Endings: On Termination in Psychoanalysis

Ever since Analysis Terminable and Interminable, the termination of therapy has placed the clinical and metapsychological levels of psychoanalytic thought in a dialectical tension. The rereading proposed by the authors situates Freud and Ferenczi as two poles of a debate which is still ongoing: psychoanalytic literature demonstrates the convergences, divergences and hybridizations which have come about through time, the various schools and the geography of analysis. The authors explore the development of the termination process, and within this, the termination event as a final moment, each with its own characteristics. The beginning of the termination process constitutes a critical moment in the analysis, one we may investigate through the conceptual lens of liminality, a sort of threshold or border that is useful for the reading of a wide range of phenomena related to termination. Every termination is nonetheless incomplete, and it is against this backdrop that the authors' theoretical reflection and clinical experience interact, suggesting a typology of analytic termination. From this, a map of a little-explored terrain emerges, where we see a mixing of the boundaries between interior and exterior reality, individual and couple goals, and theoretical aims and concrete aspirations - all requiring a meticulous task of reconnaissance.

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