ABSTRACT
It is indeed a significant risk to enter analytic treatment, to open oneself to a relationship, an ever-present dialogue, with one’s analyst. This unique partnership has the potential to engage our hearts and minds, our psyches, at the deepest levels—more so, potentially, than any relationship since early childhood. The depth of attachment and psychic involvement also renders one vulnerable to great loss. This chapter addresses the painful circumstance of the analyst’s death in the midst of an analysis. That loss may be the literal death of the analyst or the symbolic death brought about by an ethical violation. One way or another, the trusted, “good” analyst has “disappeared.” This rupture has profound implications for the analysand’s subjective experience of time and for termination. With a full termination phase foreclosed, something must be done about time.
