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While JAPA's Child Analysis and Development Section provides an important home to child analysts, the papers in this issue have much to offer to all readers. Certainly our understanding of our adult analysands is informed by their internal and external childhood experiences, whether communicated directly or through transference. Erikson (1950) expanded our ideas about human development beyond traditional notions, highlighting the developmental challenges of later ages. And any of us who have conducted analytic work with older adults have experienced firsthand the vibrancy of early developmental experiences throughout the life span. Most important, the premise and promise of analytic work with adults relies on the conviction that the outcome of the developmental process is not so crystallized as to be refractory to change catalyzed by revisiting forces from childhood through the transference.
At first glance, the three articles in this section would seem to have little in common. One focuses on termination in the context of father loss. Another addresses the world of cyberspace and its relevance to adolescent development. The third discusses the analyst's sexual orientation in relation to adolescent transference. However, on closer examination, there is tremendous overlap in their efforts to address questions critically important for contemporary analytic thought and practice. All use rich clinical examples to illustrate their ideas about development, transference and countertransference, body image and sexuality, neutrality, abstinence, self-revelation, and termination.
In “Losing a Father All Over Again; The Termination of an Analysis of an Adolescent Boy Suffering from Father Loss,” Alan Sugarman provides us an important addition to the relatively small literature on termination and the even smaller literature on termination with children and adolescents. The question of the “good enough” termination (Gabbard 2009) is revisited with particular focus on the impact of