The Pathology of Money
We find that finances not only help to establish the quite-appropriate “safety-net” for a family. They also can serve less appropriate and often destructive purposes. As a psychotherapist who works with people struggling with emotional problems, Yvonne Kaye (1991) believes that many mental health professionals don’t know how to address financial issues being faced by their clients. I suspect she would offer a similar critique of many financial advisors and investment counsellors. She believes that the “root of the problem” for many people resides at a deep emotional level. Foremost in her mind (and work) is the matter of finding “emotional fixes” through the misuse of their money.
Emotional Fix
I begin with Kaye’s (1991, p. 60) critique and then her sense of the deeper problem:
“Many health professionals treat symptoms in this money problem area, but the root of the problem has to be addressed. People with compulsive spending habits do not buy because they like to buy. It is the only way they can feel good. It is their fix.
They are considered to be irresponsible. It is not irresponsibility. I won’t go so far as to say it is a disease, but I do know it is a severe and painful condition. It is an uncontrollable dependency that engenders the same kind of self-loathing as other severe and obsessive behaviors.”
Kaye offers many examples of her clients seeking to deaden their pain by compulsive spending. They shop in order to feel “worthy.” They self-gift in order to feel cared for. As Yvonne Kaye puts it: “I shop—therefore I am.” I need not find my sense of self in much more elusive domains, such as my work, parenting, or building a safe financial reserve. I can get an immediate emotional fix (and perhaps a shot of some feel-good neurochemical or hormone, such as dopamine) when I buy that special piece of clothing or book a room at that wonderful resort. “I deserve to treat myself. And it makes me immediately feel good!”
In many ways, what Kaye is describes as a contemporary need for an emotional fix through spending money relates in an even bigger way to the critique Erich Fromm (1955) offered many years ago of the American society. Offering what was known at the time as the Frankfurt School perspective (blending Marx and Freud), Fromm wrote about the way alienation from our work—and ultimately from our sense of self—has led us to seek an escape from this alienation. While this escape can take place through reliance on authority (as Fromm suggested in “Escape from Freedom”), it can also occur through indiscriminate spending. Consumerism becomes the new “fix” for the alienation we feel from our sense of worth and identity. We live through what we purchase and find identity in what we own rather than in what we produce.
Co-Dependency
Yvonne Kaye actually devotes less attention to one’s own emotional fixes than to the fixes we get from spending money on behalf of other people. She devotes several chapters (and titles her book) to what she calls financial “co-dependency.” While the term “codependency” is usually applied to the way those who relate closely to substance abusers tend to aid this abuse, Dr. Kaye believes there is also an interlocking connection between those who abuse money and those who benefit from this abuse. Kaye (1991, pp. 60-61) offers a cogent summary of this destructive dynamic:
“When people are doing, doing, doing and giving, giving, giving until it hurts, they get hurt. We give until it hurts, as Janie did, and nothing happens. This is called emotional spending. . . . Compulsive spenders, givers and doers are into the ‘If onlies.’ ‘If only I do this, maybe they’ll treat me the way I want to be treated.’”
She (Kaye, 1991, pp. 54-55) begins her analysis of co-dependence by offering a sub-title (“If I Spend Enough, They’ll Love Me”) and the following introduction:
