Psychoanalysis and the Spirit of Capitalism

Abstract

In 1904–?5, Max Weber famously argued that Calvinism had supplied early capitalism with a “spirit” (geist) without which such capitalist virtues as methodical devotion to task would not have developed. More recently Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello in Le Nouvel Espirit de Capitalisme have argued that capitalism always has a spirit (esprit), and have traced in outline the history of the spirit of capitalism for the last one hundred years. In my paper I will modify their work to argue that psychoanalysis made a crucial contribution to the spirit of the second industrial revolution (mass production and mass consumption), a contribution that helped reorient modern capitalism toward its contemporary, consumerist direction. This reorientation, I suggest, reflected a fundamental change in the character of the family: the rise of modern personal life. This change, moreover, cannot be understood through sociological means alone since it involved unconscious or deep psychological changes in modern character structure. Highly ambiguous, we are still grappling with its implications.