Metaphors of money have shaped theories of sexual psychology ever since Enlightenment doctors explained the mind-body as an 'animal economy' whose currency was desire, figured as a liquid form of energy that could be spent or saved, profitably invested or pleasurably squandered.

In this erudite and groundbreaking book, David Bennett explores the power of economic language to mould both scientific and popular thinking about desire from the eighteenth century to the present, on topics as disparate as onanism and advertising, psychoanalysis and shopping, Christianity and communism, prostitution and revolution.

The Currency of Desire combines intellectual history with modern critical theory to shed new light on the interactions between money and desire, homo oeconomicus and homo psychologicus.