ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the process of termination particularly in the older patient. Perhaps because of the anxieties surrounding the subject of termination, much of the literature has been concerned with the elucidation of those criteria by which one might judge whether the work of an analysis has been successfully completed. In Sigmund Freud’s seminal paper he elaborates further on what he considers to be the necessary conditions for termination of an analysis. Freud appears to have moved away from the idea of psychoanalysis as capable of cure. J. Pedder goes on to suggest that latterly there has been a move away from more formal criteria for termination towards a more modest, realistic assessment of the patient’s mental state, such as his emotional growth. The process of termination can be thought of as a kind of adolescent rite of passage. The chapter concludes with providing clinical material which illustrates the complexity of the process of termination.
