ABSTRACT
In a most personalized narrative, the author reflects on his career as a psychologist and psychoanalyst in his final days of terminating with his long-term analytic patients after he decided to retire from practice during the age of Covid-19. Some typical themes connected to termination emerged: ambivalence, abandonment, anxiety, anger, regression, feelings of loss and lack, and for a couple of people, relief – finally they could fly from the nest. The author’s musings on the end of analysis, the nature of the client-therapist relationship, and the gift of mutual recognition are emphasized during the final session of therapy in an emotionally moving depiction of the termination process. During the final month, he accounts he had some beautiful interpersonal moments with his patients, reflecting on their life, growth, and their relationship, but he felt the final session produced the most moving personal experiences. All these ‘goodbyes’ occurring on the backdrop of the global Covid crisis.
