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This is an important book that should be read and taken seriously, not only by individual analysts, but also by the institutions to which we belong. The first part of the title refers to the feeling of emptiness that will come to all analysts when they face relinquishing their identity and cease to see patients. But it also leads to the warning of the subtitle that this subject has not been sufficiently addressed by us as a profession. The topic is not a new one: it has been written about before and there has been an IPA Working Party, chaired by the Editor Gabriele Junkers, to address the many facets of the challenge, but, as Junkers reports, it is so often responded to with a quiet “Later, perhaps … ”. This phrase is the title of one of Gabriele Junkers’ own seminal four contributions to the book, in addition to a Prologue and an Epilogue.
The book is a compilation of papers, roughly divided into three sections: (1) growing older as psychoanalysts, (2) illness and ending, and (3) institutional parts of ending. There is much overlap between these sections, and the topics and style of the individual papers are varied. The majority of the authors are European, but there is a strong American contribution, particularly describing the Psychoanalyst Assistance Committees as an institutional approach that bridges psychoanalytic practice with the regulatory frameworks in the USA. I also think it is
important to note the contribution that Freud makes to the book, in the quotations by the contributors to his many references on ageing and transience, and to his own illness and death as seen through the eyes of Schur, his physician.
The book begins with two senior analysts reminiscing about their empty couches and their mourning of the loss of regular patient contact, from the stand point of successful careers. For them it is has been possible to move from a busy, long and fruitful practice to being recognized as elder statesmen, sort-after teachers and speakers. This is one