Money, whether you analyse it to the last detail, right down to Georg Simmel’s The Philosophy of Money, or whether you have only a purely practical view of it, is a universal exchange medium which builds both our hopes and our anxieties. In this article, we’ll look at what happens when a person has a pathological relationship with money, one which falls within the category of addiction.

When money burns a hole in your pocket … 

When we look at addiction problems that can arise in the context of dependence on money, we need to distinguish two opposing profiles. First, there’s the eternal hoarder, ready to make any sacrifice to avoid the smallest financial outlay, and always very anxious about his savings. Of course there’s the stereotype, without much basis in reality, of the grasping retired person who keeps his outgoings to a minimum and devotes his declining years to piling up a fortune. This kind of addiction may be the result of harsh lessons, which taught these people to live cheaply and renounce the pleasures that money can buy. From very early on, they believed that the purpose of money was survival, so it had to be used sparingly.

On the other side of the coin, the second profile is of the outrageous spendthrift who just can’t stick to a budget when he goes shopping. Typically this would be a fashionable young adult. He’s always broke because he has “holes in his pockets”. The words to describe him in French are taken from fire and burning. We call him a flambeur, and we talk about money burning his fingers, about his credit cards overheating, and so on. He makes the opposite mistake by thinking about money in terms of conspicuous consumption, of using it to pay for shallow and unnecessary pleasures.

Both forms of addiction come from a kind of excess. Money is for living life, not for surviving or for showing off.

The social function of money

Both our hoarder and our spendthrift have realised that money has an important social function in today’s society. The problem is that they each understand this function in different ways, so they relate to money in different ways.

From the hoarder’s point of view, a person’s place in society doesn’t come from spending money, but from having it. A miser delights in what he could do with those solid savings, but he doesn’t actually touch them. He’s quite satisfied to imagine the potential of his money. The cost of living doesn’t worry the hoarder; he relishes the fact that he could buy anything, and that other people can’t.

The spendthrift’s relationship with money fits in with the consumer society. He feels that having money is all very satisfying and enjoyable, but no actual use unless he can turn it into real, tangible possessions. For him, money is all about results, preferably magnificent results to show off the sacrifices he has made. The cost of living doesn’t worry the spendthrift; he wants to buy everything and to enjoy doing what other people can’t.

Nu