"Prisoner Of Your Own Mind picture" The power of abstract economic Thought

Today's standard approach to economic education assumes that it can teach students how to view the world in a fixed and unchangeable way. But where does this assumption come from? Walter Lippmann, one of the founding fathers of neoliberalism, offers us an important hint: According to him, economics is capable to implant in people's heads certain pictures about the world which unconsciously guide both our thinking and behavior without being themselves alterable by human creativity. This essay turns to three texts written by Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill und Leon Walras in order to sketch out how economics has changed over the last two centuries in order to serve this purpose. At the same time it argues that this change is neither inevitable nor without alternative. Even in economics we can regain the power of creative thinking.