On the Criteria for the Termination of an Analysis1

The termination of an analysis revives the anxieties and depressive feelings experienced in earlier situations of parting, ultimately going back to the emotions which arose in babyhood at the time of weaning. At that stage, as my work has shown me, depressive anxiety reaches a climax. The loss of the primary good object, the breast, reinforces the depressive anxiety lest the introjected good object—the mother's breast and the mother—should have been destroyed by aggressive impulses and greed. This anxiety arises out of the greater capacity of the ego to synthesize love and hatred in relation to the object, and therefore the infant feels that his loved object is endangered. This is the essence of those anxieties (and ensuing defences), which I described as the infantile depressive position. Normally, the infant copes with his feelings of mourning and guilt in various ways, among which the testing of reality is of great significance. He overcomes his persecutory and depressive anxieties in relation to the loss of his internalized and external good objects as his relations to external reality and to people develop; for these processes underlie the testing of reality described by Freud as an important part of the work of mourning. The anxieties and defences experienced in babyhood are revived when the analysis is coming to an end.

My criterion for the termination of an analysis is, therefore, as follows: have persecutory and depressive anxieties been sufficiently reduced in the course of the analysis, and has the patient's relation to the external world been sufficiently strengthened to enable him to deal satisfactorily with the situation of mourning arising at this point? By analysing as fully as possible both the negative and the positive transference, persecutory and depressive anxieties are diminished and the patient becomes increasingly able to synthesize the contrasting aspects of the primary objects, and the feelings towards them, thus establishing a more