ABSTRACT
For many patients, the fact of having to pay for a therapist’s time and attention is bound to evoke early emotional wounds. Money evokes feelings about the self, feelings about money as the object and yokes them affectively. For example, the masochistic defense binds a sense of the self as victim and the money-object as victimizer, and the affect that binds them is resentment. When these issues are acted out with money, the money itself comes to represent the control of a domineering parent, and self-defeating or passiveaggressive financial behavior comes to represent the feeling of resentment. It is no wonder then that the act of paying for therapy may well become fertile ground for acting out. The masochist may, for example, act out in passive-aggressive ways by not paying the bill, forgetting the checkbook, bouncing checks, and so forth.
