ABSTRACT
It is a sad commentary on their education and training that many psychotherapists and analysts, even those of some experience, tend to remain neophytes with respect to understanding the natural history of therapy as it winds down and how to evaluate the possibility of ending treatment electively with a phase of termination. The reasons are not entirely, or even mostly, the fault of the individual therapists; rather, they lie in the training system, mostly the public clinics affiliated with the programs in which therapists receive their basic clinical training.
