Arthur had struck a jackpot. After years of false promises from successive governments to invest in specialised mental health clinics and an expansion of Medicare appointments that had barely allowed him to increase his rates, life was looking up. A loosening of industry regulations meant he could now set up a specialised practise in Corporate. Corporate Lawyers.

All the years he had spent at university reading about unethical studies on mice and pigs and theories of the unconscious birthed in cocaine consumption. All that time wanting to help traumatised adults to reconcile their internal family systems and adjust their object relations. Only to have his work reduced to a manual that could be applied by a high-schooler. Because CBT meant a stable income.

Now he finally had a chance to work with the most disenfranchised and underprivileged, and at the same time neurotic and self-abnegating, group in society. Lawyers. Corporate Lawyers. Oh, the fees he could charge. He could put up the rate of a Senior Associate as a base rate. He could even charge for every fraction of a six-minute increment of overtime beyond his usual session.

And the gossip. All the juicy goss he’d hear. Christmas party flirtations. Retainers settled in scenic elevators. Semantic debates with retired judges. High-functioning addiction. Low-functioning libido. The cutting edge of life. He would retire with enough stories to write Hunter S. Thomson-esque novels. 

What mysteries of the psyche would reveal themselves in his consultation room? He would calculate the ideal amount of yoga and mindfulness sessions to help juniors get through IPO season. He could figure out the correct ratio of narcissistic personality disorder bros to lean-in feminists required to make a successful morning tea. The correlation between the size of a bonus and dopamine levels.

Of course, all within his training. He’d heard rumours that it was the relentless drive for profit growth and the rigid hierarchies within law firms that generated toxic structures barely meant for breathing, desiring humans to inhabit. Yeah right. Until long-term studies that supported those hypotheses had made their way into textbooks, all of that was inconclusive.

Author: Daniel Zola (pseudonym) Editor: Dana Heriot