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As mentioned in the previous chapter, when the feeding relation to the breast at infantile levels begins to be acknowledged in the experience of the transference, termination immediately looms on the horizon and the fear of premature ending plays a role in all the subsequent work. This fear interacts at infantile levels with the depressive concern for “mother's babies” and dominates the struggle toward integration as a life-long task. Its counterpart at the most adult level arises as an aesthetic and intellectual appreciation of the analytic process even in young children, driving the patient to “give the next fellow his turn” and to spare the analyst unnecessary work—the “time of his life”.
This latter point, being the main focus of the therapeutic alliance in approaching cooperatively the decision for termination, may occupy us first so that we can return to the infantile problems in a more organised way. By the time that this phase has been reached in analysis, even with young children, the cooperation and interest in the analytic work is astonishing, not only embracing control of acting out and a continual collection of material for analysis from the events of daily life, but an enthusiasm for dream analysis which comes from the full acknowledgement of psychic reality and its primacy for their states of mind. The repeated experience of awakening from sleep in a mood which cannot be shaken off until the analytic session resolves it, brings forth both conviction and gratitude which sets in motion the urge to self-analysis out of useful sparing motives, in contrast to the envious or competitive motivation which was the driving force in such pseudo-self-analytic attempts during phases two and four in particular.