You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
(a) German Editions:
1937 Die Endliche Und Die Unendliche Analyse Int. Z- Psychoanal., 23 (2), 209-40.
1950 Die Endliche Und Die Unendliche Analyse G.W., 16, 59-99.
(b) English Translation:
‘Analysis Terminable and Interminable’ 1937 Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 18 (4), 373-405. (Tr. Joan Riviere.)
‘Analysis Terminable and Interminable’ 1950. C.P., 5, 316-57. (Revised reprint of above.)
The present translation is a modified version of the one published in 1950. The last eight and a half paragraphs of Section VI of the original German were reprinted in the autumn of 1937 in Almanack der Psychoanalyse 1938, 44-50.
This paper was written early in 1937 and published in June. It and the following one, on ‘Constructions in Analysis’ (1937d), were the last strictly psycho-analytic writings by Freud to be brought out in his lifetime. Nearly twenty years had passed since he had published a purely technical work, though questions of technique had, of course, been dealt with in his other writings.
Freud's main earlier discussion of the workings of psychoanalytic therapy was in Lectures XXVII and XXVIII of the Introductory Lectures (1916-1917). He had returned to the subject very much more briefly in Lecture XXXIV of the New Introductory Lectures (1933a). Readers of these earlier writings are sometimes struck by what seem to be differences between the present work and its predecessors, and these apparent divergences call for examination.
The paper as a whole gives an impression of pessimism in regard to the therapeutic efficacy of psycho-analysis. Its limitations are constantly stressed, the difficulties of the procedure and the obstacles standing in its way are insisted upon. These, indeed, constitute its principal theme. In fact, however, there