From my first article it’s fairly easy to notice one tendency – touching consumption issues from more observant stand of point in previous writings. It’s showing my current personal and deeper interaction with the topic more than just for a curiosity but don’t most of us are rising this question from time to time. It’s a theme that we have faced in the past, we are facing now and we will face in the future. And that’s a time when I would like to elaborate more on it.
When I googled phrase “consumption psychology” first two pages of results were mostly filled with articles about consumer’s patterns of their purchasing behavior. What they value and how the sellers could increase sales by adopting this information. All information seemed limited with the one sided view how to manage increased consumption efficiently. I agree that google search engine is highly influenced by popularity of information sources that readers are mostly interested in and it looks like a firm logic base for the search process. Nevertheless, in this precise situation I lacked a broader view on the consumption psychology information that I was looking for. Also I completely lost a possibility to hear more opinions based on full pallet of different angles. In my case, the ones which are criticizing consumption as such.
I’m not a psychologist or subjects related with consumption psychology matters expert. However, I’ll try to share my own point of view and experience with a consumption perception in general. To emphasis emotions and mood affected by consumption itself. My journey was essentially influenced and guided by few books of Carl Gustav Jung: “Two essays of analytical psychology”, “Psychological types”, “Man and his symbols”. I believe it’s essential to begin with some theoretical interpretation of the topic and introduce few terms used by this well-known psychologist.
From the moment of our birth we are beginning an imitation process which will last during our full life journey. Probably it’s a core human function which empowers us to learn and adopt firstly in a family and later in the society. Also, especially nowadays we frequently hear the word competitiveness in full range of contexts from personal to global competing attitude. This word became directly linked to our progress, development and of course an inevitable consumption. Probably, if not the nature of competition mode inside of us, we would hardly be able to progress, invent and sometimes consume just for the competition itself, without any actual need. In the story below I’ll try to share my own reflections and experiences that I felt when I was analyzing my own consumer behavior in the context of personal psyche concepts. While for the help, I will use quite often used terms by Carl Gustav Jung such as “shadow”, complex, individuation, persona and archetype which are very much related with understanding of our conscious and unconscious.
Remembering some years of my childhood and youth I could easily share a lot of illustrations of imitating actions of others, especially people who were around me at the school or the university. What I believe, every person experiences these situations during all their lives just with different intensities. As I hold myself a quite well adopting person I actually don’t recall many situations where I faced difficulties by copying behavior in the broader sense. On the other hand, I noticed that more common situations were more or less related with an anxiety, which originated and sometimes still is related with material objects, that people around me possess. Sometimes it’s visible quite directly. Like in a situation, when my schoolmate has brought a new toy into the class and my new-born wish of the same toy overwhelmed my thinking. Where I had to begin creating plans how to get that “dream” toy. From simple ones, related with requests for parents, to much more sophisticated ones – earning my own money for a purchase. Moreover, my constant comparison with others grew up to a partial inferiority complex, and even with a mild condition I used to buy things just to compensate the feeling of inability. And I don’t doubt that my long lasted habit of smoking was born simply from the need to be cool as my friends were.
My first collision with a consumption standard or would simply call it a necessity to consume in the way my environment does, happened with a clearer understanding of my personas. For clarity I will name some examples of my personal excess consumption situations such as: eating in restaurants from top 50 list, must vacations in some “exotic” places, weekend trips to Rome, Paris or other well-known city. I imagine that most us could fairly easy gather a long list of activities or purchases what we are doing just to satisfy our front cover persona and be able to share that experience with friends or family. That type of sharing became a new obliged reality. When I have tried to draw a picture of the collective personas I associate myself in front of the people that I interact with I noticed one obvious tendency: during different periods of live, the more I associated myself with one irreplaceable persona in all different behavior circumstances not depending on time and place, the more my actions where replicated by outside examples. What according to Carl Gustav Jung I could name as desperate attempts to fit to the archetype. I had the feeling that if I won’t imitate people around me, I’ll probably won’t be myself any more. I even might become no one if the thirst of that persona won’t be eliminated. Paradoxically, after bringing all my personas from shadows to the day light and making contact with them, the urgency to identify myself just with one persona (in my personal case the most dominant one was a successful corporate professional) was vanishing. Without one possible mask that I was showing to people around me, imitations that were mostly related with an aim of exclusiveness and sometimes limitless consumption, were step by step fading away.
I’m quite sure, that at that point I acknowledged the beginning of my individuation process. What I would interpret as a partial distancing from collective perceptions to more individual and unique views, fulfilling my real needs. I couldn’t say that copying others became something alien to me but for sure I became much more selective and considering in the acts of imitation. It brought up to the surface most of my blind consumer decisions that were not only in excess but completely useless and worthless.
Other self-conscious personal remarks, related with encouraged consumption, I would relate to my “shadows”. I see them as hidden insecurities, noticed just in the moments of emotional reaction. Even with constantly repeating practices of detecting “shadows” inside, I find this exercise quite hard and requiring notable efforts every time. For better understanding I would like to give you one recent example. Currently I’m living in the COVID-19 pandemic caused quarantine environment. Nevertheless, I bought hiking shoes online without any current and real need for them. After dedicating some time to overthink my action, I realized that it was a splash of unconscious compensation for the current vulnerable personal situation. When my person’s power question was jeopardized by a force major as social distancing laws kept me more or less trapped in the city for now and for the nearest future. This purchase was a small action of a compensation and the relieve feeling of my “human’s power elimination” by governments imposed restrictions. If I look more closely to some other my purchases of goods and services or wishes to have something in general, especially the ones that I can clearly relate with an emotion or describe by words “I really need it”, I’m finding so many hidden compensation forms dedicated to all different types of my insecurities. Such as power, sex, appearance, intelligence together with my fears of being weak, being too masculine or too feminine and many others. Complicated part here is that it’s not so easy to identify them. Every time when I dive into self-analysis, I know that I’ll have to dedicate substantial amount of time, determination and courage to ask myself for real reasons. Exploring dilemma: what I really want, is what I really need? Brought up the reality, that the lack of love in my live is impossible to replace with a trip to a love city – Paris.
Facing situations mentioned above is changing my attitude step by step to many areas my life. And one of a quite visible early birds of introspection was the unstoppable consumption. I really believe, that it’s just the beginning for me and there will be much more new cognitions, changes of valuation system and assumption that I live by. Nevertheless, I believe that just a better understanding of the self, courage to question own behavior and a bigger trust of your own opinion will not only change our attitude to the environment that we are living in but will correct the view to the consumption. Which sometimes looks like the view from the kingdom of curved mirrors.