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The skill of terminating analysis is an important part of our equipment as analysts. Hence a book on this subject will arouse much interest in readers of this journal. The author is Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University and a member of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. A lack of theory concerning the technique of ending analysis in the Institute courses and in psychoanalytic literature stimulated the research presented in this book. Firestein proceeded as follows: he selected eight analysts personally known to him (one of them a woman) who were members of the Treatment Centre affiliated to the Institute. They themselves had only recently finished their own ‘didactic’ analyses and were still having supervision of their patients. His research focused on a training patient of each of these analysts. The author interviewed the analysts at intervals of several weeks and made a summary of the pretermination phase of the analysis. He also received a summary of the early part of the analysis and of its termination phase from each analyst. He had a follow-up interview with each patient a year or more after the ending of the analysis. He also interviewed the supervisors of the treating analysts.
The book consists of an introduction followed by eight chapters (averaging 24 pages) each of which is devoted to one patient with special emphasis on the termination phase of his analysis. Then follows an exposition of substantial and methodological conclusions. The book ends with a review of the literature on termination in all its aspects (35 pages). In this very valuable section Firestein brings statements by Freud and many well-known psychoanalysts on criteria for termination of analysis (with special reference to ‘didactic’ analyses), including transference and countertransference assessment, technique of ending, observations and occurrences during the termination phase and comments on post-termination developments. Regrettably, the author makes no