Good Enough Endings: Breaks, Interruptions, and Terminations from Contemporary Relational Perspectives Edited by Jill Salberg New York:  Routledge, 2010,  318 pp.

This multiple-author work on aspects of termination is divided into three parts. The first is called “Termination: Theories and Positions.” Jill Salberg, the editor, writes an overview for this section focusing on how psychoanalytic history informs our current views on terminating psychoanalytic treatment. This is an excellent, detailed account of the psychoanalytic literature on termination. The first section is a very strong part of the book, with interesting chapters from well-known analysts who have quite different theoretical perspectives.

Martin Bergmann writes about the paucity of articles on termination in classical and ego psychological literature, and explores reasons for this neglect. Ronald Britton cites Freud, Klein, Bion, and Steiner. He illustrates his ideas with a well-crafted case example and uses Christian's continued pilgrimage with Hopeful in The Pilgrim's Progress as a model of life after completing one's analysis. Jeanne Wolff Bernstein informs us about Lacan's views of termination, and Jeremy Holmes discusses Bowlby's attachment theory as it can be integrated with other psychoanalytic theories. He also offers a moving account of his own farewell party on his retirement. Jody Messler Davies writes about self states, multiplicity, and dissociation, and uses a lengthy case to comment on the complexities of termination with an analysand who has dissociative tendencies. The breadth and depth of these contributions speaks to both the editor's view of the relational perspective as consisting of multiple points of view dialoguing with each other, and to her wish to further Spezzano's ideas of an “American middle school.” I found the variety of ideas in this section particularly stimulating, and I enjoyed the experience of the cross-fertilization of ideas as I read one chapter after another. This certainly is a rare feeling to experience in one volume and is to be cherished.

The second part of this book, “On the Clinical Frontier,” has five chapters, eac