The Exit Line: Heightened Transference-Countertransference Manifestations at the End of the Hour

Final comments in many contexts have privileged positions among the many communications we make to one another as human beings. Deathbed pronouncements are treasured for their alleged profundities. "Famous last words" are catalogued. As we listen to political debates, we are particularly attentive to the closing statements of the candidates in the belief that something of superordinate importance will be revealed in these final words. Patients who come to us for psychotherapy and psychoanalysis also convey special messages in their parting comments. Final words are heavily invested because they bear the feelings deriving from earlier separations, complete with the longings to fuse with the earliest objects. Moreover, the cathexis belonging to the object may indeed be displaced onto words. In this paper I have sought to delineate and to describe certain patterns of exit lines which may provide useful information for the clinician. These "last words" are saved for the hour's end to keep them out of the therapeutic process and to render the therapist impotent and unable to respond. However, the therapist need not despair because he can bring these comments into the following hour as the focus of much productive work. After all, as Scarlet O'Hara would say, "Tomorrow is another day."