ABSTRACT
The analytic literature on the processes of working through and termination describes the complex emotional responses that the latter, particularly, evokes in therapist and patient alike. Leading up to termination, there were many sessions spent on the business and how to make working together less conflicted. As sometimes happens during the termination phase of individual therapy, couples may experience a revival of their earlier symptoms, for example, problems with sexual expression, old arguments that haven't been fought for a while, or unresolved partner-to-partner transferences. In psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy, criteria for ending include the resolution of the transference, a more equitable relationship with the therapist, the resolution of early conflicts, particularly with parents and siblings, and as Freud said, an increased capacity to love and to work. Unresolved separation issues in the therapist also come to the surface, as they do in the termination of any analytically oriented work.
