ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the class-related experiences and concerns of therapists from diverse backgrounds, as subjects within the profession, drawing on the author's research and other writings. These often painful and conflicted experiences suggest much about the implicit structure and hierarchies of the field, in the various enactments and denials of class that abound. Social mobility presents a particular conjuncture of the social and the psychic and illustrates how the divisions of the social world are lived out personally, how class becomes embodied and has its enduring effects. Class transitions illustrate some of what is involved in the psychic life of class and its enduring effects. The huge struggle and persistence needed against various barriers cannot be overestimated, nor the lifelong effects of lesser economic capital or inherited wealth. Therapists' own experiences as patients provide some voices from the couch, to put alongside their thoughts about their work as therapists.
