Identity and money — what wealth does to selfhood

Money does not simply change circumstances; it changes the self — its relationship to risk, to others, to the future, to its own worth. Poverty can install a permanent fear-orientation that wealth does not simply erase; sudden wealth can produce what psychologists call 'sudden wealth syndrome,' a disorientation of identity whose core is the question: who am I when scarcity is no longer organizing my life? The examined relationship with money asks what narrative about selfhood your economic history has installed, and whether it is still serving you.