Did Freud write that sex-starved people talk about sex, hungry people talk about food, and bankers and oligarchs talk about morality?

On the Internet you can often come across a saying that everyone chooses a topic for conversation according to their needs. We checked whether its author is indeed Sigmund Freud.

The full phrase goes like this: “Whoever lacks sex talks about sex, a hungry man talks about food, a man who doesn’t have money talks about money, and our oligarchs and bankers talk about morality.” It is attributed to Sigmund Freud on entertainment and information sites (“Peekaboo", JoyReactor, TechInsider, "Today"), in online collections of aphorisms ("Quotes from famous personalities", "Pearls of thought", Socratify.net), on social networks (Facebook, Twitter, "VKontakte", Telegram), on the blog platform "Zen"and on YouTube. This quote is also common on English.

Conversations with the patient are one of the most important diagnostic procedures in psychoanalysis, a movement in psychology founded by Sigmund Freud at the end of the 19th century. Psychoanalysis began with the development of the method of free association - practices, in which the patient is allowed to speak freely, without any coercion from the doctor, on a topic proposed by a specialist. According to Freud, any memory that comes to mind is important from the point of view of establishing connections between processes occurring in the psyche and understanding the causes of the disease. The founder of psychoanalysis believed that psychological problems lodged at the level of the unconscious could be brought out through such conversations. However, this does not mean at all that the choice of topic for conversation will be dictated precisely by the lack of something - negative (as well as positive) emotions can have different reasons. In other words, this statement is far from perfectly consistent with the psychoanalyst’s own theory, and even statements similar in meaning to “Verified” were not found in the works of the founder of psychoanalysis - nor in the collection of Freud’s works on website Library of Congress, nor on the websites of its museums in Vienna And London, nor in others online archives.

The use of the word “oligarch” raises separate questions (if, of course, the translation corresponds to the German Oligarch). In its modern meaning, this concept was not popular in any German, neither in English language until the mid-1990s, when it became famous throughout the world thanks to Russian big business.

We also note that in English this statement began to spread on the Internet only in autumn 2021, but in German it is practically not found at all. At the same time, the aphorism by that time was quite widely divided into Russian-speaking resources, which, coupled with the mention of “our oligarchs,” suggests its corresponding origin.

An analysis of posts on social networks shows that the spread of the phrase began on December 29, 2012 after it was published on Facebook on page Snob editions. Below the quote there is a link to article from the website of the publication from which it was taken. It's about the blog Gennady Balashov - Ukrainian entrepreneur, former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada and presidential candidate of Ukraine. Balashov, who in 2022 after row problems with the law left country, often speaks to audiences in the role of a “political psychoanalyst,” as he calls himself. In his blog on Snob.ru, Balashov does not write that these words belong to Freud - he does not use quotation marks and breaks the thought into two sentences:

According to Freud, a person, as a rule, talks about what he lacks. Someone who lacks sex talks about sex, a hungry person talks about food, a person who doesn’t have money talks about money, and oligarchs and bankers talk about morality...

In joint book Gennady Balashov and Polina Kudievskaya “How to become an adventurer? Reflections of a Millionaire,” published a year before the article and written in the format of conversations with an entrepreneur, there is also a statement attributed to Freud - a slightly edited version was included in the blog. In the first chapter, Balashov talks about the political and economic situation in Ukraine, about the huge sums in the accounts of politicians, about the moralistic statements of the wives of famous bankers and oligarchs - and then, mentioning Freud, he develops his thought with the above quote.

Thus, in all likelihood, the statement about sex, hunger, money and oligarchs did not belong to Freud, but to the Ukrainian businessman and politician Gennady Balashov, who only mentioned the founder of psychoanalysis in the context of his own observation, but did not directly attribute the quote to him. At the time of publication of the analysis, Balashov did not respond to “Verified” messages asking for comment on our conclusions.

Cover photo: social networks

Not true

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