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International Forum of Psychoanalysis

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Consumerism and identity: Some psychoanalytical considerations

Siegfried Zepf Available online: 23 Sep 2009

To cite this article: Siegfried Zepf (2010): Consumerism and identity: Some psychoanalytical considerations, International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 19:3, 144-154 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08037060903143992

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International Forum of Psychoanalysis. 2010; 19: 144154

Consumerism and identity: Some psychoanalytical considerations

SIEGFRIED ZEPF

Abstract The author examines the role that the buying of commodities plays in the identity formation of the individual. He concludes that it is nowadays no longer the instrumental utility value but a psychical utility value that influences the decision to buy a commodity and that the psychical utility value can have different functions for consumers. In neurotically structured individuals, normal consuming can end in an identity extension where the individual identifies transitively unconscious scenes with those in advertisements, thus making these unconscious scenes conscious in their guise. When individuals are mainly narcissistically structured, an identity of commodities can be found, that is, a non-personal identity formation mediated by commodities in which the individuals identify reflexively with the scenic figures from Internet games, movies, television programs, and commercials.

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Key words: commodities, identity, socialisation

Our fragile sense of self needs support, and this we get by having and possessing things because, to a large degree, we are what we have and possess. (Yi-Fu Tuan, 1980, p. 472; italics in original)

The idea presented in my introductory quotation that our identity is based on what we have is neither just a Chinese wisdom nor time-bound. In the years that followed this quotation, the same issue has been repeated in practically identical wording in the English-speaking world, for instance We are what we have and possess (Belk, 2000, p. 76) and I shop, therefore, I am (Benson, 2000) (see also Lee & Mysyk, 2004; Verma, 2007). Although this issue may be in line with the interests of a marketing-oriented society, it is at first glance quite surprising. We can imagine that individuals can present their personal identity to others by what they have, but how can it be possible that the commodities they buy are in themselves identitygiving? With regard to the problem of identity formation, I will restrict myself to what we understand as buying in the usual sense.1 The concept of identity In view of the fact that the term identity is used in different senses in psychoanalysis, we should perhaps first come to an agreement on this concept

before entering into a discussion. Minolli (2004) gives an overview of its current meanings; it is not the intention to discuss these different meanings within the framework of this paper. In adding the aspect emphasised by Goldberg (1999) that personal identity consists not only of the sense of oneself at the present, but also includes views about who one should be in the future I want to stress that in the following I will use Eriksons definition of identity:
The conscious feeling of having a personal identity is based on two simultaneous observations: the immediate perception of ones selfsameness and continuity in time; and the simultaneous perception of the fact that others recognize ones sameness and continuity. (Erikson, 1946, p. 363; see also Stolorow & Atwood, 1994, p. 236)

Since nothing stays the same over time, it goes without saying that Eriksons term sameness refers to an abstract identity that enables us to recognise the diverse in what is invariant, that is, to recognise ourselves as the identical in all our different aspects. Kro ber (1964/1970, p. 503) describes this issue in a philosophical perspective as follows:
Abstract identity is indispensable for characterizing the one-identical-fact about which one is talking as this

The relationship between identity and compulsive buying will be discussed separately.

Correspondence: Univ. Prof. em. Dr. med. Siegfried Zepf, Narzissenstrae 5, D-66119 Saarbru cken, Germany. Tel: 0049-(0)681-5896188. E-mail: s.zepf@rz.uni-sb.de

ISSN 0803-706X print/ISSN 1651-2324 online # 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/08037060903143992

Consumerism and identity

one-identical-fact. The function of the abstract identity relation is to formulate the universal fact in such a way that it can be recognized as that-one-identical-fact in all its different modes of appearance.2

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Buying and identity If we want to find out how identities are built in the course of buying commodities, we should perhaps first consider how people decide which commodities they want to buy. While it is true that an instrumental value is necessary, the instrumental value of a commodity is no different in its essence from that of another commodity of the same kind. For instance, the instrumental value of a pick-up vehicle from General Motors, a suit produced by Armani or Pierre Cardin, or underwear by Calvin Klein does not differ significantly from that of other pick-ups, other suits or other brands of underwear that are within the same price range. That is to say that the decision of todays buyers to purchase a certain car, a certain suit or cigarettes of a certain brand is not primarily guided by a commoditys instrumental value. To be bought, commodities must create the impression that they cannot only be used instrumentally. This assumption is supported by the fact that, in advertising, the instrumental utility value of a product becomes almost unimportant. Whereas in the past the instrumental value of a product was central to its presentation durability, usefulness, technical perfection nowadays the appeals to the consumer strongly emphasise the experiential value of what is offered. Commodities are no longer offered solely as a means of meeting certain material requirements; they are now advertised to satisfy needs that are independent of their material usability. For psychic reasons, even the instrumental values of commodities has become functionalised. For instance, off-road cars from Toyota or Mitsubishi are without doubt extremely capable all-terrain vehicles, yet this capacity has almost no utility value in our asphalted ambient environment. The instrumental faculty becomes a virtual quality, presented in television commercials in scenes suggesting masculine freedom and boundlessness where this reality no longer exists.
I believe we can agree that if the instrumental values of different products are almost identical and a competing product is not to be bought, the advertising for a particular product has to be directed at the psychic needs of potential buyers. In one way or another, advertisements must appeal to the individuals longings and give the illusion that they can be satisfied by purchasing the advertised commodity.

In accordance with Rapaport, Gill and Shafer (1968), I want to add that these abstract identity relations presuppose conceptual structures. Concepts have an intensional determinant derived from abstraction, a content and an extension, that is, a realm. The content of the concept is the characteristics that are common to the objects subsumed within that concept and therefore falling within its realm.3 This abstract identity relation is illustrated by using the concept table as an example. The realm of this concept includes:
all the tables that exist or can be thought of, irrespective of their material, shape, color, number of legs, or use. The content of the concept table, which may be referred to as tableness is the elusive common characteristic of all tables. Tableness exists nowhere, but still is inherent to all tables. (Rapaport et al., 1968, S. 191).

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Without having the content of the concept table, that is, the abstracted intension tableness at ones disposal, one would be unable to become conscious of a given thing as it is perceived and represented in the form of a presentation for example, a wooden board with four legs as a table. From an epistemological viewpoint, it is obvious that personal identity also requires that individuals have a concept of themselves in which their I-ness or me-ness (Slavin & Kriegman, 1992, p. 205) is abstracted from their different sides and fixed as their intensional determinant. It is by this conceptual structure that aspects of an individual can be conceived as belonging to him- or herself. Akin to the table example of Rapaport et al., individuals could not, without such a conceptually structured version of themselves, recognise themselves as the identical within the different nor could they perceive their different qualities as manifestations of themselves.4

Kro ber (1964, p. 503) goes on: The abstract identity relation is the most general basis of all identity criteria that help us to recognize that-oneidentical-fact in the difference. 3 Every concept has a content: this is the sum total of the characteristics that are common to all the objects subsumed under that concept. Every concept has a realm: these are all the objects that are subsumed under that concept by virtue of having its content in common (Rapaport et al., 1968, p. 191, original emphasis). 4 Because knowledge means to grasp something specific as belonging to something general (Graumann, 1965/1971, p. 36, translated from original), a concept is a recognitional capacity (Price, 1953, p. 277).

That the psychical utility values of commodities refers to illusions follows from the fact that nobody will buy an off-road car or a BMW because he thinks that he acquires liberty or that attractive women

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S. Zepf of todays individuals allow us to accept such a hypothesis. Psychic structure and socialisation of todays customers Whereas in the bourgeois social character of the nineteenth-century, the superego, ego, and id were conflictually related to each other while still being balanced in some way or other, since that time these structures have apparently been increasingly disappearing. Of course, we know that individuals having the qualities of this character type still exist. However, it seems as if the social-psychological character that is increasingly taking shape corresponds, for the most part, to what Adorno (1950/1975, p. 486) described as the manipulative type, Sennett (1998) as the corrosion of character and Riesman and Glazer (1950/2001) as other directed. Marcuse (1964/1969) also described this under the heading one dimensional man and Fromm (1947/2007, 1976/1997) as marketing orientation. Fromms (1976/1997, p. 63) assertion I am what I have. My property constitutes myself and my identity refers to these character types. Obviously, my introductory quotation is thus valid for these individuals. According to Fromm (1976/1997, p. 120), these individuals experience themselves as a commodity, they are free of all individuality(1947/2007, p. 57), adaptively flexible and oriented primarily not on their use value but on their exchange value, that is, the saleability of their labour power. They have a manipulative intelligence . . . without reason . . . as a tool for achieving practical goals at their disposal, they treat humans and things alike, and both are utterly expendable . . . since no deeper tie exists to any of them (1947/2007, p. 122). Fromm further underlines and this is highly pertinent to my line of argument that none has a self, a core, a sense of identity as people in the nineteenth century had at that time (1947/2007, p. 121). It seems to me that the peculiarities of this character type must be related to the societal development towards monopole-capitalistic structures. Without going into detail, I want to point out, together with sociologists such as Klaus Horn (1971), that with this development the family in which the roles of father and mother were relatively precisely defined, and where the fathers dominant personal authority was substantiated by his existence as an independent producer, has become a thing of the past. With the separation of working and residential locations and the progressive work fragmentation in connection

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will throw their underwear into his open convertible. What the commercials promise represents is a symbolic fulfillment of those hidden longings that became unconscious in the past rather than a real fulfillment. In this context, unconscious means that these longings remained unfulfilled in childhood and got warded off yet remained effective in that they surreptitiously asserted themselves in different substitutive formations. It therefore seems reasonable to assume that the decision to buy a product as well as the connection of the buyer to the product is brought about through the connection of commercials with those unconscious scenes. Reminding ourselves that as a rule . . . repression . . . creates a substitutive formation (Freud, 1915, p. 154; italics in original), it also becomes apparent that an extension of ones personal identity occurs in these circumstances. The buyer unconsciously identifies the scenes within which the commodities are advertised in a transitive sense with his or her unconscious wishes, thus using these scenes as their conscious representative. Mediated by the commercials, an unconscious aspect of the buyers self-representation enters into consciousness as a substitutive formation so that in this guise it can be classified as belonging to ones personal identity. Dichter (1960, p. 86) describes this issue as follows:
Individuals project themselves into products. In buying a car they actually buy an extension of their own personality. When they are loyal to a commercial brand, they are loyal to themselves.

Of course, others can also perceive this extension of ones own personality. Dichter makes this clear by referring to investigations that showed that specific products an individual possesses often influence the reactions of other individuals toward him in a specific way (Dichter, 1960, p. 87). One could argue that there is also an identity formation, in that a pre-existing identity is changed. However, the statements about commodity-dependent identity formation quoted earlier do not refer to such a partial extension of ones personality, and Dichter also clearly distinguishes between an extension of personality and buying a personality. Whereas in case of an extension of the personality the individuals project themselves into products, in buying a personality the individuals buy the image, the size of the product and brand (Dichter, 1960, p. 170). If the image of commodities and brands is to determine the identity of individuals, it obviously implies that they have only developed a rudimentary personal identity. In an intermediate step, we now have to find out how far the psychic structures

Consumerism and identity with industrial mass production accompanied by the development of complicated personal-intensive administration structures, the role of fathers has changed from that of independently disposing individuals who determined their own lives and that of their families, to that of employees in a production and reproduction process in which they have become as helpless as their children. Since there is nothing of the manufactured item, nothing of the finished file or of the computer product that identifies who created it, the specific occupational activities of the fathers can no longer influence the children. The working father has become invisible to the child, and the time that he does spend with his children is mainly used for a passive, common purpose. In Germany, working fathers are usually away at work 9 nine hours a day. Of the remaining time, they spend average an of 12 minutes a day on nursing and caring for their children and 20 minutes for other activities with them (Fthenakis, 1985); with children older than 6 years, half of this 20 minutes is spent with them in front of the television (Winn, 1977). However, it is not only the fathers that become invisible: the mothers too have started to fade away. By 1972, almost one in every two mothers with children younger than 6 years had a job (Menschik, 1971/1974), and even when the mothers were at home, the contacts with their children were lessened. Kotelchuck (1976), for instance found that although non-working mothers were in the same room as their child for an average of 9 hours a day, they spent only 1 hour interacting with them. Moreover, various findings indicate that, together with this development, a certain kind of coldness and unrelatedness that was registered by Adorno (1962) more than 45 years ago came to have an increasing influence in the socialisation of the municipal middle classes in particular. In their childs development, todays consumers were obviously dismissed into an object world in which they could not engage in emotional and stable intersubjective relations. Instead, they found themselves surrounded by technological equipment such as televisions,5 computer games,6 automated toys, MP3 players or clockwork dolls, putting them to bed

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and singing goodnight songs.7 They were exposed to an education that was almost scientifically planned, from the well-balanced diet to the equally wellbalanced ratio between reprimand and friendliness, as recommended by the popular psychological literature (Horkheimer, 1949/1959, p. 389). This internal coldness, this loss of emotional intimacy (Entinnerlichung in German; Schelsky, 1954/1960) was accompanied by an increasingly rationally and instrumentally designed treatment of the children in which even love is administered as an ingredient of pedagogical hygiene (Horkheimer, 1949/1959, p. 389). In other words, akin to domestic animals, children were treated increasingly in a pedagogical manner according to an educational plan, that is, they were treated increasingly thing-like. One could argue, however, that this kind of a familial socialisation becomes similar to early child care as practised in care centers6 and that recent investigations into the consequences of this caring for instance, the longitudinal study of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) (e.g. Belsky, Lowe Vandell, Burchinal, Clarke-Stewart & Tresch Owen., 2007), which is frequently quoted as evidence have shown no negative influence on the children. However, I have serious doubts as to whether the outcomes of such studies qualify as evidence for the harmlessness of this type of care and for its effect on familial socialisation. In this study, which was carried out in the USA from 1991 to 2003, neither the internal validity nor the representativeness and external validity were ensured. At the onset of the study, only 109 out of the total sample of 1364 children that is, 8% had been cared for in early child day-care before their 14th month of life, and at the last check-up, at the age of 12, a complete dataset was available for only 23 of these children. I have presented the consequences for the development of individuals inner lives elsewhere in detail (e.g. Zepf, 1993, 1994). In short, they can be summarised as follows. If pleasurable mutuality, parental spontaneity, and empathic care dissolve into a technical service station in which the parents might still be there as figures but their presence as persons has faded into the shadow, the avoidance of

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Around 20% of 27-year-olds, 46% of 812-year-olds, and 56% of 1317year-olds have televisions in their bedrooms (Gentile & Walsh, 2002). According to different investigations, estimates indicate that the average American child aged 217 years spends 3644 hours a week viewing television, so by age 16 this person has spent 15,000 hours in front of a television and witnessed up to 640,000 commercials (Gentile & Walsh, 2002; Gorney, 1981). 6 On average, 15-year old children spent 140 minutes every day playing computer games, preferring the online spectacle World of Warcraft (Der Spiegel Nr. 12, March 1, 2009, p. 48).

Wachtel (2003, p. 116) describes this issue, citing parents who justify their actions by referring to the great American mantra, Im doing this for my family, working too many hours, tearing their children out of schools and friendship groups to move to a bigger home or to pursue a promotion or a better-paying job in another city. Wachtel comments that instead of providing a better life for the children, in reality these very choices, which deprive children of the things that really matter in their lives, are likely to lead these children to turn to material goods for comfort, to define their needs not in interpersonal or experiential terms but in terms of . . . the right material objects.

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S. Zepf personal identity,5 however, constitutes itself in specific interactions with specific personal objects by way of fighting against and identifying with the parents demands. Personal identity has an historic perspective and needs to be recognised and appreciated by others. It allows individuals to experience themselves as the center of their needs and moral concepts registered in their superego. Growing up as nobodys children (Mitscherlich, 1946/1967, p. 601, translated from original) so to speak, there is a lack of exactly these interactions with persons in which a personal identity can be formed and be appreciated by others. More or less isolated, the child stands besides its parents, who throw toys into the childs room, then close the door but remain outside. Thus the cornerstone of another, non-personal identity is laid down. This non-personal identity starts to become concrete via identifications with the heroes in movies, television programs,9 comics or Internet and computer games. Although these individuals distil their narcissistic identity out of the virtual reality of their play figures and understand their personal attributes as manifestations of their abstract identity as defined by things thus becoming things themselves, the fear of losing the love of objects remains. In the reality of their life as adults, they remain in need of continuous and admiring love addressed at their vanity because it is the grandiose self that helps to conceal this fear. Since the children live as adults also in a capitalistic society whose structure demands that in business life everybody competes with everybody else, that is, in which everybody is virtually an enemy of others and in which the individuals mutually equate themselves to commodities by reducing themselves to their utility value as they would do with any other commodity. It therefore seems rather doubtful as to whether other individuals would applaud their narcissistic grandiosity in their later life. Furthermore, if Bellak (1961/1967, pp. 21517), Feder (1980, p. 165), Fuerstein (1989, p. 168), Modell (1978, p. 172), and Simons (1990, p. 20) are correct in calling this period of time the age of narcissism, it becomes even more unlikely that their narcissistic grandiosity will be approved by others who are also self-centered and in need of the same approvals. It seems more likely that, in their relations with other individuals, they mostly experience the same instrumental thing-like treatment that they suffered in childhood.

unpleasure becomes much more important to the child than the longing for pleasurable interactions. Socialisation is no longer associated with the primacy of pleasurable instinctual satisfaction but gets subsumed under the narcissistic dictate of avoiding unpleasure. There are many inanimate toys available that can be utilised to avoid unpleasure having exactly those characteristics missing from the childs personal relationships. They are constantly available, they show no activity of their own, and they can counter the childs interests as little as the child can counter its parents interests. If the child succeeds in dealing with these things to lessen unpleasurable tensions by its own activities, narcissistic functional pleasure is to some extent experienced (e.g. Fenichel, 1945, p. 45; Zepf & Zepf, 2008). This experience emerges as a reaction to the unpleasure caused by the absence of the parents and wards off a relationship with them in which the child experiences itself as insufficiently loved and cared for. If interactions with things dominate over interactions with people, a selfidealisation will be the result. This self-idealisation is the outcome of an identification with the forms of action used by our cultural industry to equip the childrens play figures in Internet games such Counter-Strike and science-fiction toys like Ghostbusters, The Mask, Transformers, and Masters of the Universe, and in which they acquire their virtual omnipotence.8 These Internet games and such toys are largely built around action themes in which everything seems feasible, the biggest obstacles can be overcome by a technical or magical superiority, and the victorious hero is always celebrated. Mediated by this self-idealisation, the inner withdrawal from personal objects is accompanied by turning to the material world outside in which the differences between persons and things are suspended. Both get similarly functionalised for the same reason to stabilise the consumers narcissistic vanity in order to avoid unpleasure. Identity and commodities To start with, I would like to re-emphasise that this self-idealisation is not a direct consequence of personal interactions that occur as an outcome of an identification with idealised parents. This would imply that the child has already established a personal identity whose aspects could then be idealised. Such a

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Zuberbier, managing director of an advertising agency, is convinced that more and more children and teenagers will obtain their self-esteem from consumption (quoted in Der Spiegel Nr. 50, 1993, p. 80).

The effectiveness of gender-specific behavioral patterns offered by television could be verified in controlled experimental settings (see Lukesch, 1988, p. 185).

Consumerism and identity For these individuals, the past recurs in the present and is only altered insignificantly. Just as their parental figures treated them as thing-like, so these individuals treat their fellow humans in the same way. The difference from their past lies only in that the individuals have developed into the same figures they have experienced in their past. They became those unrelated figures who treat other individuals in the same way as they were (and are) treated, and live their lives according to the maxim Me-Myself-and-I. It is this principle of life that seems to protect individuals from being aware that they have been left alone and have become helpless. The individuals protection, however, depends on whether they can manage to convince themselves of their narcissistic omnipotence again and again. For in so doing, society offers a field: the field of consumption. In the same way as they verified their narcissistic omnipotence in the past by handling their toys at their own discretion, with the prerequisite of sufficient financial assets they can now act in this field as they see fit. In this condition, the individuals encounter advertisements and activate their warded-off longings for love and approval from other persons. Advertisements, as Haug (1964/1971, p. 62, translated from original) states, define what is to be loved, thus they manipulate the latent fear of losing love by suggesting that this fear can be minimised by buying a certain product. They allude to defence formation suggesting a stabilisation of their narcissistic grandiosity the off-road car promising boundless freedom, or the Marlboro Man conveying the impression that he could manage the most dangerous of situations without any problems. They also touch on the warded-off feelings by pretending that most of their secret longings can be satisfied the boyfriend who is adored by the guests because he prepared a certain ready-to-serve meal, the male driving a BMW cabriolet whose Campari or jeans engineered by Lewis evoke the love of females, making them weak and wanting nothing more than the car driver. As a result of buying commodities presented in the scenarios of commercials that identify fears to be avoided, the individuals confirm their grandiosity because they prove to themselves that they have the power to fulfil their innermost desires by the selection of a specific type of merchandise (Dichter, 1960, p. 170). Yet as adults, individuals not only verify their grandiosity in buying, but also modify the living versions of the life forms transmitted via television, comics, toys, the Internet, and computer games into their childs room according to the patterns offered to them by admired figures in movies, television

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programs, and Internet games or commercials. In identifying reflexively and unconsciously with the scenic figures of the commercials, which of course are also perceived and admired by others, it is obvious that the individuals choose their commodities according to the ideas that others have about admirable figures so that by the possession of these commodities they acquire an identity that is admired by others.10 On closer scrutiny, it seems as if these individuals buy synthetic instant-identity kits like ready-toserve-meals. Since their identity is without history except for their self-idealisation, and since it remains important only for keeping up the idealisation that they are admired and not what is admired, it is understandable that these individuals do not have the same durable ties with their commodities that neurotic characters do. As assumed by Fromm (1976/1997, p. 121), these individuals can change their concrete identity like a chameleon according to the principle I am as you desire me and are able to present themselves in conformity with the demands of the market in a personal facade that is, as Fromm suspected, beneficial for selling their labour power. However, these individuals not only understand themselves as commodities in dealing with their labour power, but also understand themselves and others as things. Since things are seen as commodities in our society, human relations now becomes subject to a barter system. Akin to buying a commodity for which utility value is a necessary prerequisite, their love relationships as well the sexuality of their partners has such a utility value. Yet both partners not only define the other one as a commodity, but also turn themselves into commodities. They use their own sexuality in the same way as they use the sexuality of their partner, namely as a service. Its utility value consists of its exchange value, that is, in that it can be exchanged for the utility value of the sexuality of their partner. Thereby the experience that others have need for ones own sexuality reduces the latent fear of loss of love, thus adding another secret and more or less unconscious exchange value to the experience. As is generally the case in buying commodities, in these relations as well the utility value is not the single criterion for entering into the act of exchange. For both partners, the utility value of the others sexuality is as non-specific as that of commodities in

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It seems as if this already starts in childhood. For instance, Monika Knobloch, an educator of preschool children, states: Whoever has nothing will not be visited, and Rolofs, director of a comprehensive school, remarks that the possession of certain toys and clothing became virtually a fateful question (quoted in Der Spiegel Nr. 50, 1993, p. 80, 84f, translated from original).

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S. Zepf Again, I want to emphasise that individuals do not present their personal identity by the particular set of commodities they own. Similar to the children that did not present themselves in their play figures but whose play figures presented themselves in the childrens behavioral characteristics, it is not the individuals that present themselves in their commodities but the commodities that present themselves through the individuals. Their personality becomes the form of their presentation, and the distinctive characteristic of an individual is something that is abstracted from different plastic figures and reduced to self-idealisation. In fact, for those individuals, the statements made by Dichter and by Ciskszentmihalyi hold true, namely that the commodities they own or wished to own, decisively influenced their pattern of behaviour (Dichter, 1960, p. 87)11 and that the objects [they] possess and consume are . . . wanted because . . . they tell [them] things about [themselves] that [they] need to hear (Ciskszentmihalyi, 1982, p. 5). In other words, the individuals not only buy external equipment, but also an internal equipment (Horn, 1969, p. 345, translated from original) that is mediated by commodities or their commercials. They acquire what Horn (1969, p. 342, translated from original) terms an identity of commodities (1969, p. 342, translated from original). They buy the soul living in the things (Dichter, 1960, p. 85), find themselves in their commodities, their automobile, hi-fi set . . . kitchen equipment (Marcuse, 1964/1969, p. 24), and can be admired by others on account of the commodities they own. Before finishing this section, I would like to briefly consider the consequences that can occur if the economic equipment of these individuals for example, when they are teenagers does not allow the stabilisation of their grandiose self via the consumption of commodities. In the search for a confirmation of ones narcissistic identity, it is without doubt that these individuals are forced back into relations with other people because of the loss of this prospect. Therein, however, they do not experience the necessary admiration as a reinforcement of identity, so they must find other ways to satisfy their narcissistic needs in this connection. Since other people do not adequately acknowledge their difference from other people, they themselves must make these differences evident. This can be done by humiliating others, by declaring them as inferior, and by treating them as such.

the same price range. If one wants to remain competitive in the market, individuals must individualise their own sexuality; that is, in improving its exchange value, the utility value of their service has to be specialised. As with the economic exchange of commodities, this is also only possible in combination with other commodities. This is probably the reason why these individuals equip themselves with attributes declared as virile or feminine such as cosmetics, perfumes, sexy underwear, and love techniques, with which the commercials claim that they can make someone be loved and desired. Driven by their (unconscious) longing to be loved by another person, however, instead of what is secretly longed for, they merely get the smell of a perfume, the odour of an intimate spray, the sight of tigerprinted underwear or tightly designed bras and slips in a scenario of a healthy sex life (Adorno, 1955/ 1968, p. 112). Their actions are copied from movies, television, and commercials where, in proving their quicksilver liveliness and overpowering energy (Adorno, 1944/1985, p. 70), they do physical exercises in technical figures on each other. It is not only a healthy sex life, but also the exchange of feelings between these thing-like individuals that changes into a barter type of relationship. This relationship regulates itself by the latent fear of losing either the object or the objects love according to the principle Ill show you my feelings (and you show me your feelings) so that you (or I) will not leave our relationship. These feelings are neither addressed towards a specific person nor do they come from a specific person; they are merely a functional means used for egoistic purposes. What applies to ones own sexuality applies also to ones own feelings. Their utility value consists in their exchange value; that is, in that they can be exchanged for a reduction in the latent fear of the loss of love, and the expressions of feeling are aimed at realising this exchange value. Of course, since this fear is unconscious, it cannot lead to a lasting reduction in fear. It is rather that the individuals feel forced to remain in this exchange process and to mutually convince themselves by their expressions of feeling over and over again that the other will not leave the relationship. Therefore it is relatively unimportant whether or not one actually experiences these feelings. It is only important that one shows ones feelings to the other, so that todays relationships seem to be much more emotional than in the past, although they may well be considerably colder and more instrumentalised. Since these relationships are neither based on emotions that refer to persons nor able to satisfy unfulfilled childhood wishes, it is understandable that such relationships are under permanent threat of falling apart.

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In this context, it becomes conceivable that adolescent girls can exchange their identity when they exchange their clothing (Lurie, 1981, p. 24).

Consumerism and identity In this application, the so-called happy slapping phenomenon has become a recent occurrence. This term denotes an assault, mostly by teenagers, on an unsuspecting victim whereby the offenders humiliate and beat the victim, sometimes to unconsciousness and even death, and then run off without concern for the victim. These assaults are usually recorded by an accomplice with a mobile phone camera. The videos are then posted on the Internet and can also be distributed by sending them to other mobile phones. These assaults are carried out exactly for the reason of disseminating the video material to others. The medium, Durrer (2006, p. 22, translated from original) states, is no longer used only a means for documentation; in this case it is also starting point and integral part of the aggressiveness. This aggressive behavior is particularly appropriate for convincing oneself of ones own grandiosity. It helps to restore ones fragile narcissism in a twofold sense: aggressive behavior is accompanied by an extraordinarily high degree of narcissistic enjoyment, owing to its presenting the ego with a fulfilment of the latters old wishes form omnipotence (Freud, 1930, p. 121), and also it now centres the attention of those who had refused to confirm ones narcissistic grandiosity towards oneself. The frequency of this new form of violence is not clear. Practitioners from schools, youth welfare, and the police assume that a high number of unrecorded cases are taking place. However, an increase in such cases is believed to be occurring in European countries and in the USA, particularly in schools in California. A study of 1200 teenagers aged between 12 and 19 years, representative of the 7 million teenagers of that age in Germany, by the Medienpa dagogischen Forschungsverbundes Su dwest (2007) shows that 29% of teenagers owning a mobile phone were aware of the fact that these assaults were recorded with mobile phones and that about 22% had already taken part in a happy slapping that had been filmed. With an increase of 12% compared with 2006, the number of these assaults has almost doubled. In a happy slapping incident, persons are treated like things. The reduction of the victim to a scenic figure in a video clip12 shows rather convincingly the parallels between persons and virtual figures in the Internets killer games. This parity is presumably the reason why aggression can appear as undisguised in interactions with persons when it manifests itself in

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these killer games, and also explains why there is no remorse or sympathy for the victim. Several other findings (see Zepf, 1994) substantiate the idea that this aggressive behavior crops up when individuals from whom the accessories necessary for reinforcing their identity are withheld let themselves go with what remains of their identity. Remembering Spitzs (1965, p. 300) statement that infants without love . . . will end as adults full of hate, it becomes obvious what an identity mediated by commodities still offers protection against. Conclusion The functions that consumerism provides for the identity of consumers obviously depends on their psychic structure. Buying is usually the means by which individuals acquire the instrumental value of a commodity, and its psychical utility value can fulfil two different functions. In case of mainly neurotically structured characters, typified by a specific relation of instinct and defence, the scenic figures presented in movies, television programs, Internet games, and commercials can function as conscious manifestations of unconscious wishes. Since they enter into consciousness as these substitutive formations, they are understood in their guise as belonging to ones personal identity. The consequence is a partial, albeit only seeming extension of the preexisting personal identity. If there are narcissistic character structures in which a personal identity could develop only rudimentarily, commodities themselves seem to build identities. As adults, these individuals continue to unfold the non-personal identity that was laid down in their childhood by identifying themselves reflexively with virtual figures presented in movies, Internet games, television programs, and commercials. To what extent buying is effective in enlarging or building identities cannot be known for sure. However, it seems to me that the identity-building quality of consuming is becoming more and more dominant. It is not only the idea that we live in the age of narcissism that points to the notion that a lack of personal identity characterises the majority of todays consumers. Considering that the family is the psychological agency of society (Fromm, 1932/1970, p. 117; italics in original) in that the socially necessary character structures are produced within it, this assumption is also supported by the fact that the social character described by Fromm as marketing-oriented is essentially in agreement with the demands that todays capitalism makes on its participants. For example, according to Sennett (1998), the flexible capitalism of today requires individuals, who have no long-term relationships with anything, to

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For instance, shouting This is YouTube material!, a 27-year-old British man urinated on a woman who had collapsed on the street. He also doused her with a bucket of water and covered her with shaving foam (BBC News, 2007).

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S. Zepf the nature of these resources, their availability for disposal is limited. Since preferences . . . are not to change substantially over the course of time (1976, p. 5), the utility function can only be maximised subject to limited resources (1976, p. 283), and Becker shows quite convincingly that the level of benefit is defined by its ratio to the invested resources in the same way as a rate of profit is defined by the ratio of the capital invested in the production of commodities to the revenue achieved by selling them. This also holds true for engaging in love relationships. According to this economic approach, a person decides to engage himself in such a relationship when the utility expected from it exceeds what is expected from remaining single or from a further search for a more suitable mate. Similarly, a person terminates his or her love relationship when the utility anticipated from becoming single or having a love relationship with someone else exceeds the loss in utility from separation. The strict orientation of the inner life of this character type at utility maximisation not only reflects the increasing socialisation of man, but also lets us recognise that, as Adorno (1955/1968, p. 95) noted more than 50 years ago, the thoroughly liberal and individualistic concept of psychology tends increasingly to forfeit its meaning. In these circumstances, psychological foundations of human behavior are nothing more than a rationalising glossing over. In searching for the love missing in their childhood years, these individuals find themselves in likenesses of the market prepared as living beings, that is, in its capitalised personifications in which they conjointly exist according to the existing laws of the market. If they start to search for their self-identities, they find themselves in the same position as Peer Gynt. They too will discover that they are like an onion and, as with Peer Gynt, one layer after another can be peeled off without finding a core. Their identities become labels used for an internal flat-sharing community of differing and interchangeable plastic figures as presented in movies, television programs, and commercials. These individuals breathe their life into these scenic figures prefabricated as kinds of experiential sets by our consciousness-industry (Enzensberger, 1962, p. 10) and experience their life in the guise of these plastic figures. Translated by Dave Turnbull, Astrotech, Services, Ontario, Canada.

be open to change on short notice. In his view, their particular occupational activity has to be just as unimportant and disposable as their places of residence, their friends or their families. Thus, individuals are expected to subordinate everything to the actual necessities of business life, to continually take risks, to be convinced that they are able to adjust themselves to any new conditions, and to have the capacity to let go of the past and to accept fragmentation (1998, p. 63), that is, to be selfidealised individuals without a personal identity. Since language is a certain interindividually accepted manner of interpreting the world and since an indiscriminate treatment of persons and material objects, which goes along with a lack of personal identity, can also be found on a linguistic level, both of these issues also point to the fact that a personal identity developed to only a rudimentary level has become a rather general phenomenon. I will give some few examples (see also Sigusch, 1997) of this linguistic indifference. For instance, we can read in our newspapers such statements as: an American football half-back did not yet have the necessary working temperature, a shot-putter exploded, after three football games a week the players tank was empty, the human undercarriage had to be adopted to the conditions in Atlanta, the car reacted sensitively, an oil company announced important information for your car, the stock market was pleased, a man advertised for a woman not older than construction year 1971. In further examples, another person who termed himself 31, 57, 65 looked for a blond pony-tail, on a beer-mat was printed a sympathetic beer, a house is announced by a label I am for sale, an architect termed a house autistic, in a catalogue for an exhibition the organiser wrote, We should not forget that many of the drawings have been exposed to persecution, and in natural sciences cells commit suicide, genes are intelligent, chains of molecules read each other correctly or wrongly, and enzymatic reactions are reasonable. Gary S. Becker was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1992 after he extended economic analysis into the field of human relationships and behavior. If one regards the above character type in the light of his reflections, this type proves to be virtually paradigmatic for a behavior that is, even in the private sphere, no longer psychologically motivated but essentially subject to an economic calculation. As described and empirically verified by Becker (1976, p. 14) in different investigations, behavior can now be adequately explained if it is viewed as involving participants who maximize their utility from a stable set of preferences. For this maximisation to take place, resources such as time, money, and abilities are invested, and due to

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S. Zepf Author Univ. Prof. em. Siegfried Zepf, MD, is former director of the Institute of Psychoanalysis, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatic Medicine, University of Saarland (Germany) and a training analyst in the DPG and DGPT. He has published numerous works on epistemological, psychosomatic, sociopsychological, and psychoanalytic topics. The most recent of these are: Allgemeine psychoanalytische Neurosenlehre, Psychosomatik und Sozialpsychologie. Gieen: Psychosozial-Verlag (2006); Attachment theory and psychoanalysis some remarks from an epistemological and from a Freudian viewpoint. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 87, 152948 (2006); Freuds concept of psychical reality reconsidered, Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis, 14, 197211 (2006); The relationship of the unconscious and consciousness a similarity between psychoanalysis and historical materialism. Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society, 12, 10523 (2007); Naturalistic studies of psychoanalytical treatments: some epistemological and methodological remarks. Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review, 31, 5060 (2008); Autism in infancy: The psychodynamics from a Freudian viewpoint. Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis, 16, 194222 (2008, co-author: Zepf, F.D.). Some thoughts on empathy and countertransference. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 56, 74168 (2008, co-author: Hartmann, S.); Trauma and traumatic neurosis Freuds concepts revisited. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 89, 33153 (2008, co-author: Zepf, F. D.); The concept of functional pleasure should it be abandoned? International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 17, 14857 (2008, co-author: Zepf, F.D.); Pop concerts a symbol and an instrumentalization of inexpressible experiences? Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society, 13, 27998 (2008).

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