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What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from…
In the history of psychoanalysis it seems that the end is not where we started from, for in surveying the literature on termination it is striking how recent the interest in this topic is. In 1950, Annie Reich wrote: “Astonishingly, the topic of termination of analysis has rarely been the subject of psychoanalytic investigation” (p. 179). Rangell, in “An Overview of the Ending of an Analysis” (1966), speaks of “the relatively scant literature” (p. 141). Since then, the literature on the topic has undergone an exponential increase, parallel to the rate of increase in all scientific publications (Price, 1975). The range of views concerning the conceptualization and management of this phase of treatment is vast and, as noted early on by Hurn (1970), “a variety of opinions can be discerned about the indicated ‘management’ and metapsychology of the terminal phase” (p. 343).