ABSTRACT
This chapter explores issues around ending psychotherapy, including how to evaluate when it is appropriate to end treatment, particularly when this is not agreed from the start or determined by external factors like a pending move, financial constraints or arrival of a baby. The ability to manage an ending is a generic competence for all therapists and it presents an opportunity to work through other losses and separations in the patient’s life. In the literature on endings, psychotherapists tend to refer to this as “termination”, a word that conveys a sense of finality at ending: it is after all often used for abortions and removing someone from their job. Ending therapy raises the question of the appropriate length of treatment. The patient’s superego should have been modified by the process of psychotherapy including their identification with the psychotherapist, with whom they will have experienced a different type of object relationship.
