ABSTRACT
This book is nearing its conclusion. A good starting-point for thinking about endings in therapy is Analysis terminable and interminable (Freud 1937), written two years before the author’s death at the age of 82. As Pedder (1988) points out, the German title might more accurately have been translated as Psychoanalysis finite or infinite, the very different linguistic harmonics of that road not taken steering therapists away from the abortive or guillotine-like implications of ‘termination’ and the irritable ones of interminability. Pedder’s translation suggests instead themes of separation, death, the timelessness of the unconscious, and the infinity of irreversible loss.
