Shopping with Freud

by Rachel Bowlby

What is a consumer? Shopping with Freud looks at some of the surprising ways in which the consumer subject appears in a range of writings - from literature to marketing psychology to psychoanalysis.
Rachel Bowlby shows how ideas about consumption are brought to bear on contemporary conceptions of choice in areas that seem far removed from a straightforward matter of shopping. She also shows that arguments and assumptions about the psychology of consumers themselves throw light on genderal questions of human psychology.

Genres: Psychology

144 pages, Paperback

First published September 2, 1993

Reviews

[Hao Guang Tse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although Freud's analysis is painfully out of date, Bowlby does interesting work by relating him to consumer culture and literary texts. The questions of high vs low, taste vs vulgarity are brought up, but Bowlby suggests that those are the wrong questions to ask. Instead, the critic (or consumer) must be first confronted with the problem of his or her desire for both 'culture' and 'kitsch'.

[Jay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Outstanding criticism, if you're in for that sort of thing. It's also 15 years old, which makes it interesting yet dated. One of my friends says "Deconstruction is kinda over, except when it examines literature as a cultural matrix."

How about that? Well, that's what bowlby is up to, and reading Lolita NOT as a morality tale but as a diagram of consumerism at least sparks a new conversation...Not to mention a reconsideration of what's at stake in the Lawrence obscenity trial of 1960. If this interests you (not that it should), check it out