Mind Moves:The recent publication of the Rich List: the definitive guide to the wealthiest people in Britain and Ireland provides that extraordinary roll call of the rich, ranked according to their unimaginable billions.
This list focuses the minds of us other mere mortals who work nine to five for a living, on how they achieve in a day what we take years to earn. What is it like to be staggeringly wealthy? Does it require a particular personality type to want, pursue and achieve great wealth?
If so, is that capacity at the expense of other aspects of their lives and relationships, or is that idea just the rationalisation of the resentful, those who envy their good fortune, their talent for making money and their single-minded dedication to a goal.
There is no doubt that we are fascinated with money and that is why we examine the photographs and read the lists of those who have it. We scan their faces for similarities, clues as to how they build a fleet from a vehicle, an empire from a brick or an international brand from a good idea.
We hope that by understanding how they achieved their wealth that we may gain insight into that Midas money-making magic. For the wealthy seem to be gifted with financial foresight, prescience into what will pay off: what will soon become scarce, desired and lucrative.
Of course many people presume that the wealthy are just lucky: in the right place with the right finances, able to risk what others could not afford to hazard. Perhaps it takes money to make money.
But if that is so, why is the fortune created in one generation so often diluted or dismantled by the next? And how would it feel to spend a lifetime making a fortune only to have one's children squander it one lifetime later?
Some wonder if wealth is "filthy lucre", if corruption, bribery and subterfuge are involved, for how could one make so much money unless at another's expense? And in a celebrity culture, where wealth is success, they see that adulation is often afforded to the wealthy regardless of how gotten or ill-gotten their gains.
But money is also believed to buy respectability. "Make money and the whole nation will conspire to call you a gentleman," wrote George Bernard Shaw and there is no doubt that doors are opened, deference is afforded and the motto that money talks is often cruelly evident to those who were treated differently before they acquired their wealth.
The psychology of success invariably includes those factors that distinguish achievers in many domains. For some people an experience of poverty in childhood makes them determined when money comes their way, never to be needy again. Many are motivated by the thrill of the deal: the risk, the coup, stroke, takeover, and the rush of adrenaline, power, influence, control and authority that acquisition brings.
Yet for others enough is never enough. No fortune is sufficient. We are mesmerised by such people who even in advanced age still sink millions into what they may never see come to fruition. Surely they should stop in time to enjoy it?
Money and happiness are traditionally presented as if acquisition of the former means the absence of the latter. This is usually regarded as a conscience salve by the rich: psychologically denying the luxury of money while enjoying its benefits and a patronising idealisation of poverty by people who have never experienced it. In Marxist terms it justifies the inequality that makes one person the worker and the other the beneficiary of his work.
"It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money," said philosopher Albert Camus. In this he captures that oxymoronic jousting between happiness and wealth that has always dominated discussion about money. Because while money may not bring happiness, surely being miserable in material comfort is preferable to being miserable in poverty?
To idealise poverty is to patronise the poor. Equally to be jealous of wealth may be to miss the point. If money divides us, humanity unites us. When the happiness, the mental health or the lives of our children are at risk, money becomes irrelevant.
This is when the cliché your health is your wealth becomes true, this is when what money cannot buy becomes apparent, when everyone would give up everything to save a life.
"A billion dollars is not what it used to be," said multibillionaire Paul Getty. But it is a lot of money. In Ireland where we now have the highest number of millionaires per capita, this is, perhaps, an appropriate time to examine our relationship with wealth.
For to denigrate it is to dismiss the hard work, the giftedness and the good fortune of many who also share their wealth altruistically with others. There are impressive numbers of wealthy Irish people who find their greatest satisfaction in philanthropy. They have discovered the truth of the maxim that "money is a terrible master but an excellent servant".
They use their wealth to alter and save the lives of people whom they may never meet. Well done to them, well earned, enjoy.
Marie Murray is a clinical psychologist and the director of The Student Counselling Services in UCD.