International Forum of Psychoanalysis

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Consumerism and identity: Some psychoanalytical

considerations

Siegfried Zepf

To cite this article: Siegfried Zepf (2010) Consumerism and identity: Some
psychoanalytical considerations, International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 19:3, 144-154, DOI:
10.1080/08037060903143992

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/08037060903143992

Published online: 23 Sep 2009.

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International Forum of Psychoanalysis. 2010; 19: 144
154

Consumerism and identity: Some psychoanalytical considerations

SIEGFRIED ZEPF

Abstract
The author examines the role that the buying of commodities plays in the identity formation of the individual. He concludes
that it is nowadays no longer the instrumental utility value but a psychical utility value that influences the decision to buy a
commodity and that the psychical utility value can have different functions for consumers. In neurotically structured
individuals, normal consuming can end in an identity extension where the individual identifies transitively unconscious
scenes with those in advertisements, thus making these unconscious scenes conscious in their guise. When individuals are
mainly narcissistically structured, an ‘‘identity of commodities’’ can be found, that is, a non-personal identity formation
mediated by commodities in which the individuals identify reflexively with the scenic figures from Internet games, movies,
television programs, and commercials.

Key words: commodities, identity, socialisation

Our fragile sense of self needs support, and this we get by
having and possessing things because, to a large degree,
we are what we have and possess. (Yi-Fu Tuan, 1980,
p. 472; italics in original)
The idea presented in my introductory quotation

that our identity is based on what we have
is neither
just a Chinese wisdom nor time-bound. In the years
that followed this quotation, the same issue has been
repeated in practically identical wording in the
English-speaking world, for instance ‘‘We are what
we have and possess’’ (Belk, 2000, p. 76) and
‘‘I shop, therefore, I am’’ (Benson, 2000) (see also
Lee & Mysyk, 2004; Verma, 2007).
Although this issue may be in line with the
interests of a marketing-oriented society, it is at first
glance quite surprising. We can imagine that indivi-
duals can present their personal identity to others by
what they have, but how can it be possible that the
commodities they buy are in themselves identity-
giving? With regard to the problem of identity
formation, I will restrict myself to what we under-
stand as buying in the usual sense.1
The concept of identity
In view of the fact that the term ‘‘identity’’ is used
in different senses in psychoanalysis, we should
perhaps first come to an agreement on this concept
before entering into a discussion. Minolli (2004)
gives an overview of its current meanings; it is not
the intention to discuss these different meanings
within the framework of this paper. In adding the
aspect emphasised by Goldberg (1999)
that
personal identity consists not only of the sense of
oneself at the present, but also includes views about
who one should be in the future
I want to stress
that in the following I will use Erikson’s definition of
identity:
The conscious feeling of having a personal identity is
based on two simultaneous observations: the immediate
perception of one’s selfsameness and continuity in time;
and the simultaneous perception of the fact that others
recognize one’s sameness and continuity. (Erikson, 1946,
p. 363; see also Stolorow & Atwood, 1994, p. 236)
Since nothing stays the same over time, it goes
without saying that Erikson’s term ‘‘sameness’’
refers to an abstract identity that enables us to
recognise the diverse in what is invariant, that is, to
recognise ourselves as the identical in all our
different aspects. Kröber (1964/1970, p. 503) de-
scribes this issue in a philosophical perspective as
follows:
Abstract identity is indispensable for characterizing the
one-identical-fact about which one is talking as this

1
The relationship between identity and compulsive buying will be
discussed separately.

Correspondence: Univ. Prof. em. Dr. med. Siegfried Zepf, Narzissenstraße 5, D-66119 Saarbrücken, Germany. Tel: 0049-(0)681-5896188. E-mail:
s.zepf@rz.uni-sb.de

ISSN 0803-706X print/ISSN 1651-2324 online # 2010 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/08037060903143992

one-identical-fact. The function of the abstract identity
relation is to formulate the universal fact in such a way
that it can be recognized as that-one-identical-fact in all
its different modes of appearance.2
In accordance with Rapaport, Gill and Shafer
(1968), I want to add that these abstract identity
relations presuppose conceptual structures. Con-
cepts have an intensional determinant derived from
abstraction, a content and an extension, that is, a
realm. The content of the concept is the character-
istics that are common to the objects subsumed
within that concept and therefore falling within its
realm.3 This abstract identity relation is illustrated
by using the concept ‘‘table’’ as an example. The
realm of this concept includes:
all the tables that exist or can be thought of, irrespective
of their material, shape, color, number of legs, or use.
The content of the concept ‘‘table’’, which may be
referred to as ‘‘tableness’’ is the elusive common char-
acteristic of all tables. ‘‘Tableness’’ exists nowhere, but
still is inherent to all tables. (Rapaport et al., 1968, S.
191).
Without having the content of the concept ‘‘table,’’
that is, the abstracted intension ‘‘tableness’’ at one’s
disposal, one would be unable to become conscious
of a given thing as it is perceived and represented in
the form of a presentation
for example, a wooden
board with four legs
as a table.
From an epistemological viewpoint, it is obvious
that personal identity also requires that individuals
have a concept of themselves in which their ‘‘‘I-ness’
or ‘me-ness’’’ (Slavin & Kriegman, 1992, p. 205)
is abstracted from their different sides and fixed as
their intensional determinant. It is by this conceptual
structure that aspects of an individual can be
conceived as belonging to him- or herself. Akin to
the table example of Rapaport et al., individuals
could not, without such a conceptually structured
version of themselves, recognise themselves as the
identical within the different nor could they perceive
their different qualities as manifestations of them-
selves.4
2
Kröber (1964, p. 503) goes on: ‘‘The abstract identity relation is the most
general basis of all identity criteria that help us to recognize that-one-
identical-fact in the difference.’’
3
‘‘Every concept has a content: this is the sum total of the characteristics
that are common to all the objects subsumed under that concept. Every
concept has a realm: these are all the objects that are subsumed under that
concept by virtue of having its content in common’’ (Rapaport et al.,
1968, p. 191, original emphasis).
4
Because knowledge ‘‘means to grasp something specific as belonging to
something general’’ (Graumann, 1965/1971, p. 36, translated from
original), a concept is a ‘‘recognitional capacity’’ (Price, 1953, p. 277).
Consumerism and identity 145
Buying and identity
If we want to find out how identities are built in the
course of buying commodities, we should perhaps
first consider how people decide which commod-
ities they want to buy. While it is true that an
instrumental value is necessary, the instrumental
value of a commodity is no different in its essence
from that of another commodity of the same kind.
For instance, the instrumental value of a pick-up
vehicle from General Motors, a suit produced by
Armani or Pierre Cardin, or underwear by Calvin
Klein does not differ significantly from that of other
pick-ups, other suits or other brands of underwear
that are within the same price range. That is to say
that the decision of today’s buyers to purchase a
certain car, a certain suit or cigarettes of a certain
brand is not primarily guided by a commodity’s
instrumental value. To be bought, commodities
must create the impression that they cannot only
be used instrumentally.
This assumption is supported by the fact that, in
advertising, the instrumental utility value of a
product becomes almost unimportant. Whereas in
the past the instrumental value of a product was
central to its presentation
durability, usefulness,
technical perfection
nowadays the appeals to the
consumer strongly emphasise the experiential value
of what is offered. Commodities are no longer
offered solely as a means of meeting certain material
requirements; they are now advertised to satisfy
needs that are independent of their material usabil-
ity. For psychic reasons, even the instrumental values
of commodities has become functionalised. For
instance, off-road cars from Toyota or Mitsubishi
are without doubt extremely capable all-terrain
vehicles, yet this capacity has almost no utility value
in our asphalted ambient environment. The instru-
mental faculty becomes a virtual quality, presented
in television commercials in scenes suggesting ‘‘mas-
culine freedom’’ and ‘‘boundlessness’’ where this
reality no longer exists.
I believe we can agree that if the instrumental values of
different products are almost identical and a competing
product is not to be bought, the advertising for a
particular product has to be directed at the psychic needs
of potential buyers. In one way or another, advertise-
ments must appeal to the individuals’ longings and give
the illusion that they can be satisfied by purchasing the
advertised commodity.
That the psychical utility values of commodities
refers to illusions follows from the fact that nobody
will buy an off-road car or a BMW because he thinks
that he acquires ‘‘liberty’’ or that attractive women
146 S. Zepf
will throw their underwear into his open convertible.
What the commercial’s promise represents is a
symbolic fulfillment of those hidden longings that
became unconscious in the past rather than a real
fulfillment. In this context, ‘‘unconscious’’ means
that these longings remained unfulfilled in childhood
and got warded off yet remained effective in that they
surreptitiously asserted themselves in different sub-
stitutive formations.
It therefore seems reasonable to assume that the
decision to buy a product as well as the connection of
the buyer to the product is brought about through the
connection of commercials with those unconscious
scenes. Reminding ourselves that ‘‘as a rule . . .
repression . . . creates a substitutive formation’’ (Freud,
1915, p. 154; italics in original), it also becomes
apparent that an extension of one’s personal identity
occurs in these circumstances. The buyer uncon-
sciously identifies the scenes within which the com-
modities are advertised in a transitive sense with his or
her unconscious wishes, thus using these scenes as
their conscious representative. Mediated by the
commercials, an unconscious aspect of the buyer’s
self-representation enters into consciousness as a
substitutive formation so that in this guise it can be
classified as belonging to one’s personal identity.
Dichter (1960, p. 86) describes this issue as follows:
Individuals project themselves into products. In buying a
car they actually buy an extension of their own person-
ality. When they are ‘‘loyal’’ to a commercial brand, they
are loyal to themselves.
Of course, others can also perceive this extension of
one’s own personality. Dichter makes this clear by
referring to investigations that showed ‘‘that specific
products an individual possesses often influence the
reactions of other individuals toward him in a
specific way’’ (Dichter, 1960, p. 87).
One could argue that there is also an identity
formation, in that a pre-existing identity is changed.
However, the statements about commodity-depen-
dent identity formation quoted earlier do not refer to
such a partial extension of one’s personality, and
Dichter also clearly distinguishes between an extension
of personality and buying a personality. Whereas in case
of an extension of the personality the ‘‘individuals
project themselves into products,’’ in buying a ‘‘per-
sonality’’ the individuals buy ‘‘the image, the size of
the product and brand’’ (Dichter, 1960, p. 170).
If the image of commodities and brands is to
determine the identity of individuals, it obviously
implies that they have only developed a rudimentary
personal identity. In an intermediate step, we now
have to find out how far the psychic structures
of today’s individuals allow us to accept such a
hypothesis.
Psychic structure and socialisation of today’s
customers
Whereas in the bourgeois social character of the
nineteenth-century, the superego, ego, and id were
conflictually related to each other while still being
balanced in some way or other, since that time these
structures have apparently been increasingly disap-
pearing. Of course, we know that individuals having
the qualities of this character type still exist. How-
ever, it seems as if the social-psychological character
that is increasingly taking shape corresponds, for the
most part, to what Adorno (1950/1975, p. 486)
described as the ‘‘manipulative type,’’ Sennett
(1998) as the ‘‘corrosion of character’’ and Riesman
and Glazer (1950/2001) as ‘‘other directed’’. Mar-
cuse (1964/1969) also described this under the
heading ‘‘one dimensional man’’ and Fromm
(1947/2007, 1976/1997) as ‘‘marketing orientation.’’
Fromm’s (1976/1997, p. 63) assertion ‘‘I am what
I have. My property constitutes myself and my
identity’’ refers to these character types. Obviously,
my introductory quotation is thus valid for these
individuals.
According to Fromm (1976/1997, p. 120), these
individuals experience themselves ‘‘as a commodity,’’
they are ‘‘free of all individuality’’(1947/2007, p. 57),
adaptively flexible and oriented primarily not on their
‘‘‘use value’’’ but on their ‘‘‘exchange value,’’’ that is,
the saleability of their labour power. They have a
‘‘manipulative intelligence . . . without reason . . . as a
tool for achieving practical goals’’ at their disposal,
they treat humans and things alike, and both are
‘‘utterly expendable . . . since no deeper tie exists to
any of them’’ (1947/2007, p. 122). Fromm further
underlines
and this is highly pertinent to my line of
argument
that ‘‘none has a self, a core, a sense of
identity’’ as ‘‘people in the nineteenth century’’ had
at that time (1947/2007, p. 121).
It seems to me that the peculiarities of this character
type must be related to the societal development
towards monopole-capitalistic structures. Without
going into detail, I want to point out, together with
sociologists such as Klaus Horn (1971), that with this
development the family in which the roles of father
and mother were relatively precisely defined, and
where the father’s dominant personal authority was
substantiated by his existence as an independent
producer, has become a thing of the past. With the
separation of working and residential locations and
the progressive work fragmentation in connection

with industrial mass production accompanied by the
development of complicated personal-intensive ad-
ministration structures, the role of fathers has chan-
ged from that of independently disposing individuals
who determined their own lives and that of their
families, to that of employees in a production and
reproduction process in which they have become as
helpless as their children.
Since there is nothing of the manufactured item,
nothing of the finished file or of the computer
product that identifies who created it, the specific
occupational activities of the fathers can no longer
influence the children. The working father has
become invisible to the child, and the time that he
does spend with his children is mainly used for a
passive, common purpose. In Germany, working
fathers are usually away at work 9 nine hours a day.
Of the remaining time, they spend average an of 12
minutes a day on nursing and caring for their
children and 20 minutes for other activities with
them (Fthenakis, 1985); with children older than 6
years, half of this 20 minutes is spent with them in
front of the television (Winn, 1977).
However, it is not only the fathers that become
invisible: the mothers too have started to fade away.
By 1972, almost one in every two mothers with
children younger than 6 years had a job (Menschik,
1971/1974), and even when the mothers were at
home, the contacts with their children were lessened.
Kotelchuck (1976), for instance found that although
non-working mothers were in the same room as their
child for an average of 9 hours a day, they spent only
1 hour interacting with them. Moreover, various
findings indicate that, together with this develop-
ment, a certain kind of coldness and unrelatedness
that was registered by Adorno (1962) more than 45
years ago came to have an increasing influence in the
socialisation of the municipal middle classes in
particular.
In their child’s development, today’s consumers
were obviously dismissed into an object world in
which they could not engage in emotional and stable
intersubjective relations. Instead, they found them-
selves surrounded by technological equipment such
as televisions,5 computer games,6 automated toys,
MP3 players or clockwork dolls, putting them to bed
5 7
Around 20% of 2
7-year-olds, 46% of 8
12-year-olds, and 56% of 13
17-
year-olds have televisions in their bedrooms (Gentile & Walsh, 2002).
According to different investigations, estimates indicate that the average
American child aged 2
17 years spends 36
44 hours a week viewing
television, so by age 16 this person has spent 15,000 hours in front of a
television and witnessed up to 640,000 commercials (Gentile & Walsh,
2002; Gorney, 1981).
6
On average, 15-year old children spent 140 minutes every day playing
computer games, preferring the online spectacle ‘‘World of Warcraft’’ (Der
Spiegel Nr. 12, March 1, 2009, p. 48).
Consumerism and identity 147
and singing goodnight songs.7 They were exposed to
an education that was almost scientifically planned,
‘‘from the well-balanced diet to the equally well-
balanced ratio between reprimand and friendliness,
as recommended by the popular psychological
literature’’ (Horkheimer, 1949/1959, p. 389). This
internal coldness, this ‘‘loss of emotional intimacy’’
(‘‘Entinnerlichung’’ in German; Schelsky, 1954/1960)
was accompanied by an increasingly rationally and
instrumentally designed treatment of the children in
which ‘‘even love is administered as an ingredient of
pedagogical hygiene’’ (Horkheimer, 1949/1959,
p. 389). In other words, akin to domestic animals,
children were treated increasingly in a pedagogical
manner according to an educational plan, that is,
they were treated increasingly thing-like.
One could argue, however, that this kind of a
familial socialisation becomes similar to early child
care as practised in care centers6 and that recent
investigations into the consequences of this caring

for instance, the longitudinal study of the National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development
(NICHD) (e.g. Belsky, Lowe Vandell, Burchinal,
Clarke-Stewart & Tresch Owen., 2007), which is
frequently quoted as evidence
have shown no
negative influence on the children. However, I have
serious doubts as to whether the outcomes of such
studies qualify as evidence for the harmlessness of this
type of care and for its effect on familial socialisation.
In this study, which was carried out in the USA from
1991 to 2003, neither the internal validity nor the
representativeness and external validity were ensured.
At the onset of the study, only 109 out of the total
sample of 1364 children
that is, 8%
had been cared
for in early child day-care before their 14th month of
life, and at the last check-up, at the age of 12, a
complete dataset was available for only 23 of these
children.
I have presented the consequences for the devel-
opment of individuals’ inner lives elsewhere in detail
(e.g. Zepf, 1993, 1994). In short, they can be
summarised as follows. If pleasurable mutuality,
parental spontaneity, and empathic care dissolve
into a technical service station in which the parents
might still be there as figures but their presence as
persons has faded into the shadow, the avoidance of
Wachtel (2003, p. 116) describes this issue, citing parents who justify their
actions by referring to the ‘‘great American mantra, ‘‘‘I’m doing this for
my family,’’’ working too many hours, tearing their children out of schools
and friendship groups to move to a bigger home or to pursue a promotion
or a better-paying job in another city. Wachtel comments that instead of
providing a better life for the children, in reality ‘‘these very choices,
which deprive children of the things that really matter in their lives, are
likely to lead these children to turn to material goods for comfort, to
define their needs not in interpersonal or experiential terms but in terms
of . . . the right material objects.’’
148 S. Zepf
unpleasure becomes much more important to the
child than the longing for pleasurable interactions.
Socialisation is no longer associated with the pri-
macy of pleasurable instinctual satisfaction but gets
subsumed under the narcissistic dictate of avoiding
unpleasure.
There are many inanimate toys available that can
be utilised to avoid unpleasure having exactly those
characteristics missing from the child’s personal
relationships. They are constantly available, they
show no activity of their own, and they can counter
the child’s interests as little as the child can counter
its parent’s interests. If the child succeeds in dealing
with these things to lessen unpleasurable tensions by
its own activities, narcissistic ‘‘functional pleasure’’ is
to some extent experienced (e.g. Fenichel, 1945,
p. 45; Zepf & Zepf, 2008). This experience emerges
as a reaction to the unpleasure caused by the absence
of the parents and wards off a relationship with them
in which the child experiences itself as insufficiently
loved and cared for. If interactions with things
dominate over interactions with people, a self-
idealisation will be the result. This self-idealisation
is the outcome of an identification with the forms of
action used by our cultural industry to equip the
children’s’ play figures in Internet games such
Counter-Strike and science-fiction toys like
Ghostbusters, The Mask, Transformers, and Mas-
ters of the Universe, and in which they acquire their
virtual omnipotence.8
These Internet games and such toys are largely
built around action themes in which everything
seems feasible, the biggest obstacles can be over-
come by a technical or magical superiority, and the
victorious hero is always celebrated. Mediated by
this self-idealisation, the inner withdrawal from
personal objects is accompanied by turning to the
material world outside in which the differences
between persons and things are suspended. Both
get similarly functionalised for the same reason
to
stabilise the consumer’s narcissistic vanity in order to
avoid unpleasure.
Identity and commodities
To start with, I would like to re-emphasise that this
self-idealisation is not a direct consequence of perso-
nal interactions that occur as an outcome of an
identification with idealised parents. This would
imply that the child has already established a personal
identity whose aspects could then be idealised. Such a
8 9
Zuberbier, managing director of an advertising agency, is convinced that
more and more children and teenagers will ‘‘obtain their self-esteem from
consumption’’ (quoted in Der Spiegel Nr. 50, 1993, p. 80).
personal identity,5 however, constitutes itself in
specific interactions with specific personal objects by
way of fighting against and identifying with the
parents’ demands. Personal identity has an historic
perspective and needs to be recognised and appre-
ciated by others. It allows individuals to experience
themselves as the center of their needs and moral
concepts registered in their superego. Growing up as
‘‘nobody’s children’’ (Mitscherlich, 1946/1967,
p. 601, translated from original) so to speak, there is
a lack of exactly these interactions with persons in
which a personal identity can be formed and be
appreciated by others. More or less isolated, the child
stands besides its parents, who throw toys into the
child’s room, then close the door but remain outside.
Thus the cornerstone of another, non-personal iden-
tity is laid down. This non-personal identity starts to
become concrete via identifications with the heroes in
movies, television programs,9 comics or Internet and
computer games.
Although these individuals distil their narcissistic
identity out of the virtual reality of their play figures
and understand their personal attributes as mani-
festations of their abstract identity as defined by
things thus becoming things themselves, the fear of
losing the love of objects remains. In the reality of
their life as adults, they remain in need of contin-
uous and admiring love addressed at their vanity
because it is the grandiose self that helps to conceal
this fear.
Since the children live as adults also in a capita-
listic society whose structure demands that in busi-
ness life everybody competes with everybody else,
that is, in which everybody is virtually an enemy of
others and in which the individuals mutually equate
themselves to commodities by reducing themselves
to their utility value as they would do with any other
commodity. It therefore seems rather doubtful as to
whether other individuals would applaud their nar-
cissistic grandiosity in their later life. Furthermore, if
Bellak (1961/1967, pp. 215
17), Feder (1980,
p. 165), Fuerstein (1989, p. 168), Modell (1978,
p. 172), and Simons (1990, p. 20) are correct in
calling this period of time the ‘‘age of narcissism,’’ it
becomes even more unlikely that their narcissistic
grandiosity will be approved by others who are also
self-centered and in need of the same approvals. It
seems more likely that, in their relations with other
individuals, they mostly experience the same instru-
mental thing-like treatment that they suffered in
childhood.
The effectiveness of gender-specific behavioral patterns offered by
television could be verified in controlled experimental settings (see
Lukesch, 1988, p. 185).

For these individuals, the past recurs in the
present and is only altered insignificantly. Just as
their parental figures treated them as thing-like, so
these individuals treat their fellow humans in the
same way. The difference from their past lies only in
that the individuals have developed into the same
figures they have experienced in their past. They
became those unrelated figures who treat other
individuals in the same way as they were (and are)
treated, and live their lives according to the maxim
‘‘Me-Myself-and-I.’’
It is this principle of life that seems to protect
individuals from being aware that they have been left
alone and have become helpless. The individuals’
protection, however, depends on whether they can
manage to convince themselves of their narcissistic
omnipotence again and again. For in so doing,
society offers a field: the field of consumption. In
the same way as they verified their narcissistic
omnipotence in the past by handling their toys at
their own discretion, with the prerequisite of suffi-
cient financial assets they can now act in this field as
they see fit.
In this condition, the individuals encounter adver-
tisements and activate their warded-off longings for
love and approval from other persons. Advertise-
ments, as Haug (1964/1971, p. 62, translated from
original) states, ‘‘define what is to be loved, thus they
manipulate the latent fear of losing love’’ by suggest-
ing that this fear can be minimised by buying a
certain product. They allude to defence formation
suggesting a stabilisation of their narcissistic grandi-
osity
the off-road car promising boundless freedom,
or the Marlboro Man conveying the impression that
he could manage the most dangerous of situations
without any problems. They also touch on the
warded-off feelings by pretending that most of their
secret longings can be satisfied
the boyfriend who is
adored by the guests because he prepared a certain
ready-to-serve meal, the male driving a BMW
cabriolet whose Campari or jeans ‘‘engineered by
Lewis’’ evoke the love of females, making them weak
and wanting nothing more than the car driver. As a
result of buying commodities presented in the
scenarios of commercials that identify fears to be
avoided, the individuals confirm their grandiosity
because they prove to themselves that they ‘‘have the
power’’ to fulfil their ‘‘innermost desires by the
selection of a specific type of merchandise’’ (Dichter,
1960, p. 170).
Yet as adults, individuals not only verify their
grandiosity in buying, but also modify the living
versions of the life forms transmitted via television,
comics, toys, the Internet, and computer games into
their child’s room according to the patterns offered
to them by admired figures in movies, television
Consumerism and identity 149
programs, and Internet games or commercials. In
identifying reflexively and unconsciously with the
scenic figures of the commercials, which of course
are also perceived and admired by others, it is
obvious that the individuals choose their commod-
ities according to the ideas that others have about
admirable figures so that by the possession of these
commodities they acquire an identity that is admired
by others.10
On closer scrutiny, it seems as if these individuals
buy synthetic instant-identity kits like ready-to-
serve-meals. Since their identity is without history
except for their self-idealisation, and since it remains
important only for keeping up the idealisation that
they are admired and not what is admired, it is
understandable that these individuals do not have
the same durable ties with their commodities that
neurotic characters do. As assumed by Fromm
(1976/1997, p. 121), these individuals can change
their concrete identity like a chameleon according to
the principle ‘‘I am as you desire me’’ and are able to
present themselves in conformity with the demands
of the market in a personal facade that is, as Fromm
suspected, beneficial for selling their labour power.
However, these individuals not only understand
themselves as commodities in dealing with their
labour power, but also understand themselves and
others as things. Since things are seen as commod-
ities in our society, human relations now becomes
subject to a barter system. Akin to buying a
commodity for which utility value is a necessary
prerequisite, their love relationships as well the
sexuality of their partners has such a utility value.
Yet both partners not only define the other one as a
commodity, but also turn themselves into commod-
ities. They use their own sexuality in the same way as
they use the sexuality of their partner, namely as a
service. Its utility value consists of its exchange
value, that is, in that it can be exchanged for the
utility value of the sexuality of their partner. Thereby
the experience that others have need for one’s own
sexuality reduces the latent fear of loss of love, thus
adding another secret and more or less unconscious
exchange value to the experience.
As is generally the case in buying commodities, in
these relations as well the utility value is not the
single criterion for entering into the act of exchange.
For both partners, the utility value of the other’s
sexuality is as non-specific as that of commodities in
10
It seems as if this already starts in childhood. For instance, Monika
Knobloch, an educator of preschool children, states: ‘‘‘Whoever has
nothing will not be visited’,’’ and Rolofs, director of a comprehensive
school, remarks that ‘‘the possession of certain toys and clothing became
virtually a fateful question’’ (quoted in Der Spiegel Nr. 50, 1993, p. 80,
84f, translated from original).
150 S. Zepf
the same price range. If one wants to remain
competitive in the market, individuals must indivi-
dualise their own sexuality; that is, in improving its
exchange value, the utility value of their service has
to be specialised. As with the economic exchange of
commodities, this is also only possible in combina-
tion with other commodities. This is probably the
reason why these individuals equip themselves with
attributes declared as ‘‘virile’’ or ‘‘feminine’’ such as
cosmetics, perfumes, sexy underwear, and ‘‘love
techniques’’, with which the commercials claim
that they can make someone be loved and desired.
Driven by their (unconscious) longing to be loved by
another person, however, instead of what is secretly
longed for, they merely get the smell of a perfume,
the odour of an intimate spray, the sight of tiger-
printed underwear or tightly designed bras and slips
in a scenario of a ‘‘healthy sex life’’ (Adorno, 1955/
1968, p. 112). Their actions are copied from movies,
television, and commercials where, in proving
their ‘‘quicksilver liveliness and overpowering en-
ergy’’ (Adorno, 1944/1985, p. 70), they do physical
exercises in technical figures on each other.
It is not only a healthy sex life, but also the
exchange of feelings between these thing-like indivi-
duals that changes into a barter type of relationship.
This relationship regulates itself by the latent fear of
losing either the object or the object’s love according
to the principle ‘‘I’ll show you my feelings (and you
show me your feelings) so that you (or I) will not
leave our relationship.’’ These feelings are neither
addressed towards a specific person nor do they
come from a specific person; they are merely a
functional means used for egoistic purposes. What
applies to one’s own sexuality applies also to one’s
own feelings. Their utility value consists in their
exchange value; that is, in that they can be ex-
changed for a reduction in the latent fear of the loss
of love, and the expressions of feeling are aimed at
realising this exchange value. Of course, since this
fear is unconscious, it cannot lead to a lasting
reduction in fear. It is rather that the individuals
feel forced to remain in this exchange process and to
mutually convince themselves by their expressions of
feeling over and over again that the other will not
leave the relationship. Therefore it is relatively
unimportant whether or not one actually experiences
these feelings. It is only important that one shows
one’s feelings to the other, so that today’s relation-
ships seem to be much more emotional than in the
past, although they may well be considerably colder
and more instrumentalised. Since these relationships
are neither based on emotions that refer to persons
nor able to satisfy unfulfilled childhood wishes, it is
understandable that such relationships are under
permanent threat of falling apart.
Again, I want to emphasise that individuals do
not present their personal identity by the particular
set of commodities they own. Similar to the
children that did not present themselves in their
play figures but whose play figures presented
themselves in the children’s behavioral character-
istics, it is not the individuals that present them-
selves in their commodities but the commodities
that present themselves through the individuals.
Their personality becomes the form of their pre-
sentation, and the distinctive characteristic of an
individual is something that is abstracted from
different plastic figures and reduced to self-idealisa-
tion. In fact, for those individuals, the statements
made by Dichter and by Ciskszentmihalyi hold
true, namely that the commodities they own ‘‘or
wished to own, decisively influenced their pattern
of behaviour’’ (Dichter, 1960, p. 87)11 and that
‘‘the objects [they] possess and consume are . . .
wanted because . . . they tell [them] things about
[themselves] that [they] need to hear’’ (Ciskszent-
mihalyi, 1982, p. 5). In other words, the individuals
not only buy external equipment, but also an
‘‘internal equipment’’ (Horn, 1969, p. 345, trans-
lated from original) that is mediated by commod-
ities or their commercials. They acquire what Horn
(1969, p. 342, translated from original) terms an
‘‘identity of commodities’’ (1969, p. 342, translated
from original). They buy the ‘‘soul’’ living in the
‘‘things’’ (Dichter, 1960, p. 85), find themselves in
their commodities, their ‘‘automobile, hi-fi set . . .
kitchen equipment’’ (Marcuse, 1964/1969, p. 24),
and can be admired by others on account of the
commodities they own.
Before finishing this section, I would like to briefly
consider the consequences that can occur if the
economic equipment of these individuals
for
example, when they are teenagers
does not allow
the stabilisation of their grandiose self via the
consumption of commodities.
In the search for a confirmation of one’s narcissistic
identity, it is without doubt that these individuals are
forced back into relations with other people because
of the loss of this prospect. Therein, however, they do
not experience the necessary admiration as a rein-
forcement of identity, so they must find other ways to
satisfy their narcissistic needs in this connection.
Since other people do not adequately acknowledge
their difference from other people, they themselves
must make these differences evident. This can be
done by humiliating others, by declaring them as
inferior, and by treating them as such.
11
In this context, it becomes conceivable that adolescent girls can exchange
their identity when they exchange their clothing (Lurie, 1981, p. 24).

In this application, the so-called ‘‘happy slapping’’
phenomenon has become a recent occurrence. This
term denotes an assault, mostly by teenagers, on an
unsuspecting victim whereby the offenders humiliate
and beat the victim, sometimes to unconsciousness
and even death, and then run off without concern for
the victim. These assaults are usually recorded by an
accomplice with a mobile phone camera. The videos
are then posted on the Internet and can also be
distributed by sending them to other mobile phones.
These assaults are carried out exactly for the reason
of disseminating the video material to others. The
‘‘medium,’’ Durrer (2006, p. 22, translated from
original) states, ‘‘is no longer used only a means for
documentation; in this case it is also starting point
and integral part of the aggressiveness.’’
This aggressive behavior is particularly appropri-
ate for convincing oneself of one’s own grandiosity. It
helps to restore one’s fragile narcissism in a twofold
sense: aggressive behavior ‘‘is accompanied by an
extraordinarily high degree of narcissistic enjoyment,
owing to its presenting the ego with a fulfilment of
the latter’s old wishes form omnipotence’’ (Freud,
1930, p. 121), and also it now centres the attention
of those who had refused to confirm one’s narcissis-
tic grandiosity towards oneself.
The frequency of this new form of violence is not
clear. Practitioners from schools, youth welfare, and
the police assume that a high number of unrec-
orded cases are taking place. However, an increase
in such cases is believed to be occurring in
European countries and in the USA, particularly
in schools in California. A study of 1200 teenagers
aged between 12 and 19 years, representative of
the 7 million teenagers of that age in Germany, by
the Medienpädagogischen Forschungsverbundes
Südwest (2007) shows that 29% of teenagers own-
ing a mobile phone were aware of the fact that
these assaults were recorded with mobile phones
and that about 22% had already taken part in a
happy slapping that had been filmed. With an
increase of 12% compared with 2006, the number
of these assaults has almost doubled.
In a happy slapping incident, persons are treated
like things. The reduction of the victim to a scenic
figure in a video clip12 shows rather convincingly the
parallels between persons and virtual figures in the
Internet’s killer games. This parity is presumably the
reason why aggression can appear as undisguised in
interactions with persons when it manifests itself in
12
For instance, shouting ‘‘This is YouTube material!,’’ a 27-year-old British
man urinated on a woman who had collapsed on the street. He also
doused her with a bucket of water and covered her with shaving foam
(BBC News, 2007).
Consumerism and identity 151
these killer games, and also explains why there is no
remorse or sympathy for the victim.
Several other findings (see Zepf, 1994) substanti-
ate the idea that this aggressive behavior crops up
when individuals from whom the accessories neces-
sary for reinforcing their identity are withheld let
themselves go with what remains of their identity.
Remembering Spitz’s (1965, p. 300) statement that
‘‘infants without love . . . will end as adults full of
hate,’’ it becomes obvious what an identity mediated
by commodities still offers protection against.
Conclusion
The functions that consumerism provides for the
identity of consumers obviously depends on their
psychic structure. Buying is usually the means by
which individuals acquire the instrumental value of a
commodity, and its psychical utility value can fulfil
two different functions. In case of mainly neuroti-
cally structured characters, typified by a specific
relation of instinct and defence, the scenic figures
presented in movies, television programs, Internet
games, and commercials can function as conscious
manifestations of unconscious wishes. Since they
enter into consciousness as these substitutive forma-
tions, they are understood in their guise as belonging
to one’s personal identity. The consequence is a
partial, albeit only seeming extension of the pre-
existing personal identity.
If there are narcissistic character structures in
which a personal identity could develop only rudi-
mentarily, commodities themselves seem to build
identities. As adults, these individuals continue to
unfold the non-personal identity that was laid down
in their childhood by identifying themselves reflex-
ively with virtual figures presented in movies, Inter-
net games, television programs, and commercials.
To what extent buying is effective in enlarging or
building identities cannot be known for sure. How-
ever, it seems to me that the identity-building quality
of consuming is becoming more and more domi-
nant. It is not only the idea that we live in the age of
narcissism that points to the notion that a lack of
personal identity characterises the majority of to-
day’s consumers. Considering that the ‘‘family is the
psychological agency of society’’ (Fromm, 1932/1970,
p. 117; italics in original) in that the socially
necessary character structures are produced within
it, this assumption is also supported by the fact that
the social character described by Fromm as market-
ing-oriented is essentially in agreement with the
demands that today’s capitalism makes on its parti-
cipants. For example, according to Sennett (1998),
the flexible capitalism of today requires individuals,
who have no long-term relationships with anything, to
152 S. Zepf
be open to change on short notice. In his view, their
particular occupational activity has to be just as
unimportant and disposable as their places of resi-
dence, their friends or their families. Thus, indivi-
duals are expected to subordinate everything to the
actual necessities of business life, to continually take
risks, to be convinced that they are able to adjust
themselves to any new conditions, and to have the
‘‘capacity to let go of the past’’ and ‘‘to accept
fragmentation’’ (1998, p. 63), that is, to be self-
idealised individuals without a personal identity.
Since language is a certain interindividually ac-
cepted manner of interpreting the world and since an
indiscriminate treatment of persons and material
objects, which goes along with a lack of personal
identity, can also be found on a linguistic level, both
of these issues also point to the fact that a personal
identity developed to only a rudimentary level has
become a rather general phenomenon.
I will give some few examples (see also Sigusch,
1997) of this linguistic indifference. For instance, we
can read in our newspapers such statements as: an
American football half-back did not yet have the
necessary ‘‘working temperature,’’ a shot-putter ‘‘ex-
ploded,’’ after three football games a week the player’s
‘‘tank was empty,’’ the ‘‘human undercarriage had to be
adopted to the conditions in Atlanta,’’ the car reacted
‘‘sensitively,’’ an oil company announced ‘‘important
information for your car,’’ the stock market was
‘‘pleased,’’ a man advertised for a woman ‘‘not older
than construction year 1971.’’ In further examples,
another person who termed himself ‘‘31, 5
7, 65’’
looked for a ‘‘blond pony-tail,’’ on a beer-mat was
printed ‘‘a sympathetic beer,’’ a house is announced by
a label ‘‘I am for sale’’, an architect termed a house
‘‘autistic,’’ in a catalogue for an exhibition the organiser
wrote, ‘‘We should not forget that many of the drawings
have been exposed to persecution,’’ and in natural
sciences cells ‘‘commit suicide,’’ genes are ‘‘intelli-
gent,’’ chains of molecules ‘‘read each other correctly
or wrongly,’’ and enzymatic reactions are ‘‘reasonable.’’
Gary S. Becker was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Economics in 1992 after he extended economic
analysis into the field of human relationships and
behavior. If one regards the above character type in
the light of his reflections, this type proves to be
virtually paradigmatic for a behavior that is, even in
the private sphere, no longer psychologically moti-
vated but essentially subject to an economic calcula-
tion. As described and empirically verified by Becker
(1976, p. 14) in different investigations, behavior
can now be adequately explained if it is viewed ‘‘as
involving participants who maximize their utility
from a stable set of preferences.’’
For this maximisation to take place, resources such
as time, money, and abilities are invested, and due to
the nature of these resources, their availability for
disposal is limited. Since ‘‘preferences . . . are not to
change substantially over the course of time’’ (1976,
p. 5), the ‘‘utility function’’ can only be maximised
‘‘subject to limited resources’’ (1976, p. 283), and
Becker shows quite convincingly that the level of
benefit is defined by its ratio to the invested resources
in the same way as a rate of profit is defined by the
ratio of the capital invested in the production of
commodities to the revenue achieved by selling them.
This also holds true for engaging in love relationships.
According to this economic approach, a person
decides to engage himself in such a relationship
when the utility expected from it exceeds what is
expected from remaining single or from a further
search for a more suitable mate. Similarly, a person
terminates his or her love relationship when the utility
anticipated from becoming single or having a love
relationship with someone else exceeds the loss in
utility from separation.
The strict orientation of the inner life of this
character type at utility maximisation not only
reflects the increasing socialisation of man, but also
lets us recognise that, as Adorno (1955/1968, p. 95)
noted more than 50 years ago, ‘‘the thoroughly
liberal and individualistic concept of psychology
tends increasingly to forfeit its meaning.’’ In these
circumstances, psychological foundations of human
behavior are nothing more than a rationalising
glossing over.
In searching for the love missing in their childhood
years, these individuals find themselves in likenesses
of the market prepared as living beings, that is, in its
capitalised personifications in which they conjointly
exist according to the existing laws of the market. If
they start to search for their self-identities, they find
themselves in the same position as Peer Gynt. They
too will discover that they are like an onion and, as
with Peer Gynt, one layer after another can be peeled
off without finding a core. Their identities become
labels used for an internal flat-sharing community of
differing and interchangeable plastic figures as pre-
sented in movies, television programs, and commer-
cials. These individuals breathe their life into these
scenic figures prefabricated as kinds of experiential
sets by our ‘‘consciousness-industry’’ (Enzensberger,
1962, p. 10) and experience their life in the guise of
these plastic figures.
Translated by Dave Turnbull, Astrotech, Services,
Ontario, Canada.
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Author
Univ. Prof. em. Siegfried Zepf, MD, is former
director of the Institute of Psychoanalysis, Psy-
chotherapy and Psychosomatic Medicine, Univer-
sity of Saarland (Germany) and a training analyst in
the DPG and DGPT. He has published numerous
works on epistemological, psychosomatic, sociopsy-
chological, and psychoanalytic topics. The most
recent of these are: Allgemeine psychoanalytische
Neurosenlehre, Psychosomatik und Sozialpsychologie.
Gießen: Psychosozial-Verlag (2006); Attachment
theory and psychoanalysis
some remarks from an
epistemological and from a Freudian viewpoint.
International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 87, 1529
48
(2006); Freud’s concept of psychical reality recon-
sidered, Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis, 14,
197
211 (2006); The relationship of the uncon-
scious and consciousness
a similarity between
psychoanalysis and historical materialism. Psycho-
analysis, Culture and Society, 12, 105
23 (2007);
Naturalistic studies of psychoanalytical treatments:
some epistemological and methodological remarks.
Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review, 31, 50
60
(2008); Autism in infancy: The psychodynamics
from a Freudian viewpoint. Canadian Journal of
Psychoanalysis, 16, 194
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