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This article explores the phenomena of weakly terminated and/or unending treatments, and their possible unconscious determinants. It raises the questions of whether or to what extent:
the reasons for interminable cases, superficial termination responses and premature endings are predominantly externally or internally driven;
interminable cases, superficial termination responses and premature endings reflect more covert defensive and/or conflictual reasons located within either of the participants or shared by the analytic pair;
the traditional goals of termination and autonomy are actually far more relativistic and culturally bound than analysis originally recognized them to be;
these treatments involve nonneurotic patients, whose problems lie beyond the pleasure principle, and whose treatments require a different understanding of what may be therapeutically possible.