Every Piece of String Has Two Ends

Halfway through my long analysis, my analyst's wife began to suffer from Alzheimer's, and so my analyst decided to care for her at home. Since my analysis was not over, we continued by phone until the wife died. Three months after she died, after his summer break, my analyst retired. We spoke for a couple of hours and ended the analysis. Who had had the more grueling time, I do not know,-but the time had come to end the analysis because my analyst could no longer bear the work.

My father had died when I was 19, and my analyst retired when I was 55. The analysis had lasted some 20 years, a bit more than the time I had had with my father. For me, while I suppose I wanted more, I recognized that any more would have gone against reality, both my reality and his reality. We had gone as far as we could go, and for me, that was enough. It has been 15 years since, and each year, I remember less of what we spoke of. While certain individual exchanges have solidified in my memory, it is more a general feeling of having taken part in a well-conducted psychoanalysis. The analysis helped to open me to a new epistemology, a way of seeing things, that I had not been able to see before or even during the analysis, since I was too busy trying to work out my own autonomy during our mutual endeavor. It was only after I was left to my own devices that I was able to integrate my self-reflective strivings with my newfound sense of self.

Having been locked out of my birth family's business, my analysis became somewhat a corrective emotional experience, as I became an analyst with my own private practice that differed greatly from my own analyst's practice, of which I am sure my analyst would have been proud. As I became more situated in the field, I called upon my analyst to present work at a scientific meeting, but alas, it was not to be. By that point, he was in the hospital, and when I asked he told me it was too late; he died a few weeks later. I have ended many an analysis, and my pati