The Economic Babel: The Crisis Begins at the Moment of Success

The article “The Economic Babel: The Crisis Begins at the Moment of Success” argues that economic crises do not begin when collapse becomes visible, but much earlier, at the precise moment when success ceases to be regulated in a healthy way and turns into omnipotent certainty. The text shows that markets are not destabilized only by distorted incentives, insufficient information, or excessive risk-taking, but also by a transformation in the psychic and collective relation to reality itself. One side of the self recognizes danger, while another, unconscious side pushes toward the certainty that limits have been overcome and that loss can be avoided. From this shift, omnipotence emerges. The article further argues that once a powerful experience of total control becomes established, even the smallest event that contradicts this certainty is experienced as terrifying frustration and as a rupture of cohesion. At that point, the psyche begins to function in borderline and primary terms: it shifts instantaneously from the absolutely good to the absolutely bad, from perfection to catastrophe. This logic does not remain individual. Through projective identification, psychic states are unconsciously transmitted across the collective field, so that large segments of the population, institutions, and markets begin to respond in the same absolute way. At this stage, the Babel phenomenon emerges: an excess of information, intensified communication, and proliferating analyses coexist with the collapse of shared understanding. Crisis, therefore, is not only an economic event; it is also a collective psychic dysregulation that has already begun before it becomes visible. Its prevention requires not only technical observation of markets, but also a deeper understanding of the unconscious dimensions that seek certainty, control, and the denial of limits.