The Therapeutics of the Fee in Psychoanalysis

This paper seeks to provide context for the fee and its varied meanings in the ordinary workings of psychoanalytic treatment. Drawing in particular on the contributions of D.W. Winnicott, it sets out a framework for approaching the topics of fee-setting, raising and reduction, and seeks to account for the difficulties that ensue when practitioners accept fees or allow debts that are out of sync with their personal needs for monetary compensation. It argues that the integrating rituals around fee payment, indispensable as they are to the material foundations of psychoanalytic practice, are also intrinsic to the vitality of analytic relationship as a therapeutic system or “analytic third.”