The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors

The Isis Papers
In Life Against Death, Norman 0. Brown asserts:
No wonder economic quality is beyond the endurance of modem
democratic man: the house, the car, the bank balance are his
immortality symbols. Or, put another way, if a black man moves next
door, it is not merely that your house diln]nishes in real estate value,
but that you diminish in fullness on the level of visible immortality -
and so you die.
, In his essay "The Ontogenesis of the Interest in Money" (The
Psychology of Gambling, edited by Jon Halliday and Peter Fuller), Sandor
Ferenczi states,
Every psychoanalyst is familiar with the symbolic meaning of money
that was discovered by Freud. Whenever the archaic way of thinking
has prevailed or still prevails, in the old civilizations, in myths,
fairytales, superstitions, in unconscious thinking, in dreams and in
neuroses, money has been brought into the closest connection with
filth!
Ferenczi outlines in some detail his own view of the transformation of
anal-erotic interest into monetarY interest, wherein the individual ends by
being able to possess something of color that has value, is hard (and not
soft), it neither has odor nor causes the person who touches it to be soiled
or dirty.
Edmund Bergler, author of Money and Emotional Conflict, states,
Money neurosis can be found in every country. every culture, every
group of any given society; therefore it cannot be used to prove
anythmg against our system of free enterprise. For money neurosis is
a by-product arising independently of any external system.
In sharp contrast to the above quotations and viewpoints on
Emest Becker, in his work Escape From Evil, relates an African view
money:
Recently I have heard Bantu of the old school say, with reference to
our modem products, the Europeanized evolves, 'These are men of
Paper Money and Gold
lupeto (money)'. They have explained
young men of ours know nothin b to me that the Europeanized
possessing any value ~ g ut money, that it is the only thing
hil .or them Th .
p osophy ...for a philosophy of . ey ... give up their Bantu
ideal, their end and th money. Money is their one and onl
. e supreme ultimat .. Y
actlOns .... Everything has be d e norm ... regulating their
modem universal rule of con:~ct· esltroyed( by this new value, this
· upeto money).
These intriguing remarks can be understood
beneath the surface to comprehe d h only when we probe deep
at the unconscious level of th n w atmoney(papermoney)represents
e symbol - a level f d
suspected by Sigmund Freud T f 11
ar eeper than ever
depth of the Western self-i . o u ~ un~e~tand, one must examine the
N
mage and Its ongm
o c 1 earer statement of the Western .
that expressed by essayist Samuel Lan :If-concept need be found than
Made Twain. In "Skin Deep " o f g om Clemmens, .known to all as
D • ne o a collecti f
amned Human Race, Twain described on. o essays entitled The
commenting on their costwn d a gathenng of people in India
es an complexions as follows: ,
... The company present...made a fme sh
eworks, so to speak · th
ow, an exhibition of human
fir
brilliant color.... ' m e maners of costumes and cominglings of
I could have wished to start a rival e ...
and clothes. It would have b :mition there, of Christian hats
devilish spectacle Th theen a deous exhibition, a thorough!
· en erewould th Y
sa vantage of the white . no ave been the added
did un 1 complex 10 n It ·
p easantcomplexion when itk : lS not an unbearably
?~petition with masses of bro~ps to Itself, but when it comes into
It lS endurable only because we and black. the fact is betrayed that
brown skins are beautiful b t beare ~ed to lt. Nearly all black and
d
ar
k
complexions are massed
u
the
a autiful
w
hi
te skin
· ·
lS rare .... Where
unwholesome, and sometimes :::::-e the whites look bleached out,
down South in the slavery da b fi y ghastly. I could notice this
satin skin of the SouthAfric ~ I e ore the war. The splendid black
very close to perfection. an u us of Durban seemed to me to come
heard from a 19th century Am encan . essay· t 1 .
statement published in th fi
IS • et us now hsten
e mal quarter of the 20th century
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