Our Neurotic Economy

There has been much discussion by analysts of various varieties of the economic woes of the country. This doesn’t seem to have got us very far. So perhaps it’s time for a different sort of analysis.

A little time on the psychoanalyst’s chaise longue could be well spent to ease the money-grasping neurosis in banks and markets. The Treasury and the Government as a whole certainly could do with losing their bookish obsessions with so called ‘free’ trade, and there could be help also to avoid the anxiety-driven reactions by markets and governments that make long-term recovery less likely.

The psychoanalytic metaphor is revealing, as neurosis often springs from unstable relationships. There’s way too much talk of customers ‘switching’ their suppliers - or companies changing their countries. The cure involves loyalty, stability and confidence, which in turn call for consistency. For example, long-standing savers and fuel customers being treated fairly, investment consistency displacing dividend consistency and corporations being less self-obsessed and thinking beyond the impact of their actions merely on themselves.

Confidence involves lasting understandings, well-merited trust and appropriate self-revelation - in contrast to the unstable culture of deceit that is evident in marketing driven business and society today. Many neurotics also exhibit a high level of dependency. Business executives should be less driven by avarice, and depend less on big bonuses and pay rises way above inflation. We consumers are already seeing the need to depend less on the ‘must-have now’ mentality. The financial dependency cultivated by banks and related grasping moneylenders has taken its toll and they should ease themselves onto the analytical sofa.

Neurosis also involves anxiety. The fear of not meeting frequently ludicrous and arbitrary targets and the impulsive, short-term decisions that such anxiety breeds, needs to be reduced. Lack of self-restraint - greed in particular - is an infantile trait found in many neurotics and more than a few boardrooms. This must cease, and corporate stakeholders should mature to mutual confidence, moderation and patience in a culture of commonality that also includes their customers. Qualities such as fairness, trust, commitment and loyalty define a healthy frame of mind for individuals and for industry - and indeed for society itself. Bonds of a very different ilk, as it were.

There is a deep need for a new industrial psychology (as well as something resembling an effective industrial strategy) to curb the prodigal coarseness of the loadsamoney culture that has brought us to where we now are. The gains from what might be described as ‘quality capitalism’, against the alternative of meaner and socially barren variants, go well beyond an improved economy to rebuilt national morale, and the personal and mutual self respect and security that would make for a genuine and long-lasting feel-good factor.