Shopping with Freud

In "Shopping with Freud," the author asks: what do we mean when we say consumer'? Tracking the complexity of the question through literature and psychology texts: "Lolita," "The Picture of Dorian Gray," "Lady Chatterley's Lover," and Freud's work on the Anna O. case, the book examines the surprising manifestations of the consumer subject in these works. Whether the helpless, female victim of advertising deliberately frought with psychological undercurrents to motivate buying, or the rational, male agent demanding his rights to goods and services, the meanings and appearances of the consumer are discussed and dissected, as well as the "two-way street" of influence between psychology and consumer culture.
Bowlby shows how ideas about consumption are brought to bear on questions of choice in areas seemingly far removed from shopping, and how assumptions and arguments about the psychology of consumers throw light on questions of human subjectivity. "Shoppingwith Freud" will be of great interest to readers in cultural studies, sociology, literature, psychology, business studies and women's studies.

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.

1. Introduction 2. Promoting Dorien Gray 3. `But she could have been reading Lady Chatterley': the obscene side to the canon 4. Lolita and the poetry of advertising 5. A happy event: the births of psychoanalysis 6. Frankenstein's woman-to-be: choice and the new reproductive technologies 7. Make up your mind: scenes from the psychology of selling and shopping