Guild Economy of Psychoanalysis
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#01
Against Understanding, Volume 2: Cases and Commentary in a Lacanian Key · Bruce Fink · p.34
<span id="page-23-0"></span>ANALYSAND AND ANALYST IN THE [GLOBAL ECONOMY, OR WHY ANYONE](#page-7-0) IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD PAY FOR AN ANALYSIS > **The Analyst as Capitalist?**
Theoretical move: Fink argues that the peculiar political economy of psychoanalysis—where the analysand pays to work rather than to receive a service—is what distinguishes it from all other therapies and from capitalist exchange logic, and that the analyst's acceptance of transference projections (occupying the place of the cause of desire) is precisely what is purchased, not advice or knowledge.
In the early decades of psychoanalysis, psychoanalysts operated through a sort of medieval guild system, having a virtual monopoly on psychotherapy in much of the West.