Termination of Treatment of an Adolescent Boy1

In the literature on the analytic treatment of adolescents there is an understandable emphasis on the technique of getting them into analysis (; Eissler, 1958; Harley, 1970; Spiegel, 1951) and of keeping them there once they are in (Geleerd, 1957; Laufer, 1974), but as yet there is no discussion of termination or the terminal phase. Scattered in the literature are a number of brief remarks which imply that the kind of analytic termination described and discussed in regard to adults is an infrequent occurrence in the analysis of adolescents. Anna Freud (1970) points out that the adolescent revolt is often transferred to the analyst, in fact experienced for the first time with the analyst, and instead of severing the infantile tie with the parents the adolescent ends his analysis. At a scientific meeting of the Association for Child Psycho-Analysis, the members of one Workshop are reported to have noted that the analysis of adolescents often finds a “natural end” because the patient makes some external move such as leaving the city, going to university, etc. (Landauer, 1970). Even those adolescents who do not break-off treatment but reach what may be called a terminal phase often do not show any of the features said to appear regularly in the terminal phase of adult analysis. Annie Reich reports that many adolescents show a great readiness to give-up the analyst at the point of termination. She states, “In all these cases a full-blown transference had never developed. Certain secrets were never revealed. The analysis as such had been incomplete.” (1950, p. 181). Some authors (Katan, 1937; Spiegel, 1951; Adatto, 1958, 1974), see this readiness to give up the analyst as not only a frequent occurrence but a desirable one. According to Spiegel (1951) the readiness and ease of termination is a counterpart of “newly developing object-relations”. Adatto (1958, 1974) presents a series of cases in which a period of productive analytic work is followed by a marked diminution in