We usually associate greed with money. However, this feeling is felt in many situations and it is familiar to people for whom a stuffed wallet does not constitute an important value and does not arouse desire … Find out about other causes of greed, find out how it can manifest itself and whether … greed can be treated.

Greedis most often associated with money - in this case, it means an unfulfilled desire to have more and more zeros in your account. Driven by greed, a person does not feel satisfied, even if he earns or gets what he wants. Her appetite grows as she eats. Greed is like a bottomless well, like a hole in the heart. A perfect example is the fairy tale about the goldfish, which is to warn children against succumbing to their greed. When a fisherman catches a fish, he asks his wife what she would like to get from her. She says she wants a new pig trough, then a new home. When he gets it, he wants a palace. The fairy tale ends badly for her - in the end, because of her insatiable greed, the fisherman's wife loses everything she got, even this new bed. In fact, during the entire fairy tale in her life, nothing basically changes - regardless of whether she gets something new or loses something, she is still dissatisfied …

Greed is a lust that cannot be satisfied.

Greed: unsatisfied lust

Fabulously rich Gordon Gekko, the main character of the film by Olivier Stone, Wall Street shocked viewers by claiming unscrupulously that "greed is good". According to many people, it is thanks to human greed that our civilization develops … because people are never fed up, so they work on a new car, even though the previous one could drive another 10 years. It is greed that makes us want to have more than we really need - new clothes, houses, cells and more and more money.

Greed is not only about material goods. One can be greedy for love - then a person can never get enough evidence that another person loves him. One can be greedy for power, recognition, even food! A person with bulimia nervosa (bulimia nervosa) wants to eat and eat until they "eat everything".

Greed can also lead to anorexia - then a person wants to be even thinner. One can read books or watch TV greedily - although it feels like it is alreadyyou should stop, but you want a little more, and a little more, and more …

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Greed: the development stage

Many psychologists are convinced that the feeling of being greedy is a necessary element of development and that it causes more mature emotions over time. A two-month-old baby still has a very poor memory, he cannot imagine that there is such a thing as time, future or past. For him, there is only the present. However, older children - at six or nine months of life (sometimes earlier, sometimes later) discover that there is cause and effect. When the baby cries, and after a while mom comes and gives him the breast, at a certain age the toddler discovers that the milk heals the unpleasantness. As a result, the child wants to get "all the milk", "drink everything" to the last drop, so that he or she feels well all the time. This is greed.

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How to control greed?

Greed is truly a "cardinal sin" - treating it in adulthood is difficult and lengthy. This is because the roots of this feeling lie deep in our personality - greed develops even when a child cannot speak or think. Understanding your problem in adulthood only partially helps.

Mature emotions are healing - if a greedy person has bonded with someone who can be generous and at the same time assertive, he has a chance to correct his personality and "contract" more mature emotions. It also helps to survive all your greed in a therapeutic setting, discover its symptoms and discuss them with a psychologist. Under the supervision of a professional, the patient can discover how irrational feelings he experiences. The personality becomes he althier and the person gradually begins to feel grateful, but the process is slow.

Gratitude as a counterweight to greed

If the baby's mind is developing properly and greed is not too strong, then soon the baby experiences a new thought: "If I eat everything, there will be nothing left." The fear that his own greed will destroy the nursing breast appears. This fear is very important because it causes mental mechanisms to inhibit greed. The child begins to protect others from his greed. New, balancing feelings emerge - the desire to protect what is a source of goodness and reassurance for the child, gratitude and care. The child also begins to feel a desire to repair the damage that, in his opinion, has caused others with his own greed - psychologists call it reparation, or you can say a desireredress, generosity.

Ultimately, thanks to the experience of greed in infancy, the older child develops more mature emotions, whose task is to overcome the destructive power of his greed.

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Greed - a force that destroys

Unfortunately, things don't always turn out so well. If greed is very strong, it cannot be stopped by any new mechanisms. How does this happen? Neglected babies experience a very strong hunger, and therefore a strong desire to satisfy it. It may be, however, that even the best parents will not inhibit the child's greed - his nervous system may be so sensitive that even a short hunger is very painful.

And then greed also grows stronger. Ba! Since a child is greedy because he finds that the breast calms him down, any unpleasant feeling can increase greed. Strong colic, illness, injury or a very painful teething, etc., can make greed permanently embedded in the personality. If this is the case, it can be said that the child's psyche is sick, because it suffers and does not develop mature feelings: gratitude, abstinence, compensation, caring for others.

When a greedy person gets even a lot, he doesn't feel grateful or want to compensate, as if he just deserves what he got. A greedy child wants to eat everything "till the end", does not think about the fact that maybe he is taking something from someone or destroying something in this way. Greedy people also have poor satisfaction with gratification, generosity, the ability to forgive and give something to others, only out of good will, without the desire to get something in return. The greedy person is only focused on taking as much as possible. She cannot be disinterested. If greed overwhelms someone's life, it makes it more and more unhappy, it is a pursuit of illusion and it brings despair. A greedy person will never get what he wants, because he always wants "more".

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Greedmay be the driving force behind action, achieving success, but it is not thanks to it that our civilization achieves progress. The world is developing in the desired direction mainly due to good will, striving to free itself from suffering and disease, creativity, curiosity and diligence. Greed is probably experienced by all people, but the objects of the feeling (e.g., money, appreciation, food) and its strength vary.Whether it has a destructive effect on our lives depends, among others, on on whether our psyche has developed defense mechanisms against it: generosity, abstinence, gratitude, selflessness.

Category:

Psychology