I would return to my world, to my own city and my work. I…
““I would return to my world, to my own city and my work. I would go back to being a doctor, an expensive New York doctor, the doctor into which I had been so expensively made. Wasn’t that what New York meant, expense? When I returned, everything would be expensive. Rent for my private office would be expensive. My hourly rate would be high. And however dizzying, the fee for my patients was only the beginning of the cost, the analytic undertaking promising neither comfort nor relief. It is instead a severe curriculum, Freud’s school of suffering: the universal conviction of shame, the pain of disclosure and of the resistance to disclosure, the awful vertigo of free association, the torment of encountering one’s hungers, hatreds, lusts, avowing them, claiming them as one’s own. I would become, anew, the minister of that suffering. In my costliness I would be a temple prostitute set apart and ceremonially dressed (in cardigan, gray flannels, polished cap- toe oxfords). My patients would pay me, not for something that they received from me, but instead for me to neutralize the account of whatever they had inserted or discharged into my person.””
About This Quote
This interpretation was drafted with AI assistance. It is one reading of the quote, not the author's own explanation.
The narrator reflects on the heavy burden of being a therapist, equating the professional role with a costly, ritualistic service that demands personal sacrifice and confronts deep human suffering.
In simple terms: Being a therapist is a costly, demanding role that confronts deep suffering.
Key Takeaway
Accept the weight of the work and its ethical cost.
Themes
therapy
psychology
ethics
burden
identity
Mood
reflective
serious
introspective
Type
philosophical
psychological
literary
When to use this quote
- clinical practice
- patient sessions
- personal reflection
- career decisions
Key Concepts
Freudian analysis
transference
professional identity
moral economy
Questions to Reflect On
- How do you balance personal cost with professional duty?
- What ethical boundaries guide your practice?
A Different Perspective
The financial metaphor may oversimplify the intrinsic motivations of helping professions.