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Herron and Welt set out to write the definitive book on fees. They discuss patients, therapists, society, government, morality, history, theory, philosophy, shibboleth, truth, and even a little psychoanalysis. Their overriding concern is that the fee, “a basic element of the psychotherapeutic process…” (p. 3), is avoided by patients and
therapists alike. Actually, the authors contend, therapists are the more frequent culprits.
Without being able to validate this assertion, I would nonetheless agree that therapists have a very difficult time using the fee constructively. The issue, to my mind, is more one of the therapeutic use of the fee, much in the way that an analyst would try to use any other form of reality that becomes imbricated in the treatment process. That all reality is suffused with fantasy just makes the fee that much more ripe for investigation.
This could be a promising beginning. Unfortunately, Money Matters never quite gets going. It raises several interesting questions, research findings, and possible suggestions. There is not enough in-depth analysis (not psychoanalysis), however. For example, the authors cite a study suggesting that female therapists have a harder time with fees than do their male counterparts. They offer one tentative hypothesis for this discrepancy, namely, that women are reared to spend and men to invest. Thus women are unprepared to deal with money at the same time as they remain mystified by its properties and possibilities. This is okay as far as it goes, which, sadly, is not very far.
Perhaps the first thing to point out about this book is that it rests on what I would describe as a personal position presented as fact. To wit: “Therapists know the fee is a basic ingredient of the psychotherapeutic process, but they do not like it” (p. 7). Having written and presented on the fee myself, I am very sympathetic to both the importance and the difficulty attached to the fee, its meaning, and any discussion about them. Outside of