This is one in a new series of psychoanalytic books (Contemporary Psychoanalytic Studies) with Jon Mills as editor and a prestigious and quite representative group of analysts serving on the advisory board. Their choice to include a book titled Endings speaks to the current moment in the avoidance/engagement cycle regarding termination. For the first fifty years of the twentieth century, psychoanalysts had little to say on the topic and were rather cavalier in the way they dealt with termination. But after a series of symposia by British, American, and French analysts, termination became a topic of interest and investigation, especially in the United States. Articles, reports, and books on termination appeared with increasing frequency. Engagement with the topic seemed to reach a peak in the 1990s. At that point there was general agreement that there is a distinct phase of treatment that can be designated the termination phase.