Paul Gubany offers a way out of this situation. He claims that people like me suffer from an unhealthy relationship with money. He claims that he can help us to “see” this unhealthy relationship and then change it to a healthy relationship.
I think not.
All he is offering is a bunch of psychobabble based on wrong information and twisted interpretations of western philosophy.
For instance, explaining the origins of money he says “around the time prehistoric peoples advanced from hunter-gatherers to farmers living together in villages of approximately one hundred or so, the symbolic faculty of the brain emerged.” It is a well-known fact that Neanderthals had “symbolic faculties” while living in caves, not villages. Ditto our own human ancestors who also lived in caves.
He claims that money “defeated” feudalism. Feudalism was “defeated” by bubonic plague, knowledge brought from the Near East by returning crusaders and the spread of that knowledge thanks to the invention of the printing press.
I could go on and on.
He cites Karl Marx over and over in support of his (Gubany) theories on money and consumption. He seems oblivious to the fact that Marx’s theories were disproven decades ago. Also according to Gubany, those of us who thought Carl Jung wrote about psychology and religion were completely wrong. In Gubany’s world, Jung actually was writing about money.
What Gubany really is writing about are his own issues with money. He also has some serious issues with his mother. He erroneously assumes that the rest of us suffer from identical complexes.
I am just as appalled as anyone else when extremists burn books, but I have finally found an exception. This book is not just an extreme exercise in narcissism but it is also dangerous. People with no knowledge of psychology, philosophy or history who read this book and believe the “facts” as presented in this book will be seriously misled, not helped.
Review copy courtesy of the author
