Financial Countertransference (Research)
In 2024, I began to research topics around Financial Countertransfernce. My interest is in looking at class, and class difference as it appears in the theraputic and analytic space/dyad. How do financial themes reveal themselves; how do they affect thearputic work; and how do they influence the theraputic dyad? My interest on all that is financial is vast, however, for this particular study I was curious about therapist’s experiences here.
My research is at a draft stage - I have met with a sample size of 6 psychoanalysts/psychotherapists from diverse class backgrounds for 60-90 minute for a semi-structured interview.
Abstract and Summary of Research Draft
Abstract
Financial stress is widespread in the United States but remains underexamined in psychotherapy. This study explores how financial themes arise in treatment and how they evoke countertransference in clinicians. Drawing from a literature base that frames financial trauma as akin to post-traumatic stress, semi-structured interviews were conducted with six private practice therapists of varied class backgrounds. Thematic analysis identified four core findings: clinicians’ class histories shape countertransference responses; emotional responses often accompanies conversations about money - anxiety and frustration emerges in low-fee or pro bono work; and financial countertransference can serve as a clinical tool, deepening therapeutic inquiry. These results highlight that money and class are not peripheral but embedded in the therapeutic encounter. The study underscores the importance of integrating financial narratives into clinical training, practice, and supervision.
Discusson and Future Directions
The data reveal that therapists’ class background serves not only as context but as an active site of countertransference, shaping feelings such as envy, compassion, frustration, and identification. Across participants, class background also intersected with race, migration history, and power dynamics in the therapeutic space.
As I’ve concluded my data analysis, it’s become clear that my intitial inquiry was too braod - however, it began the converstaion. I’ve become excited by the multiple directions this research could take. There is potential for deeper and more specific studies. One update to the study would be to interview therapists working outside of private practice – in community mental health, hospitals, or practices that rely primarily on insurance. A second direction would be a narrower inquiry on one specific manifestation of financial countertransference, such as therapis tfrustration around low-feework. This could explore how that frustration is shaped by the therapist’s class identity and economic history. A third direction that I am particularly drawn to the idea of a more focused study exploring how therapists with histories of financial trauma, likely from working-class or middle-class backgrounds, navigate financial countertransference in their clinical work. Coincidently, my call for particpants reached mostly middle and upper class clinicians. I’ve realized that this shifted inquiry, in fact, may bring me closer to my initial interest and to my hypothesis. This study would focus on how therapists’ unresolved financial histories may surface in treatment, shaping their responses to client concerns of money, boundaries, worth, and care.