Some technical and theoretical considerations regarding the missed session

Although Freud (1913b) originally proposed the 'principle of leasing a definite hour', there are many proponents of a more 'lenient' fee policy. The author critically examines some of the arguments put forward by the latter writers and argues that the missed session risks degrading into a 'missing' session if a financial marker does not remain in the patient's vacated place. The conflict mobilized in both partners to the therapeutic relationship by the missed session is best left open for analytic exploration rather than solved by a 'rational' and 'flexible' fee arrangement. The author suggests ways of theorizing, and eventually interpreting, the 'breach' in the relationship in terms of the absent, decentred subject, the Desire of the Other, the inherent contingency of our most primitive identifications, and the ineluctable violence and alienation of human interdependency. The 'rule of indenture' is seen in closer affinity to these basic contradictions than the more gracious 'gentlemen's agreement'.