Treating Wealthy Patients and Their Families: A Guide for Competent Psychotherapeutic Care

Abstract

Wealthy patients and their families often struggle to find culturally competent and sensitive psychotherapeutic treatment. Therapists bring their own issues around money into the psychotherapeutic relationship. These issues include a resistance to discussing money, resentment of people of wealth, and objectification of their patients. Competent care requires therapists to have their own process and tools to deal with these issues. Money is a highly charged and complex energetic. Like fire, money’s energetic has both productive and destructive qualities; and like fire, money’s energetic must be mindfully used and properly contained. One of the places money’s energetic is often improperly utilized is in the psychotherapeutic relationship. In this article, the author addresses the three most common issues that affect therapists’ ability to work with people of wealth and provides practical tools to assist therapists in working through these issues.