Page 38 - NAMAH-Jul-2019

Notes on counselling

The therapeutic barter

Dr. Soumitra Basu

Abstract
A full or partial therapeutic barter (non-monetary transaction) could not only fulfil
economic obligations but could be creatively designed to be of therapeutic use and may
not be limited to the economically disadvantaged only.

It all started when a pre-adolescent schoolgirl offering through monetary or non-monetary
commented that it was wrong for me to take means has been carried over in the therapist-
fees from suffering people who consulted me patient milieu. It is very common in Indian
for counselling and therapy. In a way she settings for villagers to offer vegetables, fruits
was not wrong. Many existential problems and even fishes to the therapist when they
that are dealt with today in counselling lack adequate monetary means of paying fees.
were presumably resolved in earlier times People from the weavers’ community often
in spiritual and religious settings which had present tokens like table-mats. A weaver
no commercial overtures. couple I chanced to meet again two decades
after I had treated them presented me a
However in the modern world of consumerism, tablecloth with my name and my wife’s name
it is Freud’s view, which even non-Freudians stitched beautifully (my wife as a clinical
love to quote, that one should not only take psychologist had spent considerable time in
fees but refuse to take negligible fees so that counselling them along with me). They had
therapy is not under-valued and the risk of prepared it twenty years back but had not
counter-transference can be averted. come back after the lady who was the original
patient had recovered. Yet they had kept the
Such Western standards cannot always be stitched tablecloth with love hoping that one
practicable in mixed economies like India day they would present it to me if ever our
where a section of the clientele have genuine paths crossed again.
difficulties in managing their finances. But
the tradition of the guru-disciple relationship Afterwards I found a novel way to deal with
in India where the guru was always paid an such non-monetary transactions. Patients who

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