Did Freud write that people with a lack of sex talk about sex, hungry - about food, and bankers and oligarchs - about morality?

On the Internet, you can often find a statement that everyone chooses a topic for conversation according to their needs. We checked whether its author is really Sigmund Freud.

The phrase completely sounds like this: “Who lacks sex - speaks of sex, the hungry speaks of food, a person who has no money - about money, and our oligarchs and bankers talk about morality.” Sigmund Freud is attributed to her on entertainment and information sites ("Picabu" Joyreactor, Techinsider, "Today"), In the online collections of aphorisms ("Quotes of famous personalities","Pearls of thought" Socratify.net), in social networks (Facebook, Twitter, "VKontakte" Telegram), on the blog platform "Zen"And on YouTube. This quote is common at English.

Conversations with the patient are one of the most important diagnostic procedures in psychoanalysis, the direction in psychology founded by Sigmund Freud at the end of the 19th century. The development of the method of free associations laid the beginning of psychoanalysis - Practices, in which the patient is allowed freely, without any coercion from the doctor, speak out on the topic proposed by a specialist. According to Freud, any memory that came to mind is important from the point of view of establishing connections between processes flowing in the psyche and understanding the causes of the disease. The founder of psychoanalysis believed that the psychological problems that have settled at the level of the unconscious could be brought out by such conversations. However, this does not mean at all that the choice of topic for the conversation will be dictated by the lack of something-in negative (like positive) emotions, there may be different reasons. In other words, with its own theory, the psychoanalyst is far from perfectly consistent, and even similar in terms of the meaning of the “verified” in the works of the founder of psychoanalysis - neither in the collection of Freud's works on site Libraries of the US Congress, nor on the sites of its museums in Vienna And Londonnor others Online archives.

Separate issues are caused by the use of the word “oligarch” (unless, of course, the translation corresponds to the German Oligarch). In modern terms, this concept was not popular in either Germannor in English language until the mid-1990s, when it became known throughout the world thanks to Russian Big business.

We also note that in English this statement began to spread on the network only In the fall 2021, but in German it practically does not occur at all. At the same time, Aphorism by that time was quite very dispersed by Russian -speaking Resources, which, coupled with the mention of "our oligarchs" suggests its appropriate origin.

Analysis of posts in social networks shows that the spread of the phrase began on December 29, 2012 after its publication on Facebook on page Snob publications. Under the quote there is a link to article From the site of the publication from which it is taken. It's about the blog Gennady Balashov - Ukrainian entrepreneur, former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada and presidential candidate. Balashov, who in 2022 after rows problems With the law He left The country often acts before the audience as a “political psychoanalyst”, as he calls himself. On the 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, speaks of what he lacks. The one who lacks sex speaks of sex, a hungry person talks about food, a person who has no money is about money, and the oligarchs and bankers talk about morality ...

In joint book Gennady Balashov and Polina Kudievskaya “How to become an adventurer? The thoughts of the millionaire ”, published a year before the article and written in the format of conversations with the entrepreneur, the statement attributed to Freud is also there - a slightly edited version has fallen into the blog. In the first chapter, Balashov talks about the political and economic situation in Ukraine, about the huge amounts on the accounts of politicians, about the moralistic statements of the wives of famous bankers and oligarchs - and then, mentioning Freud, develops his idea of ​​the above quote.

Thus, in all likelihood, the statement about sex, hunger, money and oligarchs does not belong to Freud, but to the Ukrainian businessman and politics of Gennady Balashov, who only mentioned the founder of psychoanalysis in the context of his own observation, but did not directly attribute his quote. At the time of publication of the analysis, Balashov did not answer the messages “verified” with a request to comment on our conclusions.

Photo on the cover: social networks

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