Money, Sexuality, Power and Control are Unconscious Drives

1. Unconscious Forces in the Psyche: Money, Sexuality and Control There are very strong unconscious forces at work in our lives that affect our personalities. These forces, according to Abraham Maslow in what he terms the hierarchy of needs are: survival, safety, a sense of love and belonging, self esteem, and some form of spiritual actualization. In our daily lives these needs manifest in different ways. For instance, survival is about resources and our currency for looking after this need is typically money.

2. With regard to love and belonging our need often starts with sex. After all, sex is where we all start and as adults also the beginning of the family many of us will create. Power and control are aspects of both safety and self esteem. These are measured by safety of our body and property, while our sense of confidence, respect, and achievement make us feel in control and powerful. While these forces drive our lives they often have unconscious aspects in their functioning. That’s why money, sex, and control are what we spend a good part of our day protecting and promoting.

3. When they are challenged or when we feel they are challenged, we can get feral with our reactions, opinions, and defenses. In fact, if we are challenged it often means we are unconscious about how these forces are manifesting and thus we tend to be neurotic about that subject. So to have healthy engagement in these areas we must become more conscious about these three forces of money, sex, and control. “If you think money by itself means success, just remember there are plenty of very wealthy people whose children want nothing to do with them...“

4. The Psyche and Money As meditation teachers and counselors we have found that people are far more willing to reveal the details of their sex lives than their economic situation. Obviously, as important as sex may seem to people, survival is foremost. In order to survive we need resources and the most common measure of that is money. There are some strong archetypes about money that show up when we engage in the subject. Deborah Price describes them in her book Money Magic. There is the Warrior, who sets out to make it happen; the Fool who thinks money will just show up; the Martyr who works diligently for almost nothing; the Innocent who thinks someone else will take care of it for them; the Creator/Artist who feels they are above money; the Victim who blames their lack of money on someone else; the Magician who understands money and how to make it; and the Tyrant who needs to be in control of money for themselves and probably everyone else. Sexual Archetypes and Unconscious Patterning Just as there are money archetypes there are sexuality archetypes. While the following list is by no means exhaustive we’ve named a few ourselves. The Seducer who promises, the Bacchanalian who devours, the Prince/ess Charming who dallies, the Family person who uses sex to build one, the Celibate who abstains, the Tourist who only visits occasionally and doesn’t go very deep so as to not get too close, the Tease who seems to promise but doesn’t deliver, The Loyalist who uses sex to find a partner, and the Illusive who engages but isn’t present.

5. In the same way that unconscious money patterns can wreak havoc in one’s life so too can unconscious sex patterns lead to calamity and emotional devastation. In both these cases we can feel, “How did I get here, what happened?” The key element is the unconscious part.