Universal Journal of Psychology 4(6): 277-284, 2016 http://www.hrpub.org DOI: 10.13189/ujp.2016.040605 Psychological Factors Involved in Banking, as Encountered in Two Novels Sinan Çaya Institute of Marine Administration and Sciences, Istanbul University, Turkey Copyright©2016 by authors, all rights reserved. Authors agree that this article remains permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License Abstract This article compares an American bank in an unknown state in the United States in 1970s with a French bank of 1850s in Paris. Even though those monetary institutions are fictitious as given, one can indeed infer a lot of truth and realism behind the hidden transcripts. As presented in the involved literary works; the French bank depicted by Émile Zola and the American bank thought up by Arthur Hailey are, despite the differences in time and geography; very similar in their functions. The former is only more deeply embedded in the stock exchange while the latter is essentially dependent upon loans made possible thanks to depositors. A war of nerves and extreme stress underline the themes of both of those superb novels. Keywords Bank, Banking, Money, Stock Exchange, Shares, Profit, Gain, Feelings 1. Introduction: Two Banks, Different Dates and Countries The original version of this manuscript was a graduate term-paper (submitted to Assoc. Prof. Mahmut Tekçe), which the author (yours truly) developped in a hedonist attitude, with great pleasure! Unlike most other compulsary papers along the course of my graduate-years; this paper was far from being an obligation or drudgery merely aiming at the fulfilment of a requirement. The work makes a comparison of a French bank with an Amercan one. Timing is wide apart between the two. Nevertheless; both are western countries and in both it is the capitalist economic system which prevails. Those two sheer criteria render the attempted comparison quite plausible, indeed. I had run into the French work in a half-price bookstore, by chance. This coincidence spurred my memory and made me remember about the other book. I got to search the other book in other second-hand book dealers in Istanbul. And I eventually located it somewhere.No offence, on my part! One might as well go ahead and label all that work an opportunistic research, based on the serendipitious (accidental) discovery of the mentioned French novel.. Émile Zola’s main character in the naturalistic novel L’Argent (money) [1], is Aristide Saccard, an incorrigible financier who had previously lost fortunes at the stock exchange. He is impressed by his engineer-neighbor Hamelin’s projects about prospective construction activities with a Catholic-missionary purpose, in the Anatolian part of the Ottoman territory as far as to Jerusalem. Establishing passenger ship companies, exploiting mines near the Carmel Mountain, construction of railroads mines are among the foreseen developments. Seizing the chance of joining forces with this technical master mind, this time he intends to start again, but solely to accomplish gigantic gains for his part. The two men get in league with other acquaintances of Saccard and set up the Universal Bank (1) (Banque Universelle) whose directorate is now incumbent upon Saccard. From the very beginning, he and his associates essentially buy their own stocks instead of exposing them to the public in entirety. They conceal this fishy, manipulative maneuver via a few dummy persons visible at the front scene. In actuality, whatever the country in question happens to be, certain formal and indispensable steps are required by law in setting up a finance business: [For instance] After the decision to offer the company to the general public, a stockbroker is needed for the process of flotation [or going public]. A prospectus must be drawn up. This document sets out the details of the company structure, the history of the business, full names and addresses of the directors, the profit end expansion projects audited by another firm of accountants. In the past some very dubious schemes have been foisted [concealed, hidden, covered up] on the general public with very little true information to back up extravagant claims. As a result people were misled and money lost [2]. Hamelin’s sister displays that she read the statute-book (le Code) and distinguishes between obligations (where there is no game and a certain percentage goes to the lender) and actions (in the case of which the associated person runs the