Here is something that has been bothering me for eight years: when Alvy, Woody Allen’s character, does a stand-up routine, he claims to have been suicidal at one time. However, he says, at that time his analyst was a strict Freudian, and if you kill yourself they make you pay for the sessions you miss.
I’ve wondered about the meaning behind that joke for a long time. It sure gets a laugh in the movie.
It is typical Allenesque nonsense with an absurd rationale: if you are really suicidal, why should you be withheld by the though that you would have to pay for sessions you miss? The ‘strict Freudian’ bit strengthens this: psycho-analytic schools have differences which sometimes seem close to religious differences (but of course not such a rule as Allen describes).
I always assumed thatit meant that a “strict Freudian” would insist that a patient continue his analysis for a long time for the same number of sessions per week, each of which must last for an hour (well, actually an hour of psychoanalysis means 50 minutes, plus ten minutes between sessions for the analyst to take a break). There are other psychologists who say that it’s possible to end an analysis after just a few months, that it’s not necessary to do the same amount of sessions each week, and that it’s not necessary that every session be an hour long. What Allen is saying is that “strict Freudians” are so rigid in insisting on an exactly kept time schedule in their sessions that one might jokingly suppose that they would insist that the patient keep up the schedule even if he commits suicide.
Allen is Jewish, guilt is almost more of a motivating factor than for Catholics.
Yes, but Catholics can wash that pesky guilt away in the confession booth.
(Do not hit me, it’s a joke.)
Robert Klein once said that since he is Jewish and his wife is Catholic, he teaches her guilt and she teaches him shame. 
I may be wrong but I always thought that Woody Allen’s joke was a reference to psycho analysts’ common practice of insisting that missed sessions be paid for - no matter what. Imagine how they would pile up if you killed yourself.
I once saw a cartoon, in the Funny Times I think, that showed a man walking into a psychiatrist’s office. The shrink pulls a gun on him and says “Your money AND your life!”