An interactive workshop for psychotherapists interested in transforming their own relationship to money, while examining how “the fee” influences clinical and professional outcomes.

During this workshop you will:

• Learn to have meaningful conversations about money and ‘the fee’ that enhance the therapeutic relationship
• Expand your thinking about money beyond the practical, incorporating dimensions of privilege, power and symbolic meaning
• Gain insight into your own relationship with money, exploring and potentially transforming deep-seated dynamics

Overview

A taboo in many families and cultures, money is a potent symbol. While it can represent aspiration, status and security, for some it’s tied up with lack, envy and resentment. Money can be idealised, becoming a dominant principal in the psyche, which might starve the Self of a more meaningful living. Conversely, money can be demonised or deprioritised, especially when self esteem is low. This, in turn, may limit access to resourcing, depriving one of a capacity to manifest in the world.

Looked at through a developmental lens, both the mother and the father complexes are implicated, as are many stages of self and social identity formation. These inherited beliefs can, if unexamined, remain somatised and/or unconscious, undermining our capacity to reach toward purpose. Combined with structural disadvantage, repeating patterns of trauma can be amplified. Indeed, examining one’s relationship to money often connects us with deeply ingrained developmental and intergenerational traumas. Inner work to redefine such patterns is important psychological, spiritual and social work.

Clinically, the fee is a principal ingredient to the therapeutic frame, and remains a clinical agency throughout the therapy. Some professional bodies recommend the fee is reviewed regularly, at least in line with inflation. Yet it can be a conversation which is neglected, sometimes due to it lurking in institutional or supervisory shadow.

Despite the significance of money, many therapists treat it as a purely practical matter, or a topic not deserving of much attention in the consulting room. Many of us feel awkward about bringing it up and may avoid difficult conversations.

If we work thoughtfully and curiously with money, we can recognise power and privilege, while also helping clients grow better awareness of their own assumptions. By working with the fee in a relational, fair and transparent way, the fee can come to represent care, commitment and respect to each other and the process.

Content Structure

• Archetypal – money as a symbol; and psychic implications
• Cultural – historical and contemporary collective meanings
• Developmental – connecting symbolic meaning with the parental dyad and the life of the family, including intergenerational factors.
• Ethical – how we might consider power, privilege and fairness, without colluding with unconscious processes.
• Institutional – our own professional organisations, their norms and cultures which influence money.
• Clinical – how “the fee” might be set, maintained and adjusted and how this can be explored relationally.

Format