You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This is a sensitive and perceptive book that focuses on the final professional farewell psychotherapists must one day make to their clients, their practice and their way of life. It does so with such a light touch that this often taboo subject becomes compulsive and instructive reading.
Anne Power uses her considerable experience as an attachment based therapist to explore the vagaries of endings forced by external factors. Supervising the work of a retiring colleague prompted Power's interest in the attachment issues raised for the clients going through this forced ending. This led her to explore the broader subject of retirement which would eventually become a challenging developmental stage for her, as it will for all of us engaged in psychotherapy. Her book examines not only the effect on clients of a forced ending, but also what it means to the therapists themselves.
Power has drawn on the personal accounts of 13 therapists who had to impose an ending on clients, some due to illness, sabbatical, house move or maternity leave, and the majority because of retirement from work. The retirees she placed in four groups: the Classic, who had carefully planned retirements soon after the age of 70; the Younger, aged 61 to 68, who were motivated more by external factors, such as the needs of a partner, family commitments or developing other interests; those forced to retire through ill health, aged 70 to 75, and two in an older group, both aged 88 at retirement. Power explores also the experiences of two therapists who took maternity leave, two taking a sabbatical and one who lightened his workload by taking one week off in every five.
The author's reflexive style, monitoring her own deepest responses to her interviewees, brings their experiences vividly on to the page, evoking in me, at times, an almost