ABSTRACT
Termination. The word sounds so…‰nal. But what ends? Or, we may ask, in ending, how does an analysis go on past its end? Is the termination of a psychoanalysis like the termination of a life-perhaps in some ways it is. But then it surely is not that either, as both analyst and analysand very much continue to live and breathe, and even analyze their dreams and fantasies. They just no longer do that together. So is the termination of an analysis more than about the termination of a relationship? Analyst and patient no longer formally meet to exchange their mutual insights and reactions. They do not physically meet at least. But does that mean that they are no longer in a psychical relation to each other? And is not my patient always, in some very important ways including psychically, forever my patient, even after the termination of our analysis? If I were to encounter my former patient in a restaurant, at the theater, or walking down the street with his family, do I not continue to have particular responsibilities and limitations toward him; as well as strong feelings of love or frustration past the time that we have discontinued our meeting? At what point do we believe that countertransference ends? Or transference?
