Valuation and Meanings of Money in Psychoanalytical Treatment in Argentina

• In Event: 3224 - The Meanings of Money, Property, and Relationships

Abstract

This paper analyzes the valuation and meanings of money among psychoanalysts in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a country with a disproportionate number of psychologists for the size of its population, its level of economic development, and the strength of its social welfare services. The main feature of this valuation is the generalized view that patients should not pay all the same. Setting the price per session is a result of a conversation with the patient about how much of the cost they can afford. This conversation resembles in part the economy of the bazaar, in which the parties reach a price through a process of offers and counter-offers. However, the rules of this conversation are opposite to those of bargaining, as both parties seek a fair price based on moral signals of disinterest and reflecting mutual efforts to appreciate the situation of the other. For many psychoanalysts, this process of valuation is uncomfortable and is an opportunity to think about their own difficulties in this regard, often in their own analysis as patients. This is due in part to the very nature of a bond that is typical of an ‘economy of care,’ which requires intimacy and in which the economic element must be negotiated carefully. But it is also due to the particular bond established in psychoanalytic therapy (transference), of which payment is a part, and whereby the idea that it is a payment for a service is seen by professionals with ambivalence. The invocation of the passion for clinical activity as well as the sensitivity for the other and the prioritization of the continuity of the treatment indicate a conscious process of valuation with reference to moral values, obligations to others, and visions about the meaning of a professional practice.

Author

• Daniel G. Fridman, University of Texas-Austin