Phantasy knotted around money as a drive derivative organizes unconscious modes of family survival. Social, historical, political, and economic considerations also influence the conscious and unconscious establishment of alliances, pacts, agreements, and rules to govern family life. Is the re-drafting of laws enough to solve the permanent difficulties of equivalence when couples and families talk about money and assets?

In this episode we will listen to Paulina Zukerman’s paper: “Couples and Families: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Money Issues”, in which she considers unconscious stipulations to be an illusory attempt to lessen the uncertainty of otherness. She draws references to Freud, Isidoro Berenstein and René Kaës.

Paulina Zukerman holds a PhD and is a full member and training analyst at the Psychoanalytic Association of Buenos Aires. She is the director and tenured professor for the Master’s Degree Program on Family and Couples at the University Institute of Mental Health of the Buenos Aires Psychoanalytic Association and in Maringa, Brazil. She has published in several psychoanalytic reviews and works in private practice in Buenos Aires.

Link to the paper https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dCAV8MAr-v8unphRsv1psnjRUF-DcR2i/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=112457875385152358388&rtpof=true&sd=true

This paper is also available in Spanish

Paulina Zukerman has also published articles in psychoanalytic journals:

“Apuntes para una psicopatologia de la economia cotidiana: El dinero en la clínica vincular” (2020): “Notes for a psychopathology of day-to-day home economics: money in clinical practice with linked patients.” Revista de Psicoanálisis de Guadalajara, N° 14, México.

“Intimidad en los vínculos familiares. Reflexiones a partir de diversas investigaciones”. (2017) “Intimacy in family links”: IPA Congress. Revista Psicoanálisis. Vol. XXXIX, N° 1-2.

“Sull'assimmetría nei patti e accordi familiari.” Family pacts and agreements: 

about asymmetry”: Revista de la Societá Italiana di Psicoterapia Psicoanalítica (S.I.P.P.)(2006).

Zukerman PhD thesis, University of Buenos Aires, 2015: “Conceptual analysis of the relationship between unconscious pacts and agreements and the circulation of money in families and couples”.

The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434, Jan van Eyck. Courtesy National Gallery, London.