Consumerism and Identity: Some Psychoanalytic Considerations

Author: Siegfried Zepf
Year: 2010 (International Forum of Psychoanalysis 19: 144–154)
Source type: article (accompanied by commentary essay in this raw file elaborating the theory)
Raw file: raw/articles/zepf-2010-consumerism-and-identity.md

Summary

This source applies psychoanalytic concepts — drawn from Siegfried Zepf's journal article "Consumerism and Identity" (2010) and elaborated in the accompanying commentary — to the analysis of consumption and identity formation. Its central thesis is that consumption is increasingly central to meaning-making and the construction of identity: people buy not only for utility but for the symbolic meanings objects carry, pursuing "ideal consumer objects" that enact an "ego project" of identity, filling the void of the decentred, "lacking" subject (a Lacanian objet petit a in perpetual pursuit).

Key Claims

• Consumer identity: "To what extent buying is effective in enlarging or building identities cannot be known for sure. However... the identity-building quality of consuming is becoming more and more dominant." Identity is formed by what one has and possesses, increasingly separated from utility.
• The ego project: we consume "not only to satisfy our own biological instinctual needs, but to carry out an 'ego project' of identity formation" — symbolic consumption makes "individual identity... increasingly inseparable from consumerism." Choice, avoidance, and rejection of objects all shape identity.
• The desiring subject: drawing on Freud's narcissism/ego-ideal and Lacan's mirror stage and objet petit a, the postmodern subject is "an empty 'no self' filled with nothingness," driven by lack, "endlessly... generating substitutive objects" that never satisfy ("the finding of an object is in fact a refinding of it," Freud).
• Psychoanalytic marketing: the descendant of Bernays and Dichter, advertising exploits unconscious desire, "offered consumers moral permission to embrace sex and consumption"; psychoanalytic market research is integral to consumer capitalism.
• Cultural critique: with the decline of "sweeping cultural ideals and moral certainties" (Gabriel & Lang) and the rise of narcissism (Lasch), consumerism "promises to fill the void in our lives"; traditional ego-ideals are displaced onto an imaginary world of objects.
• Postmodern conclusion: consumerism is "a social, cultural and economic process of endlessly pursuing and choosing meaningful objects," bridging economic/cultural institutions and "discourses of the self."

Connections

Concepts: Consumerism · Everyday Life · Ideology
Authors: John Chase · Michel de Certeau (consumption as meaning)
Related source notes: The Role of Consumerism in American Architecture (Chase) · The Practice of Everyday Life (de Certeau) · The Revolution of Everyday Life (Vaneigem)

Direct Quotes

"The identity-building quality of consuming is becoming more and more dominant." (Zepf, 2010, p. 151)

"We not only consume products to satisfy our own biological instinctual needs, but to carry out an 'ego project' of identity formation."

"It is the sum total of the subject's past experiences, unmet needs, ideal wish fulfilling fantasies, aspirations and hopes which drive the subject to find an object to fill the void and create a sense of completeness and identity." (Commentary conclusion)

Open Questions

• Does the psychoanalytic account of consumption-as-identity-ground ("we are what we have") complement or contradict the more structural/discursive critiques of consumerism (Sklair's culture-ideology of consumerism, de Certeau's tactical consumption) in Geoffrey's framework?