Posted by pegasus on April 23, 2004, at 12:53:34
In reply to Re: Ts: Field choice *always* = caring? (opinion) » spoc, posted by Dinah on April 23, 2004, at 11:58:10
I agree with Dinah. I never saw being a psychotherapist as a particularly high paying job at all. In fact, I'm in grad school now to become a T, and I see it as a huge step down, income-wise from my current job (which is a good living, but nothing exceptional). Aside from the rent and insurance that Dinah mentioned, Ts who are self employed (as most of them are) have quite a lot more taxes than non-self employed people do (self employment tax runs about 13% on top of other taxes). And most of them spend considerably more time on their clients than the 50 minute session. They have to review and plan and consult, etc. A lot of them don't see clients 8 hours a day, so a lot of their "work" time is not directly being paid for by anyone. They also have to participate in continuing ed regularly, to keep their licenses (and they pay for that, although I would hope some of it is a tax write off). It's not just sitting there listening to folks in 50 minute chunks and then running off to the bank, laughing about the $100 they just got.
Also, I really think that a *good* T wouldn't be able to do the work if they didn't have some way to fundamentally care about all of their clients. It would become obvious, and it would be really wearing. Have you ever tried to act empathetic all day to people that you don't really care about? Talk about grueling. The mask would have to slip on a regular basis, I would think.
Just my two cents. Maybe I'm being naive. But I think I'm just not being cynical. And I'm excluding pdocs from my comments. I think they're a different breed.
pegasus
poster:pegasus
thread:339137
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040419/msgs/339168.html