Novick's clear and well-reasoned contribution assesses the criteria for the decision to terminate recommended by various contemporary and earlier writers on psychoanalysis. But beyond that, it argues usefully for several ways of looking at that decision. For example, with children we must consider whether the parents are able to sustain to some degree the support and help the analyst has been providing. Perhaps with adults too we must consider to what sort of emotional environment we are consigning patients when they leave us.

Another major section of the paper argues that the most important evidence that the child is ready to end is some assurance that the child's psychological maturation has resumed its course (as proposed by Anna Freud); but—a fact not much noticed—we may apply a somewhat similar criterion to an adult.

The paper offers much more; it is, in the best sense, simply written and strongly practical.