David Tuckett

The 2008 financial crisis showed that human emotion has a critical impact on financial markets. Until now, economic theories have failed to take this into account.

Psychoanalysis Comparable & Incomparable:
The Evolution of a Method to Describe and Compare Psychoanalytic Approaches

How do we know when what is happening between two people should be called psychoanalysis? What is a psychoanalytic process and how do we know when one is taking place?

Profile

David Tuckett trained in Economics, Medical Sociology and Psychoanalysis and is Professor and Director of the Centre for the Study of Decision-Making Uncertainty at UCL in the Faculty of Brain Sciences, as well as a Fellow of the Institute of Psychoanalysis in London. He works part-time in clinical practice but since winning a 2006 Leverhulme Research fellowship for a "psychoanalytic study of investment markets" has been collaborating with a range of colleagues to introduce psychoanalytical understanding to behaviour in the financial markets and the economy more generally. His book Minding the Markets: An Emotional Finance View of Financial Instability was published in New York and London by Palgrave Macmillan in June 2011 and a further monograph written with Professor Richard Taffler (University of Warwick School of Management) entitled "Fund Management: An Emotional Finance Perspective" was published by the Research Foundation of CFA Institute. Prior to this he received the 2007 Sigourney Award for distinguished contributions to the field of psychoanalysis. He has published books and articles in sociology, psychoanalysis, economics, and finance and is a former President of the European Psychoanalytic Federation, Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and Principal of the Health Education Studies Unit at the University of Cambridge.

Current Research

Finance and Economics

Psychoanalysis

Professor David Tuckett has been awarded nearly $250,000 to research the role of emotions in economics.

The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) grant will enable Professor Tuckett to examine how unconscious processes can cause swings in the financial markets.

The research, which will take place over 2.5 years, will be based on interdisciplinary insights into the social and psychological context that trading financial assets create and in which decisions are made.

Clinical Methods Workshops take place at various psychoanalytic conferences and congresses. They are based on the method devised by David Tuckett and colleagues within the European Psychoanalytic Federation Working Party on Comparative Clinical Methods. The material here is designed to help those preparing to attend:

Press & Publications

Recent & Forthcoming Publications

Recent Press

2011- Financial markets are markets in stories: Some possible advantages of using interviews to supplement existing economic data source. Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, forthcoming.

How to save the Euro

2011- Inside and outside the window: Some fundamental elements in the theory of psychoanalytic technique. International Journal of Psychoanalysis. (Forthcoming)

Greed and Restitution

2009 - Addressing the Psychology of Financial Markets

When devils strike:
Explaining how banks lost so much money is easier than why they did

(2008) (with Junkers, G and Zachrisson, A) To Be or Not To Be A Psychoanalyst - How do we know a Candidate is ready to Qualify? Difficulties and Controversies in Evaluating Psychoanalytic Competence. Psychoanalytic Inquiry. 28:3, 288-308.

You can't expect anyone investing $1bn to be fully rational

2008 Phantastic Objects

College professor says clients listen to their hearts

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