My argument is the following: While there are some benchmarks for price-setting among psychoanalysts, fees are not set in stone or the same for all patients, but are up for conversation with the patient. The authors of the ad also trusted that the Argentine public would be familiar with the scene and the psychoanalytic language used. One can expect an auto mechanic to add some extras that appear during the vehicle inspection, or that each new fix adds up to the final rate, but a therapist would never charge in the same way. Luckily, our mechanics are not like auto mechanics.” The commercial comically played with the idea that certain forms of charging are appropriate for certain services, but not for others. The mother, disoriented, replies that she only brought her son for a vocational test, to which the therapist responds: “Yeah, but you know what? If I return him to you like that, you’ll end up bringing him back in a month.” The commercial ended with a sign that said “Luckily, psychologists are not like auto mechanics. When the mother asks him how much she owes him for the test, the man explains that the test was 600 pesos, but that there were a few extra problems he found and fixed: “an issue with the superego,” “fears that were not original,” so the session would cost 1200 pesos. The ad featured a therapist chatting right outside his office with the mother of a teenager who had just finished a vocational test. In 2015, a TV commercial for an Argentine car repair service used, of all things, a psychoanalyst charging for a session to show how this company was different from other auto mechanics. They have to be careful to ensure this flexibility results in morally acceptable transactions. Payments in psychoanalysis are delicate arrangements, and analysts often stress about valuation and payments. 4) The prevalence of cash, face-to-face payment without intermediaries, which helps desacralize the analyst and disentangle the session from the rest of the economic life of the analyst, but impedes evading moralization of the transaction. 3) Psychoanalysts’ elaborations on the meanings of the payment, which should reflect the uniqueness of each patient and the bond analyst-patient and symbolize the patient’s commitment to treatment, involving a cost and a loss beyond the economic. 2) A professional narrative that highlights a responsibility towards patients that should not be contaminated by economic interest. Drawing on the sociology of money, morals and markets, and valuation studies literatures, I distinguish four factors to explain this: 1) Some formally produced prices as well as market mechanisms shape benchmarks for fees, but the peculiar service psychologists offer (which makes quality judgments hard), the way patients and therapists are matched, and the lack of public information about prices allow for high flexibility in price-setting these are structural factors that remain unsaid in the conversation on fees. This negotiation is conducted with some principles of gift-giving, where parties try to give more, rather than through competitive bargaining (an inverted bazaar). Psychoanalysts do not use explicit sliding scales but rather reach an agreement about fees in conversation with the patient. This article examines valuation and payment practices of psychoanalysts in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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