Consumerism and identity: Some psychoanalytical considerations

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.

Keywords:

• commodities
• identity
• socialisation

Notes

¹The relationship between identity and compulsive buying will be discussed separately.

²Kröber (1964, p. 503) goes on: “The abstract identity relation is the most general basis of all identity criteria that help us to recognize that-one-identical-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).

⁴Because 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).

⁵Around 20% of 2–7-year-olds, 46% of 8–12-year-olds, and 56% of 13–17-year-olds have televisions in their bedrooms (Gentile & Walsh, 2002). According to different investigations, estimates indicate that the average American child aged 2–17 years spends 36–44 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).

⁶On 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).

⁷Wachtel (2003, p. 116) describes this issue, citing parents who justify their actions by referring to the “great American mantra, “‘I'm 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.”

⁸Zuberbier, 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).

⁹The effectiveness of gender-specific behavioral patterns offered by television could be verified in controlled experimental settings (see Lukesch, 1988, p. 185).

¹⁰It 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).

¹¹In this context, it becomes conceivable that adolescent girls can exchange their identity when they exchange their clothing (Lurie, 1981, p. 24).

¹²For 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).