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O our knowledge of what takes place in the termination phase of successfully completed analyses is based largely on our own limited individual caseloads, on the teachings of our more experienced supervisors, and on a few clinical papers that emphasize a particular aspect of termination. Psychoanalytic institute case conferences usually contribute little to the understanding of termination because the candidate-presenters have rarely reached that stage in the progress of their cases. Consequently, there is uncertainty and even controversy about the regular events of the termination phase. How long, for instance, is termination? Are there characteristic termination dreams? What affects, fears, wishes, and fantasies are mobilized, and are there shifts in transference and resistance? Do old symptoms reappear or new symptoms emerge? What conflicts, oedipal and preoedipal, are finally worked through during termination?
To answer such questions, I conducted a survey of 48 successfully completed analyses. The cases come from 15 institutes around the country. The material was supplied by 48 recently certified psychoanalysts,