Writing on termination seems to go through periods of plenty followed by times of drought; currently, we are deluged by books, panels, and papers on the subject. One of the most recent is a fascinating and illuminating collection of papers on termination from a relational perspective, ably edited by Jill Salberg.

There have of course been earlier relevant writings from this perspective,1 but there is little written specifically on the ending of analysis explicitly with this psychoanalytic approach. As Salberg says in her introduction, “there has not yet been developed a body of relational literature that would constitute relational theory on this subject” (p. xxii).

This book, then, is an attempt to do so, and the reader will decide whether it has accomplished that goal. But it does present all psychoanalysts with moving accounts of endings and trenchant comments on this