Scapegoats, hate figures and superheroes

Psychotherapist and former banker Lucy Beresford says we’re all in denial about our guilt for the debt crisis

During the recent economic nervous breakdown, pundits everywhere put forward every possible financial cause. But they only told part of the story. Economics is also governed partly by human behaviour. So a fuller understanding of the crisis, and our reactions to it, requires psychological interpretation. Trouble is, it makes for such uncomfortable reading: like alcoholics refusing to admit our addiction, we are in acute denial about our collective guilt.

It’s easy to see why people reacted to the financial meltdown by panicking. We are group creatures after all, and historically our very survival depended on being able to detect correctly the signals within the tribe. Misinterpret the look on your fellow spear-carrier’s face and you became the local mammoth’s next lunch. A year ago, the queues outside Northern Rock tapped into our fear of annihilation, where money (our savings, our mortgages, our pensions) equals our very sense of self.