The Price of Success - Outlines of a Psychology of Wealth and Money.

The particularities of a psychology of wealthy persons constitute the subject matter of this empiric study. In fifteen extensive narrative biographic interviews with wealthy individuals the special life conditions which come along with great wealth were analyzed from a psychological point of view. The study was carried out in 2010 in Switzerland – three years after the start of the great financial crisis.

• Envy as the conceptual downside of wealth: 
  

Almost all participants expressed worries about future social stability and condemned the banking managers without being asked. A pronounced worry of the interviewees regards the envy of others. A closer psychological analysis evidences envy as the conceptual downside of outstanding capacities and wealth. Modesty, reclusiveness and demonstrative understatement may thus be motivated by realistic worries of envy rather than the ideals of protestant ethics as described in sociological accounts of wealth and royal courts.

• The psychological appropriation process of wealth: 
  

On the basis of narrative biographic interviews, the second part of the study looks in detail at the question of which psychological processes are particularly required during the appropriation of great wealth. The question was raised in particular of the strategies, which are utilized when substantial material wealth has to be ‘taken over’. The sample was comprised of two distinctive groups: the founder generation and the successor generation. Whereas the founder generation thrives in their business and generates wealth in the form of a byproduct, the successive generations do often experience extensive challenges in the psychological appropriation of their inheritances. 

Erté : Adoration

We found certain biographic patterns allowing for the successful appropriation of inheritance: Instead of being entitled at an early stage to enter the family company, these persons develop, on their own initiative or even with the support of the family, an ambition ‘to stand on their own two feet’. For years – and in some cases even for decades – they turn their back on the family company, to return only at a critical moment (e.g. the illness or death of the founder) to support the family company, or ‘to save it’. Although the rescue of the company by members of the next generation is frequently intended as a prophylactic measure, it often leads to the successors’ successful takeover of the company. Our evidences suggest that psychological appropriation of great wealth may be well assisted by the experience of a profound crisis prior and/or during the formal-juridical inheritance process. The findings in our study stand in stark contrast to strategies, which prepare successors for a gradual integration into the family enterprise.

The entire study (German only) can be acquired via the following link: Der Preis des Erfolgs

el Sehity, Tarek. “Der Preis des Erfolgs. Skizzen zur Psychologie des Vermögens und des Geldes.” In: Verantwortung Und Bewährung: Familienunternehmen in Der Schweiz. Eine Vermögenskulturelle Studie., edited by T. Druyen, 160–96. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2012.