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Recently two patients of mine interrupted their analyses, and when I came to examine the material left over, my mind was flooded by questions. However my reflections on this subject were initialy guided by my associating the theme of interruption with the title of a book by Simone De Beauvoir (1981), La cérémonie des adieux. This work is divided into two parts: in the first part the author recalls Sartre's last days, the second part contains the tape-recording of a long interview with him in which he outlines the human experiences lying behind his works and the ideology contained in them. I don't believe this division was made by chance. The author tries to cope with her loss by remembering the events of the immediats past, but memory alone seems to provide scant consolation and so she turns on the tape recorder in order to hear the voice of the deceased once more and start a dialogue again. Thus it is the very fact of carrying a living presence to talk to within oneself which makes it possible to start afresh.
The cérémonie des adieux is a separation rite. Studies of primitive cultures describe a vaste range of such rites which are strikingly similar