Four years ago, Manhattan therapist Clay Cockrell met a patient with an unusual problem. The 21-year-old college senior said he’d recently received traumatic news. “He seemed scared,” Cockrell recalls. “Like, really scared. He wasn’t sure he could trust me, so for the first few sessions we just talked generally about his life.”
The patient had attended public schools, worked summer jobs as a lifeguard and camp counselor, and drove an old Toyota. During the previous year, he’d struggled to decide what career to pursue after college.
Then, on his 21st birthday, his father, a businessman, called him into his office and dropped a bombshell. According to Cockrell, “the father told his son, ‘I’ve been keeping something from you: We’re actually quite wealthy.’ ” The family, it turned out, owned a multinational corporation.
“Do people actually like me for myself or because of my wealth? Who can I trust?”
It’s hard to sympathize with the afflictions of great wealth—especially as income inequality soars worldwide. In the U.S., one-tenth of the top 1 percent owns as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent combined, according to the Institute for Policy Studies. But just because you can burn $100 bills to keep the estate warm doesn’t mean you’re at peace with it or immune to being demonized by Occupy protesters or Bernie Sanders. The discomfort of peering over the wealth gap—as well as insecurities about how money can change people and affect relationships, especially in the wake of the financial crisis—helps explain why affluent people are turning to therapy to discuss their First World problems in private and why banks are incorporating wealth therapy into services for high-net- worth families. “Either there are more problems or there’s more recognition for those problems,” says Madeline Levine, a wealth therapist and author of The Price of Privilege.
“Do people actually like me for myself or because of my wealth? Who can I trust?”
Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon don't seem to need a shrink because of their wealth.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/more-money-more-problems-the-rise-of-wealth-therapy/ar-BBp5Ws7?li=BBnba9J&ocid=iehp
= new reply since forum marked as read