ABSTRACT
In this chapter the author discusses his views on the termination process in psychoanalysis, views garnered primarily from clinical experience. The author acknowledges that although the combined contributions of his teaching, exposure to the psychoanalytic literature, as well as his interaction with colleagues, students and supervisees, have left their imprint, he tends to regard his actual in vivo experience with patients as contributing most to the forces that shaped his ideas about termination. In this chapter two significant and interwoven changes in the author’s development as a clinician in regard to termination are explicated. One involves the evolving and expanded way psychoanalysis regards the ending of the treatment process. The other change stems from the author’s evolution as a relational psychoanalyst, and in particular, his increasing appreciation of the complexities of time and their contribution not only to the termination process, but to the entire endeavor of psychoanalysis.
