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TERMINATION, AS UNDERSTOOD HERE, IS AN ENDING OF TREATMENT THAT is not crucially determined by extraneous factors in the patient's or therapist's life but appears as a natural organic outcome of the treatment process itself; it is, in that sense, not an interruption of treatment. Nor is it a product of acting out if by acting out we mean actions that run counter to the therapeutic engagement and its intended course. Therapy terminates at some given point in time, but that point is preceded and prepared for by a longer or shorter time period during therapy which is called the termination phase. My attention will be mainly focused on this phase.
Let me weave in her some general remarks. Distinctions and statements about termination, as compared with the rough and tumble of clinical work, with the ambiguities and multiple, overlapping determinants of psychic life, always sound more univocal and exclusive than the real thing. By the same token, clinical illustrations are so rich in meanings and open to various interpretations—often equally valid—that even experience-close generalizations do not easily emerge from them.
For convenience, the termination phase may be divided into two stages. There is a stage during which the patient with our help arrives at a decision whether or not to terminate. That first stage is initiated by various indications that the patient unconsciously or consciously approaches the question of terminating treatment with more than casual glances. The therapeutic process as seen by patient and therapist, sometimes seen more clearly by one than by the other, may show signs