ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that our role in the community requires a responsible and responsive dialogue about this neglected topic in our field, and a recognition that for analysts, given the trajectory of our training, the close link between retirement and mortality in the unconscious may make this dialogue a difficult one to begin and sustain. The chapter describes the possibility of an unconscious link between retirement and mortality. It also describes rare personal moments are not a substitute for our field taking on the meaning of retirement and with it, mortality. The capacity to face reality is central to analytic thought and practice. The death of one’s analyst, or her retirement from practice, will ignite feelings long dormant–grief, triumph, the proximity of one’s own ending. The chapter discusses the difficulties some analysts might face when the time comes to close the practice space, the external symbol of the analytic identity, and have speculated on why this might be.
