Billable Services and the "Therapeutic Fee": On the Work of Disavowal of Poli…

This article analyzes the structural contradictions in the professional lives of social workers and counselors ("psychotherapists") that give rise to a set of rationalizing discourses that align billing practices with notions of therapeutic appropriateness. I propose that, bound by a normative professional trajectory that prescribes upward mobility on one hand and the performance of a commitmen…