Money is Symbolic

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Money is Symbolic

Money is rarely just about money. It carries the symbolic weight of survival, power, deprivation, shame, control, freedom, and love. In our homes and social settings, money and sex are two of the most difficult topics to speak openly about. Both are loaded with emotions like envy, guilt, pride, and powerlessness. Our early experiences of being provided for or denied financial security or instability form the unconscious groundwork of how we relate to money later in life.

In many families, money is used as a medium of control: allowances are granted or withdrawn, financial boundaries are drawn without explanation, or expectations of gratitude are tied to material support. Children internalize these dynamics, often associating money with approval, dependency, or punishment. When adult conversations about hurt, vulnerability, or helplessness are silenced, money becomes a stand-in - a symbolic expression of needs, fears, and unspoken desires.

Therapy, being a reflective mirror of the external world, cannot remain untouched by these meanings. The therapeutic space often holds a tension around fees: the transactional nature of payment juxtaposed with the deeply personal nature of the work. Therapists may feel the need to reassure clients that they care beyond the fee. Yet, this anxiety itself reflects broader societal discomfort: are we suspicious of care that is paid for? Do we believe love or authenticity cannot coexist with monetary exchange?

This links to Carrington’s idea of emotional currency, where money in relationships functions as a symbol of emotional exchange—affection, recognition, care, or resentment. Byng-Hall extends this to intergenerational narratives, where money often represents unresolved relational scripts. Someone who fears that a therapist is “just doing it for the money” may be enacting a deeper belief—perhaps that love is conditional, that trust can be bought, or that vulnerability is unsafe.

We describe people as stingy, generous, hoarding, or extravagant—not just in money but in emotion. These adjectives often describe emotional tendencies too. One may “withhold” affection, “spend” energy on others, “invest” in relationships, or feel “bankrupt” emotionally. These metaphors are not accidental. They point to how money becomes a language for emotional life.

So when people we work with raise questions about fees or seem uneasy with the financial structure of therapy, it may not be “just” about the money. It could be about the fear of exploitation, the longing to be seen without having to pay, the shame of needing, or a belief that care must be earned. Addressing these symbolic meanings becomes an essential part of the therapeutic process.

Therapy, after all, is a space to engage with what is emotionally and symbolically charged. Money, as emotional currency, often reveals a person's internal world: their histories of attachment, their sense of worth, and the stories they have inherited about love and survival.

In therapy, these dynamics enter silently. As Muriel Dimen observes in "Money, Love and Hate: A Psychoanalytic Point of View", money is never just about the fee. It's about the contradictions that lie at the core of intimacy and exchange. The very structure of therapy, a relationship rooted in care that is also paid for—can stir anxieties. Can love be bought? Can care be authentic if it's compensated?

These questions are not abstract. They appear in the subtle hesitations, the missed sessions, the feelings of resentment, guilt, or fear around payment. Feuerstein, in “Money as a Value in Psychotherapy,” reminds us that money represents not just symbolic meaning but a cultural and personal value system. For some, paying for therapy may feel like an investment in the self. For others, it may trigger feelings of undeservedness or evoke a transactional worldview where emotional support must be earned, not freely given.

There is shame in needing help. There is shame in not being able to afford help. And sometimes, there is shame in being able to afford it. These feelings are rarely articulated, but they shape the therapeutic alliance.

Richard Trachtman, in “Beyond the Fee: The Emotional Meaning of Money in Psychotherapy,” argues that clinicians often underestimate the emotional content of monetary exchange. He suggests that the therapist’s own relationship to money—fears of being greedy, anxieties about charging too much or too little—also shape the therapy. Therapists may over-accommodate, undercharge, or over-explain their fees in an attempt to “prove” that they care. But isn’t this a symptom of a wider problem—where we assume care and compensation cannot co-exist? That working for love and working for money are mutually exclusive?

Money reflects a symbolic system that predates language. Before we can speak, we are dependent on others for food, shelter, comfort. Money, later, becomes a way to symbolically negotiate these early needs? (Maybe?) In therapy, when clients/patient/person question the cost, miss payments, or hesitate to discuss fees, it’s rarely “just” about the money. It’s about trust, vulnerability, and worth. The fee becomes a site of transferential meaning.

When someone fears that a therapist is only working “for the money,” we must ask: where does this belief come from? Perhaps it's not about the therapist at all. Perhaps it's about a worldview shaped by betrayal, scarcity, and emotional inconsistency. The person may carry an internal logic that love always has a price—or that emotional safety is a luxury, not a right.

This belief, if left unexplored, can distort not just the therapeutic relationship but all relationships. It can breed suspicion, withhold trust, and reinforce a deep existential fear: that no one truly gives without expecting something in return.

So perhaps what’s uncomfortable about money in therapy is not its presence—but what it reveals.

Even Freud? Maybe we all do find it difficult?

References:

Carrington, L., & Byng-Hall, J. (1989). Money and emotional currency in family therapy. In P. Gale & G. A. H. Fava (Eds.), Money matters: The fee in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis (pp. 99–112). Jason Aronson.

Dimen, M. (1994). Money, love, and hate: Contradiction and paradox in psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 4(1), 69–100.

Feuerstein, M. (2002). Money as a value in psychotherapy. The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 62(3), 255–271.

Trachtman, R. (1999). Beyond the fee: The emotional meaning of money in psychotherapy. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 36(1), 12–23.