ABSTRACT
This chapter presents preliminary findings of an empirically-grounded perspective on the hypothesis that patients will continue to build upon what they accomplished during the course of therapy after termination if they rely on enduring and benignly influential representations of the therapeutic dialogue to serve adaptive functions. Identificatory processes give rise to "psychic structures" that de-personify and perform the regulatory functions served by representations of the self in relation to others, some of which were acquired through the processes of introjection. The period of time after termination during which the representational legacies of effective and ineffective therapies continue to exert a regulatory influence on patients' lives might be accorded a status equal in importance to the beginning, middle, and termination phases of therapy. One of the longest held hypotheses in psychoanalytic literature is that the beneficial effects of therapy persist after termination in the form of a newly acquired.
