Monday, June 15, 2009

"savior complex"


Journal Entry One, June 14, 2009: Weight = 174.2; Coinage = $.79, 29 pennies, 3 nickels, 1 dime, 1 quarter; Glass bottles recovered = 4, Ground Scores = 7. Best coinage find = a curb scatter consisting of 1 quarter and 3 pennies. Finding a quarter always makes a walk. Ground scores included a working G.E. microwave and a new bathroom sink. It was the day after a yard sale. I hid the loot behind shrubs and retrieved it later with my pick up. Will run a “free” ad in the paper and give the proceeds to Friendship House, a ministry for battered women and their children. All of my coinage goes to their cause.

Journal Entry Two, June 15, 2009: Weight = 175.0, Coinage = $1.25, 50 pennies, 1 nickel, 2 dimes, 2 quarters (six pennies were residual finds); Glass bottles retrieved = 11; Ground Scores = 9; Best coinage = played a hunch, took a slightly different route to end point and found a dime/penny scatter. Interesting ground score = one perfectly working bathroom scales. I will clean and disinfect and sell it with the microwave.

Feature Entry: Numi, the World’s best at finding lost coinage west of the Mississippi River, recently said: “I love weathered coins. They are so much more fun to discover than shiny new ones!” I agree with Numi. I can’t speak for her, but I think I have a condition that Freud would have called a “savior complex.” (Note: Freud did not identify this complex but he would have had he followed the MoneyWalker’s blog. In fact there is reference to a “savior complex” in the literature but it is not listed as a pathological condition or even recognized by the psychology/psychiatry community. Maybe it should be.)

Anyway, other sources suggest that a person with a “savior complex” feels a responsibility to save the world. The person has a heart that yearns to “cure”—to experience the miracle of change brought about by one’s own doing.

Perhaps that is what I like about finding old coins. Coins were created to serve, to be of utility. Like with a soul, the longer a coin is lost and in the gutter, the less likely it will have to fulfill its destiny; saddly, to be a lost coin forever. And then to be the change agent, the person that was able to pluck the calloused and abused coin out of oblivion and replace it into useful service, ah, the pleasure of it all. And then all those calories consumed in the process.

Folks this entry could have been worse, in a future blog I will address existential personality therapy and walking to find money.

Opps, Ms Monewalker is requesting that after I finish saving the world will I mind taking out the trash. Yes dear, coming right up.

MoneyWalker

2 comments:

  1. Wow, thanks for the "World's Best" designation, even if it only for west of the Mississippi!

    Reaching back into my past psychology classes and my ten years in a psychiatry office (managing, not patient!), I'm thinking a DSM IV diagnosis might be a combination of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Delusional Disorder. The last week has brought two paper money finds so I'm definately leaning towards the narcissistic side at this time.

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  2. The Moneywalker was not ready to conced the area east of the Mississippi to the Numismatist, but if she continues to log scores of paper money, it might be inevitable.

    Now concerning the DSM IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual), I am old school and prefer to think of my condition in terms of DSM I--the failure of the suffering individual to adapt to his or her environment,i.e, pennies should be made from copper, not zinc. But Frankl's Purpose in Life stuff is coming and then we will know how sick the MoneyWalker really is.

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