On: Response to Danielle Quinodoz

Dear Editors,

Dr. Quinodoz (2013) has done us a service by writing her letter opening up the important subject of retirement about which analysts have not previously published; Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing (PEP) does not list a single paper about analyst retirement although it provides 1132 papers about transference. Her Letter to the Editor discusses analyst retirement, and presents three suggestions about how to deal with some of its problematic aspects. Although I have no confirmatory statistics, not only do analysts not write about retirement, it is my impression that few analysts do retire. A recent New York Times section devoted to retirement (14 September 2013) featured an analyst well past 85 who was practicing, without questioning his path or that of other analysts in their 80s and 90s who continue to practice. Dr. Quinodoz warns: “An analyst who only took account of his phantasmatic age would risk being overcome by a dangerous feeling of omnipotence, as if he were impervious to the passage of time” (p. 793). She adds: “When we lose our intellectual capacities, we often simultaneously lose the capacity to be aware of the loss” (p. 794). Most analytic society/institutes, perhaps all society/institutes, are confronted by analysts in their midst who practice beyond their competence.

Why do some analysts practice beyond their competence? In addition to accepting the transferential image of their patients, there may be at least two other factors are involved. The analyst may want/need to retain the prestige/satisfaction of being a psychoanalyst. This need may be intensified by real life losses and illnesses, especially of colleagues, friends, and sometimes diminished contact with children and grandchildren. A second factor is that the analyst wants/needs to continue professional income for both reality and intra-psychic reasons.

I believe that her suggestion that elderly, active analysts be asked to participate in clinical intervision seminars with colleagu