A Jungian Psychotherapist & Suburban Life, 3: Money

By Brian Collinson

counselling Jungian analysis Psychotherapy

Posted: February 9, 2013

Money in all its aspects is highly significant in suburban life, as any Jungian case studies well knows.

Jungian case studies

This isn’t surprising: money has immense psychological importance, overall.

What do I mean by that?

Money as Energy

Psychologically and symbolically speaking, a Jungian case studies thinks of money as representing a form of stored energy. The money we earn effectively results from the expenditure of our life’s energy.

As a result, money is fundamentally tied up with our hopes and dreams, for ourselves, and just as importantly, for those whom we love. It is also powerfully associated with our fears and insecurities. Let’s make no mistake: financial crises, recessions or other situations of financial threat, personal or collective, are powerful emotional events.

These psychological facts take on a particular nuance or flavour in suburban settings. In suburbia, success and affluence are highly prized, and deeply tied up with personal identity.

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Money Complex and Social Self

Basically, everyone has a money complex. Money issues can leave us in the grips of many different strong emotional states, but money “gets” to almost all of us, one way or another, whether as extreme competitiveness or extreme worry, or other emotional states.

jungian case studies

The world’s great financial organizations and institutions gives us the impression that money is one of the most rational — even mathematical — of things in human life. Actually, money is one of the most emotional things on earth. Again, this emotionality is often heightened in suburbia, where outward trappings of affluence and success are a highly prized part of our social masks. The social collective stresses the need to be, and to be seen to be successful– in order to have any worth.

Songwriter Aimee Mann explores the complexity around “looking successful” and money in her insightful song, “Freeway” — “You’ve got a lot of money / But you cannot keep your bills paid.”

Suburban Life: A Troubled Marriage with Money

As a Jungian case studies, a key area of investigation, and a key issue for people who see me in my practice, is the particular relationship between suburban life and money. It’s a potent, potent mixture!

The constant message of suburbia? Successful people live here. In fact, that’s why many chose to live in the more affluent suburbs. Certainly, “success” in this sense means financial success: having a lot of money. The not-so-subtle message in our society, which screams from every brick in suburbia, is that self-worth is directly connected to worth in dollars.

Upscale suburb living symbolizes success. And, very clearly, those living here need to appear successful. This can be an extremely trying pressure in economically uncertain times.

Self Worth and Money?

Human beings are worth infinitely more than their assets. There’s irreplaceable value in our individual uniqueness. Our culture doesn’t always affirm this. We need to live in the conscious awareness of our own uniqueness, and our own unique journey. A Jungian case studies focuses on grounding people in their unique identity and worth.

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