Dr. Sally Donaldson is a psychoanalytically trained psychotherapist with experience in negotiating issues around inherited wealth.
Money questions will be treated by cultured people in the same manner as sexual matters, with the same inconsistency, prudishness and hypocrisy
+1 212-375-1816
26 West 9th Street, 9B New York, N.Y. 10011
sallykdonaldson@gmail.com
While sex has come out of the closet into our face, money is the last bastion of secrecy. It is spoken about with the same inconsistency, prudishness and hypocrisy Freud noted in 1913. When money is treated like a dirty little secret not to be discussed in polite company it’s subject to all manner of distorted fantasies. Ambivalence around money is revealed in the way the makers of large fortunes are either glamorized as celebrities or demonized as responsible for the country’s social ills.
No matter what one’s actual financial situation, almost everyone has complicated feelings about money that they’re reluctant to share. But as the Inheritance Project teaches us, people who inherit enough money not have to earn a living are in a particularly complicated situation. They cannot claim ownership of their wealth because they are rich through a parent or grandparent’s efforts. Young adults who inherit hefty incomes often question whether or not they can stand on their own. An independent income can prolong a dependency on family because getting a first job that pays a living wage, a traditional rite of passage into autonomy isn’t necessary. Growing up in comfort creates an expectation that the heir must do something impressive to be worthy of his/her inheritance. Early post-college jobs like waitressing, bartending, babysitting are seen as beneath them. But like most twenty-somethings they’re not sure what they want to do with their lives.
I became involved with the Inheritance Project through my friendship with Barbara Blouin who I met in college. Post college, Barbara lived a modest, tasteful life in Berkeley in keeping with the graduate students we knew. I realized that there must be money there when she bought a large house without having a regular job. Since I had income from a trust fund that I was doing my best to hide by working several “cover jobs,” I was relieved to know someone else with independent means, though I never acknowledged our commonality. Throughout our various paths in life, hers in embracing Buddhism, mine through a PhD in psychology and psychoanalytic training, we never discussed money or questioned each other on how we could afford to go long stretches without being gainfully employed.
” I was relieved to know someone else with independent means “
Once Barbara owned her position as an inheritor and began interviewing other heirs, I came out of the closet and acknowledged to my inheritance. We were both astonished that it had taken us twenty years to have this conversation. Like her other interviewees I found solace in finally having a place to tell my story. Though I had done a fair amount of work in psychoanalysis around my negative feelings toward my rich grandmother and my father’s belief that having inherited money was the source of all problems, the talks with Barbara were different. Looking at my history through the single lens of money, and by extension class, new things came into focus while others solidified. In the process I arrived at a place where I no longer felt defined, either positively or negatively, by my inheritance. It was just something I was born with like being female or blonde.
In my training as a psychotherapist, money was discussed with a prospective clients in the beginning when a fee is set and rarely mentioned thereafter. I assumed that questions about salary, assets, and real estate were the purview of financial planners. Now I see that by avoiding these questions, especially when a client presents as comfortably well off, I’d joined the culture’s queasiness around money. Inquiring into how much someone has inherited yields essential information. A person can experience as much guilt and confusion over a two hundred thousand dollar inheritance as one in the multiple millions. Feeling different from others and shame around privilege doesn’t have a number attached to it.
“Inquiring into money without being seen as rude or envious can be tricky. “
Similarly, questions about where the money came from and how much someone thinks their family is worth speak directly to the family’s dynamics around secrecy, favoritism, inclusion, and exclusion. Often parents warn their children against speaking to anyone outside the family about money lest it engender envy in the other person. This injunction applies to therapists as well, so inquiring into money without being seen as rude or envious can be tricky. But there’s also relief in ‘talking dirty’, talking numbers and telling inadmissible family secrets. Sometimes it’s important to break through heirs’ willful ignorance about their family’s financial situation so they can get a realistic picture of what they’re dealing with. Sometimes having money is blamed for one’s difficulties, thereby exonerating the family dynamics in which money is embedded.
The process by which an heir claims an inheritance as a viable part of oneself, which can be used to benefit others as well as oneself, involves getting past the idealization, demonization, and projections that wealth accrues in one’s family and in the culture at large. One has to accept that, while money affords certain advantages, it doesn’t make one more special or less valid than anyone else. Whether clients find me after being inspired by The Inheritance Project’s website or I guide them there, many heirs have been empowered by reading these personal stories of how others have struggled with issues around inheritance. As one heir said, “ I can’t believe this website exists! I didn’t know other people had problems with inheritance. I thought I was crazy for feeling this way. Thank you.”