Quote:
Originally Posted by Xynesthesia
Would you elaborate more on how a policy like that is part of therapy and how it is fair not being able to skip a session, whether it is due to emergency/sickness or just wanting a break? I can't come up with an explanation, no matter how I try to think about it, other than inappropriate reasons for the T to demand a "salary", like stopdog said. I understand the value of learning/improving discipline very well, but this is a very inappropriate way of doing that , IMO, way too far and unrealistic. I can't think of any decent occupation, engagement, school, job, whatever, that would demand this on an ongoing, long-term manner, unless it is some destructive system, dictatorship or other abuse of power. How can that be therapeutic? People can exercise and talk about discipline and responsibility without being forced into dictatorship and submission.
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I see it differently. The OP wants to skip the session because of things that have come up in therapy. Not because they would have duties at school or work, or health related emergency. Yes, they want a break, for reasons related to therapy and that's why this is part of therapy. They can skip the session, no one denies that, but the session must be payed for.
It is not dictatorship or abuse of power. The OP has any time the power to decide that they are not fine with this kind of agreement and choose another therapist who has a different policy.
Also, as it has been mentioned several times, this is quite common policy among psychoanalytic therapists. The patient is given a time slot and they don't ever have to worry that someone else is ever scheduled to that time slot. But that means that if the person is not coming then the therapist really has no opportunity to do anything else and thus it seems rather logical to pay for the time anyway.
Of course, one option would be to just make the fees higher to account in for possible cancellations. However, my understanding is that many psychoanalytic therapists work with a sliding scale to make long term regular therapy affordable to people. For instance, my session fee is not a list fee but is a result of the negotiations between me and T and it is such that it was affordable to me and still acceptable to T. If I would insist that I want the opportunity to cancel then probably that would mean that the general fee has to rise.