Most of us do our jobs to get paid. Even if we like our work, even if we’re good at it, most of us would bail on our jobs if we got rich somehow. Grifters therapists are just like everyone else in this regard. After all it’s possible to help people for free, like working on a crisis line, and probably some therapists do that as well. The rest just want to earn.
The money can be pretty good. Say a therapist charges $100 per hour and bills 1200 hours per year, roughly 26 hours per week, 46 weeks of the year (which is a lot less than most people work), that’s $120 000. Knock off $20K for office rental, phone, computer, website, advertising and other overheads. That’s $100K in taxable income, still not bad. Take a third off for taxes and other deductions (the same ones every working person pays), that leaves a take-home annual income of $67 000, which I’m guessing is well above the median or average take-home income in many wealthy countries. Hell, it’s more than I take home and I’m pretty comfortable. Full disclosure: I don’t have kids or a mortgage. But plenty of people who do have kids and mortgage would thank their lucky stars if they took home $67K per year and they would work 40 hours per week, every week of the year, to get it. Without a word of complaint either.
Sure, it’s easy to challenge these numbers since taxes and overheads will vary widely between locations. But so will therapy fees; you can be sure that NYC therapists charge a lot more than Tallahassee therapists. So I figure it evens out and my example isn’t too far off the mark.
Not that it’s easy for therapists to book 1200 hours every year. They often must work evenings and weekends, since their Marks clients are people who can afford expensive therapy sessions and tend to be at work on weekdays. Every Mark that leaves must be replaced. Some cities have an over-supply of therapists and competition is fierce. Grifters need to hustle to keep their schedules full.
How do therapists hustle? Generally in two ways: Recruiting new marks and upselling current marks. Which do you think is easier? Yeah… this whole thing of therapists never thinking that you’ve done quite enough work, gone quite deep enough into your issues yet… yeah, starting to make more sense now, isn’t it?
Google “terminating therapy” or a similar phrase and notice how many articles – written by therapists, of course – say that you should not quit therapy without first discussing it with your therapist. That’s so they can talk you into staying for three or four “termination sessions” during which they find some bullshit reason why you need stick around for a year.
Google “unconscious fiscal convenience” too. Yeah, there’s even a name for this dynamic.
Also, there is a niche market of therapists offering other therapists help to build their practices, for a fee of course. This indicates just how precarious many therapists’ financial situations really are 1) because there is a market for such a service and 2) so many therapists have the time to try to fill the demand.
The challenge of making a full-time income as a therapist partly explains why so many therapists are women and work part-time. They have a partner who brings in the household’s primary income. The therapy practice brings in money for extras like vacations or kitchen re-modelling. Maybe it’s something she’s trying out because her kids are older and she has more time, and it’s way less of a drag than working for an employer. I think there is a danger of such therapists not being invested enough in their therapy practice. It’s more like a hobby to them and if it doesn’t work out, whatevs. Imagine putting your trust and your emotional well-being in the hands of someone with those motivations.
Money is one of the major reasons why I believe therapy is a con. The therapy industry presents itself as only interested in your well-being, but this is a lie. Therapists, being human, are as prone to self-interest as anyone else and it takes a lot of discipline to set self-interest aside. Most of us only do it for people we really love. Grifters don’t love their Marks, but they love the cash.
Doing a survey of therapists’ marketing websites, the graphics, the magical promises, is a trip in itself.
Yes, I’ve found some of these people offering therapists help in marketing their business. I can’t begrudge them for doing so, after all it is their profession and they need to make a living.
The reason I wrote about it on my blog is to remind patients that their therapist is making a living off them! Many patients find their therapist so benevolent and they may be, but they rarely counsel for free. Or, they make up charging less and make it up on a good paying client. Fact of the industry.
Yeah, it’s all a performance.
Hi,
yes money is the major factor. Before haring any Therapists you should make sure that he should deserve what you pay.
I found this page from Googling, “harmful psychotherapy,” while laying in bed crying that I’d given away precious parts of myself to someone who didn’t truly care. I didn’t even go into therapy expecting to find caring, I just felt like I needed to talk to someone who would listen.
Then when the therapist did express so much caring, I was bowled over. Finally! Someone gets it! I think I fell in love with that – who wouldn’t?
But finally, I learned the harsh truth and it was painful indeed. I don’t need to pay $170 an hour to make myself vulnerable to someone who pretends to care about me.
I’m a so-called high-functioning person, with a degree of power in the business world. Didn’t think I’d be an easy mark. Didn’t think I’d find myself crying over my therapist!
Your personal emotions and psychology are sacred. Why risk your stability with someone who is *guaranteed* to let you down? (Because no person is perfect.) Hell, it’s not even the therapists’ fault. They buy into the lie too. They think they are helping but probably the best thing they could do is say, “There’s nothing wrong with you. You don’t need me.”
Ouch. That’s just it, isn’t it? They’re pretending to care, but it is never openly acknowledged. So you are on your own when it’s time to deal with that.
Yes, exactly!
I don’t think there is anything wrong with being in it for the money, per se. I’m a business person. Many non-family relationships are an economic exchange of some sort.
It’s the fact that the one-sidedness of the relationship goes unacknowledged in therapy.
Also, therapists have all these terms for acting and behaving therapeutically, which really is a fake way to be so that the client feels “safe.” They consider their therapy personality to be “self of the therapist” (like an actor putting on a costume), and they have a “stance” called “unconditional positive regard,” which is unnatural to real life and designed to build your trust.
What you are paying for is an unnatural relationship. Nobody would sit for free and listen to your troubles for an hour, with “unconditional positive regard” for you. That’s why it’s so expensive, because the service itself is so unnatural. (Like prostitution in a way, it seems like.)
Problem is, once this trust is built, it is one sided. It flows from client to the therapist, but not the other way. And yeah, you’re on your own when the truth slams into you like a truck one day that this person in your life who knows all of your secrets really doesn’t give a shit about you. I knew this intellectually, but I didn’t KNOW it in my heart until after it was over.
It’s like going through a breakup, or finding out your lover cheated on you.
I had an ethical therapist who saw me getting attached and essentially pushed me away. Maybe for my own good? The therapist was one of those who did it on the side and didn’t need the money – a problem in itself because this therapist wasn’t good at promptness and customer service. Lose lose for the client!
The rise of therapy speaks to a harsh society with little time for fulfilling interpersonal relationships. We have to schedule and pay for our caring.
Spot on, especially the last sentence. And I find that when I am willing to listen to someone’s troubles for an hour with (more or less) unconditional positive regard (i.e. just being a good friend), I get MILKED DRY. It becomes the whole friendship, the basis for every conversation. I think many people are so desperate for quality attention that when they finally get a bit of it, they lose self-awareness and ramble on. I have actually ended friendships over this, because the other person simply could or would not see me as anything but a shoulder to cry on. I’m not an especially warm person or good listener, so I don’t think it’s me. I think I’m just bumping up against a symptom of problems in the broader culture. I touch on this a bit in my Q&A post.
I would be FAR less critical of the therapy industry if they owned up to all this stuff, informed clients of these risks and worked with them on avoiding the complications. You are right to mention prostitutes – they could probably give the therapists a few pointers on how to keep things strictly business!
You might be interested in the podcasts of the Marxian economist Rick Wolff and his psychotherapist wife, Harriet Fraad. They discuss how capitalism has eroded community and family relationships, particularly in the last 30 years. Notice how pretty much EVERY aspect of life is now commercialized, even things that were formerly done out of familial love, friendship, etc as a matter of course? We pay to have our children and aging parents cared for, to find dates, and – in therapy – to be known and understood.
New York magazine had an article a few years ago about the spa industry, and how women spend more on massage, facials, mani-pedis and so on as a way to get emotional needs met. It’s here: http://nymag.com/beauty/features/41280/ (notice that spa workers are sometimes called therapists!)
So, our culture is in a bad way when it comes to emotional health. I think therapy is a symptom of it, not a cure.
This is brilliant:
“I would be FAR less critical of the therapy industry if they owned up to all this stuff, informed clients of these risks and worked with them on avoiding the complications. … Notice how pretty much EVERY aspect of life is now commercialized, even things that were formerly done out of familial love, friendship, etc as a matter of course? We pay to have our children and aging parents cared for, to find dates, and – in therapy – to be known and understood.”
…I’m checking out the New York mag story. It’s funny that you link to that because just last week I decided that the next time I need to feel cared for, I will get an hour massage. Then, I don’t have to get emotionally attached or share too much of myself.
My massage “therapist” charges a high rate, but not nearly so much as the therapist. It’s a more honest exchange.
Thanks for responding to me so thoroughly. Really appreciate it. Your blog is, dare I say?, therapeutic!
I applaud your honesty. It is about time people stand up and say ENOUGH with the abusive therapy. Cognitive behavioral therapy is a joke. And Dialectical behavioral therapy the new fad is a joke. I have been through over thirty years of therapy and my life is still not worth living. I started when I was 8 years old. In the last three years I went to a peer support therapy group which you pretty much get therapy from a bunch of inexperienced therapists and your peers in the group. I went to 25 hours a week at 5 hours a day and 5 days a week. I got kicked out of therapy because I made a complaint against the caseworker and therapist. The caseworker was putting degrading things about clients on twitter. One of his tweets was making fun of a ciient with no teeth. I complained and next thing I know I am thrown out of therapy. They told me to go to another place that was too far away. The state of Illinois did nothing to help me. Looking back with some clarity I see therapy is a big joke. It just keeps fat ceo’s of the social service agencies making all the money. The clients continue to suffer and get no where. In three years of all the day therapy I went to I didn’t see one client making progress. The state pays 90.00 per half hour per client per day. That is 1350.00 a week per client. There are about 20 client on average per day. Some of these people in this group have been coming 30 years. Than the organization called pillars in Illinois made up lies about me to get rid of me. They told the state that I was negative toward my peers and disruptive in groups. I was never disruptive or negative toward peers. I was the highest functioning person there. I was more than kind to my peers. Now they say oh cients are saying they don’t want me back. I am like I cannot think of one person that would not want me back. These low life scumbag therapist make up things to get rid of you. If they ever read about me in the newspaper I will make sure to leave a note outlining what the therapists drove me to do.
When I quit therapy, I used the money I was saving to schedule a weekly massage instead. I feel more stable, grounded, happy, and relaxed after 6 months than I ever did.