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Psychoanalytic work is arduous and demanding. We do it because we recognize its therapeutic power, and because it is very satisfying to help people free themselves from intolerable symptoms and create the full and happy life toward which we feel everyone is entitled to strive. It can be very frustrating, therefore, when analytic effort does not reach all the goals toward which we and the analysand have been working, or when it is broken off prematurely rather than arriving at a smooth, triumphant, planned termination process.
The authors of this book have long been interested in understanding what is entailed in successful completion of analytic work and in puzzling out what at times interferes with our achieving that end. It has troubled them that, far too often, their work and that of other psychoanalysts approaches a successful conclusion, but then does not seem to reach it, either because of a stalemating of the process or as the result of an abrupt interruption of the work. In this volume, they examine what appears to be involved in those instances of frustrated analytic effort.
In the first two-thirds of the book, Ferraro and Garella devote themselves to constructing a historical review of the concept of psychoanalytic termination, and of the psychoanalytic process of which it is a part. The result is concise, yet impressively inclusive and richly informative. They begin by reaching back to Freud's ideas about termination as expressed in various of his works.1 They also discuss Ferenczi's ideas about how to decide when an analysis can be brought to an end, and in particular his idea that “a complete analysis entails an infinite period of time”