One aspect of our disagreement related to our responsibility as comparatively wealthy tourists in a poor country. My friend was in favour of giving more than was expected of us, because we could. Her argument was that we had a responsibility to support those who were worse off than us. Our trip was costing more than many of the people we met would have earned in a year. My response to her was that we were already supporting them, by travelling there, and buying and paying for the services and products they offered. I judged her to be reacting to their poverty from the guilt of being well-off, and I reacted to her reaction by rejecting the obligation I heard her demanding of me. It left me wondering how much is enough? For the rest of the trip and on my return home, I was still with that question.

Before training as a psychotherapist I worked in and for the accountancy profession for many years, the members of which are, in general, supporters of business and entrepreneurship. It came as somewhat of a surprise to me that having spent almost thirty years in that profession, that I was ambivalent about money issues. As I reflected on the question prompted by the incident above, How Much is Enough and its relevance for my new profession started to come into focus. Many therapists I know have been affected in a negative way by the recession, with falling client numbers, downward pressure on fees, and increasing demands for flexibility as regards appointments and scheduling. Many feel the tension between empathising with the financial struggles of those they want to help and needing to earn a sufficient living themselves.

One core issue seems to revolve around the ethics of earning a living from the pain and suffering of others. Is it unethical to earn a profit from counselling and psychotherapy? I don’t think so. But I am aware as I write that, that I am uncomfortable not so much with my answer, as with a fear of being exposed in my answer, a fear of being judged by others as materialistic, greedy, and perhaps lacking spirituality. I have struggled for some weeks to write this piece for the same reason. I am clear about my views, but unsure of how they will be received!

In his book, The Voice of Knowledge (Ruiz 2004), Miguel Ruiz describes how each of us is creating our life story all the time; a story in which we play the lead role, drawing those in our lives into our script, and assigning them roles which may have little to do with how they see themselves, and everything to do with the part we want them to play in our stories. As therapists, we may want to believe that we can see past these roles to the truth of the person beyond. However, we know that we can only see our clients through our own lenses, shaped by our culture, our family, our schooling, our religion and our experiences.

I grew up with the sayings, “Blessed are the poor” and “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”. I never really gave them much thought until recently, when it occurred to me that I had internalised them to mean that “poor people (also sick people, old people and vulnerable people) are more valued than rich people.” I found I was trying to reconcile this value with my parents’ desire that I should be financially secure and have a good standard of living. One important way in which this contradiction has impacted my life (and hence my work) has been an exaggerated sense of responsibility for others, especially those who, like Neville Symington, I see as “Poor Mary”. I have had to find a way to balance my respect for my clients’ ability and resourcefulness, with my perception of their vulnerability and fragility. In looking for that balance, I have had to look at my own shadow, my need to be important or significant to others, and where I might be looking to my client and their problems to bolster my ego. Perhaps my reaction to my friend’s desire to pay more than the going rate for a tip was the beginning of trying to free myself from these old paradigms?

And there are many other issues which arise when I start to look at the place of money in my life and in my work. For example, I ask myself whether the lens through which I view my client is also coloured by my need to earn a living? In my desire to pay the bills, am I inclined to look for my client’s problems, rather than seeing their wellness? Is there room in my work for both? In my response to what they bring, do I focus on what I see is wrong, or on where their lives are working well? Do I appreciate their growth when I see it? Do I look for that growth? And what is the impact of that on the work? I cannot hope to answer these questions for myself or for you in this short piece, but in telling you of some of the questions that I have been asking myself about this issue, I hope that you may come to find some of your own, and the answers too.