Editorial

What we call the beginning is often the end

and to make an end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from.1

Seldom have T.S. Eliot's words seemed more relevant as we stand at the juncture between two millennia, and this year has also seen the fiftieth anniversary of our Association, where we stand on the brink of a new era of change and development (see Lush, Hurst and Radford, Vol. 25 No. 1 of this journal). We are marking this turning point with a subsection on endings in this last journal of the twentieth century where the issues of loss and of gain are explored both theoretically and clinically. The second, Italian subsection serves also both as a review of past achievements in Italy, an indication of the work being undertaken there, and as a new venture for the journal with overviews of work around the world. (The August 2000 edition will feature work from Australia, and there are already further international editions being planned.)

But to begin with endings: our first paper by Isca Wittenberg: ‘Ending therapy, highlights the universal difficulty with endings which has been reflected in an absence of opportunities in training to grapple with these fundamental difficulties. The author describes the seminars she ran on endings at the Tavistock Clinic and gives a comprehensive overview, with clinical illustrations, of the issues which emerge and of the different ways in which endings occur and are dealt with.

Isca Wittenberg's notion of endings involving a weaning rather than a ‘termination’, with the finality and catastrophic loss this often denotes, leads on to our second paper by Monica Lanyado, ‘Holding and letting go’, where the author points up the developmental importance of ending therapy, and continues the thinking around the struggles this involves