Psychotherapy and the Poverty Patient

This guide is designed for the psychotherapist who works with poverty patients - those who are poor in regard to economic condition, as well as those who suffer from psychological impoverishment. The contributors offer therapeutic strategies for dealing with patients who suffer from emotional impoverishment and methods for avoiding discrimination against lower-income patients, whose inability to pay fees can negatively affect their treatment. "Psychotherapy and the Poverty Patient" aims to assist therapists in treating both patients afflicted with either financial or psychological poverty by addressing a variety of topics that present clinical and philosophical challenges to the practice of psychotherapy. The chapters recount specific case examples to provide models for the treatment of lower-income psychotherapy patients and also explore the existence of a feeling of impoverishment as part of the emotional cycle of all therapy situations. Specific topics discussed in this volume include poverty as a medium through which the patient is engaged with his or her own life, the experience of poverty as a model for the patients feelings of oppression and limited possibilities for individual power and liberation, the influence of society's ambivalent attitudes toward the poor on the patient/therapist relationship and the complicated ethical struggles involved in reduced fee therapeutic services.