ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the fundamental and distinctive feature of psychoanalysis concerning its duration: its open-endedness. The psychoanalytic process can begin as open-ended, and then continue until a time when both analyst and analysand believe they are ready to separate. However, analysts must be aware that the eventually inevitable step of deciding on a day for termination radically transforms the nature of the psychoanalytic relationship. Long before a date for termination can be agreed upon, a number of narcissistic, regressive, or catastrophic fantasies about ending are likely to emerge. These can be subsumed under two major categories. To the first belong fantasies about one's analysis going on forever, as if the hard realities of separation and loss could be magically denied. The second group of fantasies centres around the mostly unrealistic fear that one's analysis could be suddenly and traumatically interrupted, before a time when the conditions for bringing it to a satisfactory conclusion could be established.
