman is a psychotherapist and teaches at Kean University in New Jersey. See full bio

July 20, 2009, Addiction

Your mother's story, your money story*

The Money-Love-Mother-Matrix

Some people have compared the pursuit of money and love to the ebb and flow of the oceanic tides. People get rich, they get poor. They seek love, they find it, they lose it -- they seek it again.

Money and love strike us as elusive. Even when we get love, it may not be the Big Love. There is a sense that whatever we have will merely do - there is trust, there is attraction perhaps, rapport, maybe even all 3 -- but still, it's not the Grand Canyon love, the one with breathtaking vistas, the kodacolor love we waited for.
So too with money -- even those that made money, even lots of it don't feel they have enough. Many financially comfortably people rue the big deal that got away - the brownstone they should've bought in 1975, the Qualcomm stock they should've purchased in 1994 (and sold in 1998).

And so they scheme for the Big One -- the day, the moment, when they will be truly realized and seen in all of their glory. That this Big Love, Big Money day will most likely never happen is irrelevant. The inner Walter Mitty is alive and vigorously engaged in a never-ending dialogue with the impossible.
What strikes me is how many happy people indulge in this. It seems to be not only a vital part of life, but a part of the life story. Impossible desires and fantasies give life so long as they don't harden into obsession. They occupy that innocent gray zone so many people live-in - there is a schemer in every one of us. We are all ripe for Madison Avenue quackery and dubious investments. Body creams and thigh repair, botox between the brows for the women, Viagra or its emotional equivalents for the men. We offer incantations to the gods -- invest in all kinds of aphrodisiacs and schemes and yet, alas, mostly we seem to be at the mercy of the moon, its gravitational forces no match for our ministrations and pleadings.

Some, aware of our own foolishness, turn to psychoanalysis for comfort. We chart our lives on the big graph. We lay out on an invisible grid in the offices of the analyst or the chambers of the healer, counselor -- advisor. We discern patterns and repetitions. We become experts on ourselves, our mothers, our fathers. What does your analyst seek from you? Only that you walk humbly with Him and talk. But you know that ultimately, this too is fool's gold. You have to do more, but what?

Take my relative for example, a scholar of the world and a scholar of himself, a generous heart and yet a perennial business failure. Always willing to do a favor, lend you his car, his house, but for himself, no traction -- a man simply, on whom the sun has gone down.

A simple analysis of his life, will tell you that he does not hold on to himself or his desires long enough, hard enough or straight enough in interactions with people to get what he wants and needs. He suffers from what he calls emotional ED - emotional erectile dysfunction.

Like most people, he has a story. The narcissistic mother and father, the youngest, most neglected one in his family. His analysis has uncovered that much, at least. But during this process he has become enamored and attached to his own story. The other week he wondered aloud to me, has he become too attached to his own story? Is this very story, true as it is, getting in the way of his having a different life?

Dear readers, I invite you to comment: does your story interfere with your making money? Your words are weclome

*Acknowledgments to Ncaps learners, Robin R. Benjamin, LP and faculty