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At the 1987 International Psychoanalytic Congress, “Analysis Terminable and Interminable” (1915) was reexamined (Sandler, 1987). Freud's paper, a valedictory, still has analysts over fifty years later trying to understand the issues he raised. In the literature it is clear that issues of termination—criteria, indications, pathology, transference-countertransference, to name a few—have received far more attention than the phenomenon of the interminable analysis. Sensitive issues, especially confidentiality, inhibit publication of clinical material. “Interminable” analysis here is defined as an analysis which does not terminate, with or without interruptions, in which the patient continues the analysis with an analyst for many years, without any apparent indication that it will ever come to an end. (However, often patients who originally present as interminable analyses do eventually terminate.)
Continuing the analysis through self-analysis is a sign of a successful analysis. It is accepted that the internalized process of analysis is one that never terminates in most well-analyzed patients. However,