The Empty Couch: The Taboo of Ageing and Retirement in Psychoanalysis edited by Gabriele Junkers London:  Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2013,  186 pp.

Freud left us an overwhelming legacy, part of which is his thoughts about the relationships between work, illness, old age, and death. In 1910, at the age of fifty-four, and long before his dramatic struggle with cancer had commenced, Freud wrote to Oskar Pfister,

I cannot face with comfort the idea of life without work; work and the free play of the imagination are for me the same thing, I take no pleasure in anything else. That would be a recipe for happiness but for the appalling thought that productivity is entirely dependent on a sensitive disposition. What would one do when ideas failed or words refuse to come. It is impossible not to shudder at the thought. Hence, in spite of all the acceptance of fate which is appropriate to an honest man, I have one quite secret prayer: that I may be spared any wasting away and crippling of my ability to work because of physical deterioration. (Schur 1972, p. 259)

Freud's model of absolute commitment to psychoanalytic work has been followed by many psychoanalysts. Martin S. Bergman, for instance, voiced in his 100th birthday speech the insight that psychoanalysis is not only an independent profession, but also a deep passion: