ABSTRACT
Case reports of patients are valid and necessary tools in attempting to grasp who engaging with in treatment and to open work for discussion. The confusion about the input of the therapist arises because the nature of what we do in psychotherapy is asymmetric in setting and purpose. Ending therapy is a process and it is a milestone in a patient's development, analogous to other developmental steps such as puberty, leaving home, committing to another person, becoming a parent, finding a meaningful task in life, getting old. For Kohut, the task was to re-open an empathic channel in the relationship between analyst and patient that was experienced as solid enough to be turned towards and include the outside world, thus enabling the patient to move on. The actual ending phase of Rafaela's treatment with regular sessions took one and a half years.
