Central to modern psychoanalytical theory is the relation 
between the money complex and the human body. Some 
analysts derive money from the infantile impulse to play with 
feces. Ferenczi, in particular, calls money “nothing other than 
odorless dehydrated filth that has been made to shine.” 
Ferenczi, in his concept of money, is elaborating Freud’s 
concept of “Character and Anal Erotism.” Although this idea of 
linking “filthy lucre” with the anal has continued in the main 
lines of psychoanalysis, it does not correspond sufficiently to 
the nature and function of money in society to provide a theme 
for the present chapter.

     Money began in nonliterate cultures as a commodity, 
such as whales’ teeth on Fiji; or rats on Easter Island, which 
later were considered a delicacy, were valued as a luxury, and 
thus became a means of mediation or barter. When the