The economic unconscious: Towards a psychoanalytic macroeconomics

Abstract

This paper introduces psychoanalytic theory into macroeconomics, arguing that economic crises emerge not from rational miscalculations but from unconscious drives, such as repression, denial, and repetition compulsion. Inspired by Freud and Lacan, we theorize macroeconomic narratives as symbolic structures that repress structural contradictions, which periodically return as crises. Using Turkey’s ‘interest rates cause inflation (or lowering interest rates will lower inflation)’ discourse as empirical material, we demonstrate how collective denial sustains unsustainable booms until symbolic breakdown forces traumatic adjustment. This approach moves beyond behavioural economics’ cognitive biases to examine the libidinal economy underlying aggregate dynamics. We conclude by outlining a research programme for psychoanalytic macroeconomics that treats markets as sites of unconscious desire rather than rational calculation.