ABSTRACT
Ending is separation to which both analyst and patient agree. The nature of the agreement will emerge as the discussion proceeds. The patient's contributions to the analysis become thinner than heretofore, and not very much new is brought to the interviews. The intensity of the transference becomes progressively less and the patient's recognition of the analyst as a real person increases. Both analyst and patient start to think of, and reflect about, ending and one or other starts communicating with the other about the question of doing so. Reasons for ending or stopping psychotherapy are various, and Jung gave a list of nine in Psychology and alchemy. They include a piece of good advice, presumably after one or two interviews, lack of money, a change in fortune for the better, freeing from childhood fixations, forming a philosophy of life, a religious conversion. The ending period gives room for mourning to be reached and this involves a post-analytic phase.
