The ‘do-something’ culture of the financial world is ill-equipped to deal with panic, says psychoanalyst Coline Covington
There is no petrol in the state of Tennessee. And for the first time in four years, the Dow Jones has fallen below the critical 10,000 mark. In London, too, shares fell yesterday to a four-year low. In short, panic has set in with the result that people are buying feverishly or not at all.
Our word 'panic' comes from the Greek god, Pan, the herdsman, who was famous for being able to inspire fear and disorder among people. The Olympian victory over the assault of the Titans was attributed to Pan's power to create a 'panic'. Whoever falls under the spell of a 'panic' is in serious trouble.
The collapse of the financial markets has created a worldwide panic with inevitable repercussions. Even those who may be relatively untouched by what is going on have cause to worry. Individuals and institutions express their panic in one of two ways with
strikingly similar effects. There is the lemming-like behaviour in which, pressed to survive, the individual will carry on regardless of the circumstances, continuing to be active until he has actually jumped off the cliff into the icy waters to reach the other side. A perilous decision but one that is, ironically, in keeping with the way many financial institutions are run. In retrospect, Lehman Brothers' plummet seems to fall into just this kind of category.
There is a well-established ethos in the City that is at the core of free market capitalism which is to be active, to produce, to acquire, to grow, to be in control. In short, it is to be powerful. The ones who get to the top are often or at least, so the mythology goes, the ones who are most driven and ruthless and, significantly, most active. They do more deals, make more money, and increasingly take more risks. We are now seeing this spiral unravelling with a trajectory just as breathtaking as its rise.
When those who are most driven and who are most anxious about staying in control face imminent danger, the reaction is more often 
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