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This article focuses on the dimensions and consequences of patients' thoughts and images of therapy following termination. More specifically, this study examines the extent and nature of former patients' representations of therapy and their therapists, the influence of such variables as length of time spent in therapy on these representations, and the extent to which specific types of representations continue to play influential and facilitative roles in patients' lives after termination.
Recent research has indicated that during the course of therapy, patients construct an aggregate of more or less coordinated positively and negatively charged representations of themselves in relationship to their therapists (Barchat, 1989; Geller and Farber, 1993; Geller et al., 1982; Henry et al., 1990; Orlinsky et al., 1993; Perry, 1992; Quintana and Meara, 1990). Many patients report that access to positively toned representations of their therapist in between sessions and during vacations serves a variety of adaptive, reparative, and wish-fulfilling functions. That is, as they consciously experience and report it, patients use these representations to achieve further self-discoveries, to regulate affective experiences, to solve problems, to assuage feelings of loneliness, and so forth. It is noteworthy, however, that among the variety of functions these representations may serve, only patients' use of representations to “continue the therapeutic dialogue” (Geller et al., 1982, p. 141) has been consistently found to be significantly and positively correlated with self-perceived improvement during the course of psychotherapy (Geller & Farber, 1993; Geller et al., 1982; Perry, 1992).
Most of what has been written about former patients' relationships