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Contents
Foreword vii
Introduction ix
Ending 187
References 189
Foreword
The hyphen that breaks through and divides the one-word, original
Italian title of this book makes for a wordplay of sorts. For to translate In-fine
into English a person would need to privilege one of at least two readings of
the title. Infine, in point of fact, means both “ultimately” and “in the end”.
The word end, in turn, in English as in the Italian fine, itself evokes two
signifieds: end as aim or goal, and as termination point, or finish line. It
strikes me as curious that where the Italian term is concerned, it's the gender
of the definite article that specifies its meaning: the masculine il fine denoting
orientation of intent, whereas the feminine la fine bears the hallmark of
finality. Woman as omega, and not only alpha. The grave as womb, death as
the ultimate passage.
Atop the doorway that marks the passage into my consulting room is a
black-and-white photograph of a footbridge whose wooden slats extend
infinitely across and into what looks like a sea of wheat, under a low horizon
of menacing clouds. It is accompanied by some lines by the famed Spanish
poet Antonio Machado, which read:
For the longest time, my own association to the image and the caption –
which was also my own way of making sense of the riddle – had to do with
one of my favourite childhood movies, The Wizard of Oz, and the dazzling,
dizzying spaces inhabited by Dorothy and her cohorts: spaces somewhere
along the yellow-brick road, between the twister-threatened fields of Kansas
and the emerald gates and towers of Oz. In preparing to write this little note
to Ferraro and Garella’s wonderful book, I decided to research Machado's
original poem. In so doing, I learned that the poet had penned an earlier
version of the above-cited fragment no. 5 of his 1919 Proverbios y cantares:
Not until had I read In-fine did I really get what Machado had intuited,
about that “third dimension”. And now that I have a better sense, I think I
also know why the photograph hangs where it does, marking the exit of every
patient from every session hour spent in my company. Marking the passage
away from the couch. An intimation, ultimately, of the end that's always in
the air.
Anthony Molino
Notes
1
The original Spanish reads:
Entre el vivir y el sonar
hay una tercera cosa.
Adivinala.
Introduction
This book is the point of arrival of a long journey, one filled with
stopovers and vicissitudes that we will seek to trace in its pages. It gives
special emphasis to the perspective that inspired its approach, as if it were a
compass in a voyage that, as it proceeded, saw its destination becoming
increasingly unknown and remote. The writing of this book developed from
an inner necessity to place a momentary end to an investigation which is
virtually infinite; presumably, we will continue to pursue it in the coming
years, but at this point an attempt at systemization and historicizing was
necessary.
For this reason, the first part was conceived as an accurate and detailed
account of the first steps of our route, which started with a reexamination of
the psychoanalytic literature on the theme of termination of analysis. We feel
that this first part can serve a double function by connecting markedly
subjective elements that are nonetheless welded to more objectively-based
themes of interest. Indeed, in its (final) expositive form, this part resembles a
careful bibliographic survey suited to palates that have a taste for
systematizing and potentially exhaustive research, though it in point of fact
this image is not entirely true1. This type of survey runs a high risk of boring
the reader, but for the authors it forms an initial shoal and terra firma that are
necessary and preliminary to venturing out on one’s own route. The
deliberate use of these contrasting images - the obscure depths of the shoal
and the clarity of terra firma - expresses our conviction that, as Winnicott
(1967) states, we innovate in tradition: we latch onto the attempts at thinking
of those who preceded us, and in this journey backwards, paradoxically, we
sometimes find lines and suggestions lying on the bottom of an intricate mass
of elements; they are brought to the surface with a gaze that recognizes them
as preexisting in the very moment it sets about reinventing them, impressing
them with one’s own personal mark.
From the first part’s comprehensive vision we gain a sense of how
complex and articulated the debate has been on this theme, which we
nonetheless continue to think is in some way the object of a peculiar
reluctance. There is probably a gap between the richness and complexity of
experience, preferentially entrusted to oral communication, and its translation
in less informal intentions of systematic reworking and writing. At a meeting
at the Centro Napoletano di Psicoanalisi, Gilda de Simone proposed the
hypothesis that this sort of reluctance might regard the impossibility of
treating this theme without displaying - in a sort of inevitable self-revelation -
one’s own style of work, which at the point of its final precipitation is
necessarily connected to a vision of the psychoanalytic process and its goals.
x ENDINGS: ON TERMINATION IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
Notes
1
A more systematic and complete survey of the literature on the theme of termination
of analysis may be found in two monographic issues of the Rivista di Psicologia
Analitica (1992 and 1999), entitled La conclusione dell’analisi and L’istanza del
finire.
2
(Transl. note) The authors state that they prefer to use the term Nachträglichkeit
throughout the text, as they believe that the common English rendering “deferred
action” does not suitably correspond to the original Freudian term.
Part One – A Century-Long History
One
1. Antecedents
unifying feature of their papers was the interstructural question, that is, the
relationship between id, ego and superego, with particular attention to the
function of the analyst, especially with regard to the recent publication of The
Ego and the Id. In Alexander’s paper, which later became a classic, the
psychoanalytic process (the “curative process”, in Alexander’s expression)
and the modifications which take place in it are observed by focusing on the
dynamics of the analyst’s role within relations among the agencies and
especially in relation to the superego (Wallerstein 1965). A cure is obtained
by overcoming resistances and the ego’s assumption of the functions of
superego, and the “dissolution of the super-ego is and will continue to be the
task of all future psychoanalytic therapy” (Alexander 1925, p. 32). Some of
the speakers at the Congress, like M. Klein and W. Reich, developed the
discussion of analytical technique further; they made additions to Ferenczi’s
paper, respectively, regarding the proposal to modify psychoanalytical
technique in children and the positive evaluation of active intervention in the
analysis of character.
In 1925, too, Ferenczi addressed the question of the end of analysis -
perhaps for the first time in such a clear way - in his essay Psycho-analysis of
Sexual Habits, in a section entitled “The Process of Weaning from Psycho-
Analysis.” In it, in agreement with Rank, he defines the period of termination
as one of the most important and significant moments of the entire therapy.
With regard to the criterion for deciding the end of therapy on the analyst’s
part, Ferenczi supports Freud’s position in the case of the Wolf Man, but with
a number of specifications which suggest a rather substantial divergence.
Indeed, he claims it is necessary to satisfy a preliminary list of questions:
these regard the general validity of the rule, the existence of precise
indications that dismissing the patient would be appropriate, and the criteria
to be followed if the announcement of termination provokes a worsening of
the patient’s condition. According to Ferenczi, the psychoanalyst must keep
the general situation in mind, never ending the analysis when it is the patient
that asks to do so; if the announcement of the end of analysis turns out to be a
mistake, he must backtrack and admit the error. The Freudian criterion thus
gets quite restricted in its application, and certainly cast in doubt on a
technical level. Ferenczi adopted the criterion of waiting “until the
impossibility of obtaining real gratification through the analytic situation,
together with the attraction of external reality, overcame a transference-
relation the value of which was gradually depreciating” (Ferenczi 1926: 296).
For some cases, Ferenzci proposes a two-stage ending: first, a reference to
the possibility of termination, and then the announcement of a date. He also
alludes to the appearance of dreams and transitory symptoms which can be
interpreted as Rankian birth fantasies; these are not, however, not attributable
to “birth trauma”, but rather to a “…regression in phantasy from the Oedipus-
conflict to the birth-experience; the latter having been already overcome is,
relatively speaking, the less painful of the two” (ibid). In more theoretical
The Beginnings: Freud, Ferenczi and A.T.I 5
terms, the analyst must not impose his own ideals on the patient: if the
patient’s ego manages to mediate between superego, id and reality, the
analysis can be considered terminated.
The same year, Ferenczi reconfirmed his ideas in Contra-indications to
the “Active” Psycho-Analytical Technique (Ferenczi 1925b), a paper given at
the Ninth International Congress of the IPA at Bad Homburg. Here, though
accepting criticisms of his active technique, he implicitly challenged Freud’s
“heroic” measures, rejecting the idea and practice of the imposition of a
temporal limit on analysis. In 1927, at the Tenth International Congress of
Psychoanalysis in Innsbruck, Ferenczi presented The Problem of the
Termination of the Analysis, the culmination of his reflection on the subject
of therapy and the end of analysis. In this work, Ferenczi claims that the
discovery of fantasy is not sufficient to guarantee a cure, in that it requires “a
reconstruction, in the sense of a rigid separation of reality and fantasy”
(Ferenczi 1955 [1927]: 79), and advances the idea of termination by
“exhaustion”. This idea motivates his conviction that the analysis can be
brought to a “natural” resolution, and therefore not consist of an interminable
process. It also stimulated his attention to dynamics peculiar to the final
phase - the so-called “weaning” phase defined as one of the most important
and significant in the entire treatment. Ferenczi supports his view through a
reconsideration of a series of psychoanalytic (and Freudian) cornerstones. For
example, he describes the need for free association as an ideal: when
completely satisfied, the analysis would be terminated. On the other hand, he
emphasizes the importance of the temporal factor: a complete analysis entails
an infinite period of time. In reality, for Ferenczi the adjective infinite stands
for indeterminate (the patient’s decision to not pay attention to the absolute
duration of the analysis, not interrupting it for the necessary period of time).
The correct termination of analysis is one by “exhaustion”: the patient
detaches himself from the analyst little by little, to the extent that he realizes
that he is actually gaining only satisfaction from it and nothing more, and he
is able to get over the mourning provoked by the comprehension of this fact.
As the termination approaches, a transformation of symptoms takes place.
Ferenczi concludes that the analysis “… is not an endless process, but one
which can be brought to a natural end…” (ibid: 86). The fact that completed
analyses up to that point were still few was an obstacle which for Ferenczi
could be obviated with the improvement of theory and the analyst’s inner
knowledge.
Further, Ferenczi’s interest in the preconditions by which an analysis
could be deemed complete underscores the importance of a wide-ranging
study of character traits which utilizes all of the patient’s expressions, as well
as gesture and postural peculiarities, and it requires the unmasking of hidden
mistrust of the analyst. For Ferenczi, in effect, there is no analysis of the
symptoms which is not also an analysis of character. As a complement to
this, Ferenczi emphasizes the importance of “tact” on the analyst’s part (a
6 ENDINGS: ON TERMINATION IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
truth depends on the behavior of the analyst, who is thus a full participant. In
this context, there is an appreciation of regressive lived experiences which, as
repetitions of old experiences made possible by peculiarities of technique,
favor the full unfolding of transference. Regression thus appears to be an
essential component of the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis, even though
Ferenczi seeks to distinguish himself from O. Rank’s perspective, where the
association of regression to a concept of trauma as a single event explaining a
linear causality had given rise to short-circuiting attitudes supported by the
“therapeutic haste” so severely criticized by Freud. Thus we can perceive a
connection between the genetic and curative processes which cannot be
radically distinct, since the etiology of neurosis is attributed to disorders in
growth. The idea of exogenous factors as the basis of neurosis has a central
role in Ferenczi’s thought, and it has a precursor in the statement related by
Cremerius in regard to an article by Ferenczi from 1909, for which “the
dominance of sexuality in the origin of psychic illnesses is largely to be
traced to social causes” (Cremerius 1991, Ital. ed: 141).
In 1932, Ferenczi gave a paper in Wiesbaden entitled Confusion of
Tongues Between Adults and the Child (Ferenczi 1933). The background to
this paper offers a glimpse of the growing tensions provoked by Ferenczi’s
technical experimentations and the rift in his relations with Freud. Indeed,
Freud advised Ferenczi not to present the paper, hinting at his intention of
countering the technical incorrectness of Ferenczi’s results with further work.
Freud nonetheless proposed his disciple for the position of President of the
International Association of Psychoanalysis, partly in order to get him out of
“the island of dreams which you inhabit with your fantasy-children” as he
wrote in a letter of May 12, 1932 (Dupont 1988: xvi). Hurt by Freud’s
assessment, Ferenczi refused the candidacy, but he did present the paper
(which was accepted thanks to Jones’ resolute position, but was not published
in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis). The divide between the two
deepened, and Ferenczi’s death eight months later was followed by an
abandonment of the positions and ideas he expressed (at least according to
Jones). The paper summarizes his theoretical-clinical path of the previous
years: Ferenczi highlights the importance of exogenous factors in the etiology
of neurosis and warns against the danger of an inappropriate use of terms like
“disposition” and “constitution”. By turning to these two concepts, he
conceals his critical attitude toward the excessive value attributed to the
Oedipal situation in Freud’s work. However, at the end of the essay he hints
at the possibility “that we shall have to revise certain chapters of the theory of
sexuality and genitality” (Ferenczi 1949: 16). As Cabrè (1997) has incisively
shown, Freud’s response appeared in Analysis Terminable and Interminable -
proof of the continuity of an internal dialogue which continued after the death
of his interlocutor; in this, as we will demonstrate more carefully below,
Freud responds to such objections by means of the question of trauma.
According to Cabrè, it is precisely from this dialectic confrontation that it is
8 ENDINGS: ON TERMINATION IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
factors: the “synthetic function of the ego”, that is, the tendency of the ego to
assimilate and order contents in a coherent and finalized manner as they
progressively become accessible; and the “abreaction” or explosive
liberation, in the act of becoming conscious of the energy tied up in conflict.
The following year, T. Reik published New Ways in Psychoanalytic
Technique, in which he dealt with the risk of an “excess of knowledge” with
even greater emphasis than the preceding works. According to Reik, an
excess of reflexive thought can lead the analyst to apply what he has learned
erroneously and block his intuition.
In that period, then, three assumptions emerged which would become
cornerstones of the theory of technique in the coming decades: the analysis
proceeds from the surface to the depths, the analysis of resistance must
precede that of the contents, and the analysis must also address the patient’s
non-symptomatic features - that is, it must also analyze his character.
According to Fenichel, the attention paid to the analysis of resistance, the true
therapeutic agent in therapy, favored the growth of ego psychology’s
importance in subsequent years, with a gradual, concomitant de-emphasis on
the economic-drive element. The latter was, on the other hand, quite present
in paper by Reich, who - as is well known - continued to develop his own
theory which diverged from the classical one.
In 1934, Strachey published the article The Nature of the Therapeutic
Action of Psycho-Analysis, in which he proposed a theory of interpretation
based on considerations from structural theory, distinguishing between
transference interpretations and extra-transference ones. In Strachey’s view,
only the former are truly “mutating”, that is, effective in creating a psychic
change in the psychoanalytic process. With regard to the psychoanalytic
process itself, he elaborates on the new Kleinian theories with older
theorizations related to the role of the analyst in the patient’s interstructural
dynamic. For Strachey, the analyst’s superego substitutes the patient’s, and in
this way the analyst can eliminate or reduce that part of the patient’s
superego which employs pathogenic defenses. Transference is redefined in
the terms of projection on the analyst of archaic images, and the
interpretation’s efficacy is connected to the reality of the moment in which it
is presented. Strachey explores Ferenczi and Rank’s criticism of interpretive
fanaticism, linking such an undesirable occurrence to the predominant or
excessive use of extra-transference interpretations. Moreover, he critiques the
concept of abreaction, making a distinction between emotional discharge,
which is defined as an occasional and even useful addition, and libidinal
gratification, an event which is treacherous if it is not recognized. The effects
of abreaction are permanent only in cases in which the etiological factor is an
external event, as in shell-shock, for example.
At the Four Nations Convention in 1935 (the Viennese Psychoanalytic
Society, the Hungarian Psychoanalytic Association, the Prague
Psychoanalytic Society and the new Italian Psychoanalytic Society, which
10 ENDINGS: ON TERMINATION IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
was not yet affiliated with the IPA [Leupold-Löwenthal 1988]), the
discussion focused on three subjects which would later have increasing
influence on the analytic process in theoretical and clinical terms: the death
drive and its derivatives, psychic trauma, and ego psychology. The discussion
demonstrated the difficulty, if not the out and out refusal, to accept the dual
theory of drives and in particular the destructive drive, despite an
appreciation for the clinical value of Freud’s observations. From the
symposium acts it is possible to ascertain the growing theoretical and
technical weight of ego psychology, which would be dealt with the following
year in A. Freud’s The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense (1936), and
which would be thoroughly developed theoretically in Hartmann’s work.
At the Fourteenth Congress of the IPA in Marienbad in 1936, a
symposium presided by Jones took place on The Theory of Therapeutic
Results. It is interesting to note that the works presented were published
together with Analysis Terminable and Interminable in two subsequent issues
of The International Journal of Psychoanalysis. According to Wallerstein
(1965), there was a rather widespread agreement among the participants as to
the fact that the therapeutic aim of analysis consisted in establishing a
harmonious equilibrium among the psychic agencies. Taken as a whole, the
particular points discussed form a mosaic of the state of the art in that period.
Freud seems to have provided a rapid response with A.T.I.; he was not
particularly satisfied with the symposium’s conclusions (Leupold-
Löwentahal 1988), identifying a line of optimism in them regarding the
therapeutic prospects of analysis which was not sufficiently supported by
experience. Fenichel treated the action of therapy from the point of view of
relations between ego and the defenses; Laforgue identified two essential
therapeutic agents: the patient’s trust in the doctor - which coincides with
“suggestion” but is used in the opposite way - and the willingness to engage
in analytic work (anticipating by a few decades the concept of “therapeutic
alliance”); Glover expressed reservations about the possibility of a theory of
therapy; unlike Glover, Bibring supported the necessity of a “theory of
therapeutic procedure”. In particular, it is interesting to note that in
describing the modifications to each of the three psychic agencies which
would establish the success of psychoanalytic therapy, Bibring spoke of the
“demolition of a drive”, the reinforcement of the conscious ego, capable of
extending itself over areas and parts of the id.
In the same year, the British Psycho-Analytical Society organized a
Symposium, Criteria of Success in Treatment, in which Jones, Sharpe,
Brierley and Glover delivered papers. Jones’ presentation established a
distinction between therapeutic and analytical results which in large part
corresponded to the patient’s evaluation of success and that of the analyst. In
the former category, Jones cites the elements of the patient’s subjective sense
of strength, his trust and his well-being, understood as potential capacity for
enjoyment and happiness. On the objective side, there is a free flow of
The Beginnings: Freud, Ferenczi and A.T.I 11
positive feelings through the ego and the reduction of anxiety. On the other
hand, the elimination of symptoms does not receive any recognition as proof
of therapeutic success. Confirming the value Freud attributed to overcoming
infantile amnesia, Jones added a criterion which goes beyond pathology and
is relative to the understanding of the evolutionary lines of all of the principal
interests in the subject’s life. Sharpe concentrated on the criteria for cure in
adults with an “especially dismal” childhood and proposed to understand
them in terms of a psychic plasticity possible in every case. The criteria of
success in such cases are based on the expansion of the ego and the
mitigation of the severity of the superego, and in particular regard sexuality,
the ability to work and social relations. Glover continued his work of
conceptual and methodological development, proposing an articulated means
of evaluating success by examining various factors, and he declared that he
was convinced of the difficulty of “rendering scientific” the problem of
analytical criteria, given that the analyst’s subjective factors can influence
them. Brierley agreed on this point, and she emphasized the relativity of the
criteria’s reliability and of success itself. In the years that followed, Glover
returned to the papers from this symposium, considering them a mixture of
theoretical and practical criteria that created the urgency for an agreement on
general principals and a theoretical fine-tuning which was still far from being
reached. He clearly felt the need for a conceptual clarification in
psychoanalysis and was the first to pose questions of method with regard to
the psychoanalytic theoretical elaboration and verification of clinical activity.
The spirit of the times regarding the entire question was expressed by
Jones (1936), who was convinced that in the immediate future there would be
a non-revolutionary development in psychoanalytic technique: the objective
would be a constant progress in its development, greater refinement and
accuracy, with the result that there would be much greater assuredness than at
present. From this survey, we have the picture of a psychoanalytical world
which was readily concentrated, among other things, on developing concepts,
methods and analytical techniques in therapy. Nonetheless, as we have
suggested, Freud did not agree with this.
definitive place to land. For authors like Mahony, on the contrary, this feature
is one of the merits of A.T.I., a text which is eminently “dialogic rather than
systematic” (Mahony 1989, Ital. ed: 5), although the interlocutor is
generically identified with the reader and not - as in our reading - with
Ferenczi.
In our view, Freud’s deliberate and insistent reference to the primacy of
theory constitutes a first important differentiation from Ferenczi; in order to
appreciate its most refined articulations, a careful re-examination of various
passages is necessary. The structure of the text may be schematized in this
way: Freud appears to start with a circumscribed question - the duration of
analysis - dedicating the first two sections of A.T.I. to it, but he then moves
concentrically to touch upon the theory of therapeutic process itself; in the
final part, he returns to more precise considerations relative to the problem of
analysis’s terminability or lack thereof. The two initial sections and the two
concluding ones enclose a central part which weaves in, in a sort of
crescendo, the unavoidable use of metapsychology; in this sphere, he restores
an importance to the economic point of view which had up to that point been
neglected. The logical structure of the text is illustrated in the fifth section,
where Freud, returning to the enunciation of the three elements for
determining the outcome of analysis (the influence of traumatic aetiology, the
relative strength of the instincts, alteration of the ego), declares that he will
thoroughly and almost exclusively investigate the second in particular. This
point constitutes the central backbone of the discourse, which unfolds in the
four central sections, from the third to the sixth. We feel that the emphasis
Freud places on the economic point of view must be placed in relation to the
necessity of reasserting the scientific profile of the analytical enterprise: it
has its insuperable limits in its anchoring to the drives’ quantities as final
constituents of psychic life, but at the same time there is the possibility of
avoiding slippery and arbitrary reductions to unstructured, superficial or
purely cosmetic therapeutic practices (“the warmed-up leftovers of
psychotherapy”). The centrality of the economic factor branches out in
several directions and necessarily requires us to highlight some details.
In the first section, Freud establishes the question of the time required
by psychoanalytic therapy, tellingly defined as “the freeing of someone from
his neurotic symptoms, inhibitions and abnormalities of character” (Freud
1937a, p.499, in S.E. 23: 216). This entails long and exhausting work, for
which it is illusory to substitute shortcuts, as in the case of Rank, whose
theoretical foundation - birth trauma - had been carefully critiqued by Freud
in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (Freud 1925). In this respect it must be
observed that Freud’s break with Rank had already taken place at that time of
A.T.I.’s writing; Ferenczi ended up taking the side of his mentor out of
loyalty, distancing himself from the colleague with whom he had co-written
the important essay of 1924. Freud insisted on psychoanalysis as a “scientific
enterprise” rather than a “facile therapeutic operation.” Haynal emphasizes
14 ENDINGS: ON TERMINATION IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
“therapeutic haste” with the further risk, noted by Freud, that the negation of
the centrality of the Oedipus complex can lead to outside of psychoanalysis.
In the second section, the question of trauma is made explicit in the
Freudian statement that of the three factors responsible for the outcome of
analysis (we repeat: the influence of traumatic aetiology, the relative strength
of the instincts, alteration of the ego), the first is the one which most easily
permits a real termination of the analysis. It may be reasonably supposed that
this affirmation demonstrates the influence of Ferenczi’s hypothesis.
Working with regressed patients, Ferenczi was in fact able to gather the
importance of traumas and develop the following considerations: the
necessity of reconsidering the traumatic-hysterical bases of illness; the
greater therapeutic efficacy of cases in which it was possible to ascertain
them; the problematizing of the role of fantasy and the reevaluation of
traumatic reality of pathogenesis; the appreciation of regressive experiences,
which inasmuch as they evoke early experiences, are made possible by the
particularity of technique.
But this is not the only reference to Ferenczi, who is instead quite
present in Freud’s first lines in the discussion of the concept of the “natural
end” (first introduced in his 1927 piece on the termination of analysis), and
subsequently, with regard to clinical examples presented for reflection on two
questions which emerge from practice. The first patient Freud talks about in
the second paragraph of A.T.I. is Ferenczi himself, and this reference contains
some questions which are highly significant. The central point is constituted
by the possibility of understanding the termination of analysis not only as the
elimination of current conflicts, but as a prophylaxis for future ones, to be
pursued through a technical strategy aimed at making them present in the
analytical field if they are latent. Freud considers it doubtful that a theme or
“complex” can be activated by merely mentioning it if it is not already
present in the patient, arguing the impossibility of activating quiescent
conflicts and the inadequacy of employing shortcuts with predominantly
theoretical considerations. Here, he offers an implicit criticism of the so-
called “active technique”, which in Ferenczi’s conceptualization aimed at
encouraging the reactualization of distant experiences in transference. At the
same time, it is as if Freud had made his own the point argued by Ferenczi:
the insufficiency of an intellectualist point of view in conducting an analysis.
Here a dichotomy appears: Freud opts for a coming to awareness – Einsicht -
in the spirit of the Aufklarung, while Ferenczi chooses lived experience,
Erlebnis (cf. Thompson 1994 for a discussion of existential aspects in the
Freudian vision of analysis and its aims).
In this passage, moreover, it is possible to see the conception that Freud
himself had of transference, by way of his refutation of Ferenczi’s criticism:
it is possible to perceive some limits in Freud to the full use of the
transference instrument, due to personal idiosyncrasies (his unease with
maternal transference, expressed on several occasions) as well as to the
16 ENDINGS: ON TERMINATION IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
power coming to the aid of the ego (whose precursor was the hypnotic
technique), and he ends with a critical conclusion in recalling Ferenczi’s
“unfortunately vain attempts.”
The Freudian choice of investigating this original excess, which was in
the end responsible for frequent failures in the action of reining in the drives,
led to a return to the cornerstone of psychoanalysis through the invocation of
the witch metapsychology: the two principles of psychic functioning, with
the dialectic between the primary and secondary processes. The importance
in prior writings of insight and persuasion induced in the analysand recedes
with respect to the consideration of the quantitative factor’s excessive power,
due to its close ties to biology. Perceiving the necessity of offering an
explanatory hypothesis of the very irreducibility of the economic factor,
Freud conceives of it as a historical factor which became dispositional. In this
way, the difference between the congenital and the acquired gives way: the
disposition is the precipitate of a prior lived experience of the species, to
which the more recent lived experience of the individual is added as a sum of
accidental moments. According to Fornari (1976), it is at this point that a
dilemma is established, one which was to become the source of serious future
difficulties: what is in question is the possibility of influencing with psychic
means (the analyst’s interpretations and constructions) that which is
presented as quantitative and, in the final analysis, physical. Fornari further
notes how Freud’s singular and total silence on Reich in A.T.I. – the latter
having sought to overcome the economic factor of libido with the thesis of
energetic stagnation – implies an unequivocal distancing from a position
which, in biologizing the drives, deprives them of the aspect as “psychic
representation” that defines analytic work’s sphere of competence (cf.
Contardi 1997 and Napolitano 1998).
Actually, all of the approaches directly aimed at the quantitative aspects
(and Ferenczi’s attempts, firmly anchored to the economic point of view,
should be included among these) turned out to be fallacious in their pretence
to ignoring drive derivatives, the only ones on which it is truly possible to
act. Moreover, the delay in taking into account the economic point of view,
whose importance was clear to Freud as early as in his Project for a Scientific
Psychology, has to do with the intrinsic difficulties of investigating economic
aspects, because of having to deal with quantities for which there is no means
of measure, and also because the quantitative processes are close to
biological ones, these being border processes whose prototype is the
psychoanalytic notion of drive. Freud sought to break out of this dilemma by
weakening the dichotomy between nature and culture through the concept of
phylogenetic experience found in ontogeny. This implied the introduction of
a cultural dimension in the concept of drive and the transformation of a
traumatic historical event’s significance into a basic feature of a drive
through the tendency to repetition. This Freudian conception of transforming
the trace of what tended to be repetition of the past in the present thus yielded
18 ENDINGS: ON TERMINATION IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
As is well known, through time this argument has been the object of
meticulous and critical fine-tuning (Blum 1987, Anzieu 1987). Blum
considers it emblematic of the curious oscillation in A.T.I. between
innovative, profoundly original points of view and residues of outdated and
superceded formulations. In effect, in the context of A.T.I., trauma is treated
as a discrete event, somehow isolated from the conflict which becomes
invariably activated in concomitance with the trauma. Moreover, it appears a
rather generic idea of trauma, despite the fact that Freud had described
specific traumas of the developmental phases, especially in Inhibitions,
Symptoms and Anxiety; on the other hand, there do not appear to be any
The Beginnings: Freud, Ferenczi and A.T.I 19
After having demonstrated, with this brief review of all of the sections
of the text, how the imaginary dialogue with Ferenczi unfolded throughout
the entire work, we would like to clarify the most important features of this
comparison. In our view, these features lie in the differing conceptions of the
analytical process, which are strictly intertwined in their repercussions with
the ways of understanding the termination of analysis. In the previous
section, we summarized Ferenczi’s theses, outlined most fully in his article
from 1927: the analysis ends with natural exhaustion; treatment must be
based on a decisive capacity in the patient to distinguish between reality and
fantasy; the final phase takes on particular importance, from the point of view
from the transference/counter-transference pair as well. In contrast to
Ferenczi, we have seen how in A.T.I. Freud instead privileges reflection on
the intrinsic limits of the analytical enterprise, which are connected to the
bases of psychic life in drives; he glosses over technique, which Ferenczi had
attempted to push further in order to widen the therapeutic resources of
analysis. In A.T.I., a theoretical foundation which renders analysis
interminable is repeated forcefully: the perennial contrast between primary
and secondary processes. We might isolate a dual aspect in this approach, one
of wider importance and the other dealing specifically with clinical work.
The Freudian point of view, usually characterized as pessimistic, can instead
be understood both as an expression of a necessary balancing with respect to
the encouraging ideas coming out of Marienbad and as a reaction to the
development of ego psychology, with its emphasis on the adaptive and
unifying tendencies of the mind. From this perspective, the accentuation of
disintegrative features and the emphasis on the “structure of opposition and
on the tension between opposites” (Thompson 1991), bear an acute
postmodern sensibility. Nonetheless, in our opinion, the sense which was
most congenial to Freud is the one which underlines the dialectical process
between opposite polarities, and not the most extreme version which deals
with the production of a fundamental and irredeemable incoherence, based on
a radical questioning of every unit of interpretation. On the more properly
clinical side, Freud’s focus – full of caution and skepticism – is on the
numerous elements which thwart therapeutic efforts, such as the libido’s
intensity and tenacity, in addition to the ego’s weakness. These elements are
frequently found in uncontrollable and unanalyzable transference
configurations which contradict the Ferenczi’s optimistic requirement of a
complete dissolving of transference and the end of analysis by exhaustion.
According to Kirshner (1993), Freud’s ambiguity towards psychic
reality leads to paradoxes which Ferenczi sought to resolve, or at least found
difficult to accept: in particular, the question of the relationship between the
reconstruction and the nature of the subjective reality that analysis attempts
to reconstruct. According to Kirshner, although Freud and Ferenczi both
pursued an accurate reconstruction of historical reality, they held different
ideas about the nature of that reality. Freud supported an observer-observed
The Beginnings: Freud, Ferenczi and A.T.I 23
that of the instruments or means which make it possible. After seeking in the
long-distance dialogue between Freud and Ferenczi the original foundation of
a debate which is still open today, our next step is the indication of a research
perspective aimed at finding in later psychoanalytic reflection on the subject
the resumption and development of themes which do not lie so much in a
linear warp of monolithic sides – pro-Freud and pro-Ferenczi – as in
articulated and complex operations, which nonetheless form diversified
discursive orientations.
As proof of the heuristic value of this hypothesis, we remind the reader
of Balint’s formulation in the late 1940s of the central point of the question
pertaining to the termination of analysis:
phase and libidinal weaning, attributing to the analyst a more incisive if not
more directly active role.
In Glover’s book, we find another conspicuous trace of the debate
triggered by Ferenczi’s positions under the heading “term” in the
questionnaire prepared by the author. In particular, in discussing the
procedure for setting a term, Glover writes:
wholly intuitive and exempt from the necessary effort to transform intuitive
evaluations into clinical accounts which could be rendered more objective.
According to Glover, the key criterion to undergo close examination is the
one relative to the limits of analytical influence: the domain in which it is
exercised is transference neurosis, whose manifestations – regression,
fixation, and transference-resistances – if dealt with in analysis, can evolve
toward a modification in the order of identifications, with the analyst serving
as an auxiliary superego. Glover strongly insists on the need for instituting a
crucial test of the analytical process, whose conditions must be satisfied - at
least ideally - before an analysis can actually be considered complete. In his
opinion, however, it is often the case that not entirely reliable criteria prevail
in the decision to terminate, for example a symptomatic improvement,
external motives or a condition of stagnation. In contrast to the unreliability
of these criteria, Glover favors having as much confirming evidence as
possible to serve as an antidote to errors in judgment which can arise from
counter-transference reactions of boredom, impatience and optimism on the
analyst’s part. Among those items which can serve as confirming evidence,
special emphasis is placed on oneiric reactions to treatment (“review dreams”
[Glover 1955], etc.).
From Glover’s presentation we thus get a picture of a clearly delineated
termination phase with particular features -such as a marked regression, an
increase in fantasy and transference fixations, and an exacerbation of
symptoms - which can lend increasing importance to secondary gain, the
second line of defense against analysis. The reasons in favor of the need to
postulate a terminal phase and dedicate careful clinical attention to it seem to
be based on the consideration that the patient’s mind is dealing with a
regression from which he must be enabled to emerge before being dismissed.
As it is articulated, Glover’s position appears similar to Fenichel’s: both start
with the intention of deepening, widening and systematizing Freud’s thought,
only to find themselves at odds with the man who inspired them and
inadvertently close to Ferenczi. But Glover appears more pessimistic than
Fenichel when he concludes his work by recalling Sachs’s provocative
statement that the most complete analysis is little more than a scratch on the
surface of a continent.
aspect of the question regards the many ways in which separation events take
place, whether they are provoked by the analyst, the patient or agreed upon.
On this basis, due to his specific knowledge acquired in the context of the
analytic situation, the analyst can construct developmental accounts
regarding the preparation of the patient for the ending event.
some therapies, it happens that the analyst intuits that a patient who appeared
up to a certain moment to be virtually cured tends to be really cured, and
despite this the patient still hesitates to abandon the infantile and fantastic
world which prolongs analysis in order to undertake a direction in his
behavior which would lead him to face the adult world. In this moment of
essential importance, the analyst’s neutrality - up to this point indispensable -
can become an obstacle to carrying out the process, and if interpretive
technique is aiming only for the interpretation of instincts, it can impede the
subject’s real contact with the object. Nacht therefore proposes deliberately
orienting the patient toward reality through interpretations directed to
behavior outside of the analytic relationship and focusing on actual behavior
and the way of reinvesting energies freed up through analysis. This change in
technique must be carefully distinguished from the active attitude adopted by
Ferenczi: Nacht insists on the concept of “presence” with which the patient
may find it useful to clash, oppose or even engage, whereas the classical
attitude of analytic neutrality provides him only with an image constructed
essentially by his subjective projections.
In the 1954 symposium, Bouvet cites Nacht’s ideas, enunciated in
structural terms according to which the reestablishment of proper functioning
of the three agencies - and in particular of the ego’s mastery over drive
activities and over the superego - forms the main criterion for the decision to
end analysis. Since in Nacht this goal is fully meaningful only if the
transference bonds (both positive and negative) are sufficiently loose, we are
actually dealing here with a general theorization of the process of termination
which is not significantly dissimilar from Glover’s. Likewise, in reproposing
the importance of a convergence of signs and, on the contrary, the
uselessness of isolated criteria, Bouvet notes criteria such as the possibility of
actually applying the rule of free associations or a change in the patient’s
object-relations. Nonetheless, despite the apparent harmony of their
perspectives, Bouvet assigns a crucial role to “intuitive perception” of a
certain state of the subject as a real turning point which only in a later
moment will be followed by the search for criteria and their objectivization.
Thus Bouvet, here again following Nacht – who spoke of “global
perception”, just as Fenichel had written of the “click of truth” – suggests that
the criterion of cure be placed within a framework of an intuition of the
whole present in the analyst in a given moment, that the subject has
undertaken a new way of being which will ensure a plausible irreversibility
of his insights and the possibility of maintaining them outside of analytical
control, the transference relationship having become useless. In this view, the
criteria outlined are utilized above all as elements for rectifying an inner
experience which, although it might seem transitory, still remains the key
moment of the decision to conclude. On the contrary, the lack of this so-
called “click of truth” should induce one to be suspicious.
After Freud: The Theme of Termination in the Mid-1900s 41
The following year, Bouvet extended the positions expressed in the first
symposium with a paper considering two particularly insidious forms of
counter-transference that can operate in the analytical relation. The entire
paper deals with the dilemma, already described by Freud in A.T.I, as to
whether particularly arduous analyses are to be attributed to id resistances or
to errors in technique. The precise reference to some aspects of the active
technique proposed by Nacht - such as a lack of regularity in sessions, the
interpretation of external behavior and the more summary and infrequent
character of interventions aimed at dissolving the transference bond - does
not, however, establish a motive for aligning Bouvet with Nacht, despite the
fact that they belong to the same theoretical-clinical school. Much more
cautiously, Bouvet declares using a “casual” reduction in the number of
sessions in a pre-terminal phase as a means of testing, likening this
circumstance to the subject’s suffering due to an accidental lack. The use of
prolonged weaning appears feasible to Bouvet if the analysis is sufficiently
advanced, because its consequences can be predicted and tailored
commensurate to the subject; moreover, it can turn out to be useful as an
indicator of the reactions to the frustration which, made evident to the patient,
can clarify the analytical situation and get the end of analysis underway. One
gathers the impression that Bouvet’s paper is an attempt at a uneasy balance
between the flexibility of the procedure for termination to be adapted to
individual and often complex analytical relationships, and the adherence to
some basic, informing principles which lie in a transference attitude of
simultaneous understanding and detachment. The influence of counter-
transference in the decision to terminate and the role of intuition as a reliable
criterion are further examined by Held (1955), who proposes an interesting
typology of patients in relation to the problem of eliminating transference and
its residues.
The talks in these symposia have as a particular connotation the effort
to explore the role of intuition and to examine the dynamic of counter-
transference in the termination of analysis, this latter theme also being
present, though with different aspects, in the late works of both Freud and
Ferenczi. In particular, the authors return to Ferenczi’s theme of “tact” and
the role of the analyst by underlining the analyst’s presence. In Nacht, this
takes place through the technical modifications of therapy aimed at favoring
an object contact in the analytical relationship and through interpretative
activity that privileges external reality (even if Nacht makes a point of
rejecting the Ferenczian sense of the analyst’s activity). In Bouvet, the
analyst’s activity, conceived as the agent of potentially traumatic external
reality, functions as a probe for gauging the patient’s reactions. Thus the
analyst’s activity, here too distinguished from Ferenczi’s position, aims at
reaching an intuitive perception of the patient’s state.
Three
1. European Psychoanalysis
For Meltzer, these phenomena reflect two fundamental insights of this phase:
the recognition of an introjective infantile dependency on the mother’s breast,
and second, the differentiation of the levels through which the more mature
part of personality begins to develop its own capacities of introspection,
thought and responsibility through introjective identification.
In Meltzer’s conception, process and cure are no longer represented in
exclusively dynamic terms (modification of the defenses), or economic terms
(ability to bear psychic suffering), but also in terms of personality
development, with reference to the structuring and organization of self as
well as to internal objects. Meltzer’s position represents the most fully
developed attempt to establish an isomorphism between analytic process and
psychic development. The Kleinian perspective was later taken back up in the
work of J. Steiner, which will be discussed below.
Let us now briefly review the French papers in the aforementioned
meeting, whose title seems to suggest an attempt to bring A.T.I up to date. J.
Rouart (1968) proposes to place the “heroic” Freudian measure in a counter-
transference framework, emphasizing that this would permit movement from
a resistance “of” transference to a resistance “to” transference. For Rouart,
the discussion over the “natural” end of analysis has evolved in the direction
of an understanding of the meaning and definition of the end of treatment, the
possibility of its existence, and technical questions and difficulties related to
it. As for the question of a complete cure, Rouart mentions that the relativity
of the concept of cure was underlined in the French meeting of 1954,
indicating the idealized and static aspects of the conception of health as
perfect psychic equilibrium. After a meticulous analysis of the factors of
irreducibility in Freud’s essay (repressed male homosexuality, femininity and
penis envy, the role of pregenital elements and ego alterations), Rouart
claims that progress on these fronts must be evaluated on two levels: one of
technical and theoretical clarification, in connection with the possibility of
deepening the analysis and overcoming particularly strong resistances; and
that of considering the positive aspects which are structuring and fruitful for
ego organization and for the therapeutic working-through of repressed
homosexuality, penis envy and narcissism, characterized by Freud solely in
terms of their negative features as obstacles. According to Rouart, the
“residual phenomena” described by Freud are impossible to eliminate and not
very residual, in that the psychic system includes elements and components
of differing complexity and levels of development. The author also recalls the
difference of approach between Freud and Ferenczi, with the latter’s greater
attention to counter-transference and greater faith in the possibility of
overcoming the Freudian bedrock.
J.-A. Gendrot (1968) sees Freud’s essay as a dialectic between the
theoretical necessity of placing an end to the duration of the analytical
therapy and the theoretical desire to analyze the sources of neurosis at their
very roots. Reflecting on the means and results of analysis, Gendrot asks
Theoretical Developments and Modern Orientations 45
whether or not analysis is a treatment and enquires about the goals which it
has for the patient and the analyst. He claims that for Freud the notions of
cure and termination of analysis do not coincide, at least in the deepest
conception of cure (as can be seen by Freud’s writing regarding the Wolf
Man). On this point, Gendrot states, contemporary analysts know perfectly
well that it is possible to be cured in one’s own eyes and in the eyes of
society without ever having completed analysis and vice versa. As for the
aims of analysis, on the one hand these depend on the theoretical assumption
relative to the conditions to be respected to obtain the most definitive
resolution possible of the neurotic conflict (as in the case of Freud’s decision
to establish an end to the analysis of the Wolf Man in the attempt to clarify
his infantile neurosis). On the other hand, there are transference and counter-
transference elements of the analytical relationship that intervene, such as the
analyst’s desire to cure the patient. Gendrot then identifies three different sets
of criteria for the termination of analysis. First, there are ones connected to
scientific research which vary with the state of knowledge, the dominant
tendency, the scientific group, etc., with significant eroticized and idealized
elements. In the second set, Gendrot cites the analysts themselves in their
concrete and individual activity. Here he recalls the varying opinions of
training analysts regarding the degree of depth in training analysis; he
observes that therapeutic analyses, in terms of their success and goals, both
compare and contrast with medicine. Nonetheless, Gendrot feels that we must
ask if the real goal of analysis is the cure of illness, and if not, what it
actually is. Finally, the third type of criteria has to do with the patient’s goals.
Aside from aspiring analysts, for whom the author claims that true analysis is
self-analysis after training, the goals of the patient are interconnected with
those of the analyst: they are all known but difficult to define, especially in
advance. According to the author, the impossibility of speaking of the
analysis in terms of results is definitive: this corresponds to the notion of the
“ego resistance that opposes the discovery of resistances.” However much we
may hope for progress in the power of analysis and in the extension of its
application, an insuperable form of ego resistance remains which is
incessantly renewed and which expresses a human being’s originality. This
makes it necessary for the analyst to keep in mind the influence of normal
ego ideal, which always lies in ambush. Gendrot concludes with the opinion
that the essential part of analysis does not lie in a therapeutic ideal and that
analysis is not a lesson. This is a question that confronts each and every
unconscious, a permanent interrogative and therefore interminable: cure and
its meaning belong to the person who undergoes analysis. The tolerance
inherent in this view is perhaps one of the principle advances made in
psychoanalysis since A.T.I.
R. Diatkine (1968) reverses Gendrot’s framework and claims that
psychoanalysis has overturned the concept of therapy in psychiatry and has
radically transformed the concepts of normality and pathology. He asserts
46 ENDINGS: ON TERMINATION IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
that the interrelation between clinical work and metapsychology is valid, and
that the definition of outcome in psychoanalysis has followed the
development of theory. Nonetheless, according to Diatkine, the formulations
have preserved their initial value, even if their range has been perhaps greatly
reduced, from the early ones (like “the hysteric suffers from reminiscences”)
to final ones (like “where id was, there ego shall be”). In the former case, the
analytic goal is the recovery of memories, in the latter, the integration of
drive energy and rebalancing of the ego-superego dynamic. The end of
analysis is connected to the ego’s achievement of a level of energetic waste
that is minimal or less than in the past, connected to the conflicts between the
psychic agencies manifested in repetitive behavior, in limitations of
investments or in the level of ego activity. The quality of insight rather than
the quantity of analyzed material informs the work carried out.
S. Lebovici (1968) explores the last part of Freud’s essay in particular
(the rejection of feminine passivity in the male and the lack of renunciation
of the phallic claim in the female). He elaborates his considerations on both
the technical and theoretical levels: Lebovici observes that the concept of
cure in analysis not only differs from the medical-psychiatric one, but it also
possesses a fundamental ambiguity, for which the aim of rendering conscious
the unconscious, for example, takes on a different meaning according to the
theoretical (metapsychological) context chosen. The author then recalls that
negative transference was initially dealt with by French analysts in the form
of negative transference elements to be revealed to the patient as such or in
relation to his aggression. The perspective subsequently changed, drawing
closer to Freud’s position on the uselessness of “unmasking” the patient.
According to Lebovici, the anti-authoritarian attitude which analysts began to
assume in the wake of Freud, with the renunciation of a prescription for the
end of therapy, opened the doors to the search for a natural termination
respectful of the patient’s freedom. Concluding, the author emphasizes how
the question of id resistance has not been dealt with and receives little
attention, whereas he feels that we should better understand the play of drive
mixtures and remixing in the organization of personality as well as their
weight in the indications and contraindications of analysis. In this regard,
Lebovici cites the Freudian oscillation between the historicity and specificity
of individual development and the importance of quantitative, energetic and
economic factors.
M. de M’Uzan (1968) begins with Freud’s ideas regarding traumatic
aetiology – that it is the one which allows for the greatest success in analysis
- and the best results provided by analytic work when pathogenic events
belong to the past. He introduces time as past time and the capacity for
temporizing, claiming that among the events belonging to the past there are
certainly some that can, thanks to transference, be both early and
contemporary. Consequently, it is not surprising that the cases in which
pathogenic events belonging to both the past and the present are the ones
Theoretical Developments and Modern Orientations 47
which offer the greatest opportunities for analytic intervention. The author
proposes substituting the terminated/interminable analysis contrast with that
of elimination/non-elimination of transference neurosis and, as a logical
consequence, that of formation/non-formation of the transference neurosis.
This reasoning leads to the following statement: interminable analyses are
those in which a real transference neurosis has not formed; analyses in which
this sort of neurosis has developed and been worked through are the ones
which evolve naturally toward termination. De M’Uzan then links
transference neurosis to what he defines as the category of the past, which he
believes to be inextricably bound to the possibility of a termination of the
analysis. In fact, the possibility of reconstructing and creating the past in
place of an amalgam of lived experiences is indispensable for the
development of such a neurosis and, a fortiori, for its elimination. The author
then deals with the question of ego modification, distinguishing between two
types: in the first, as is commonly known, there are cases in which the
patients are capable of reconstructing the past and creating it in their talk. The
second type, on the contrary, is expressed in a “archipelago personality” in
which the circulation of representations is limited or impossible.
C. David (1968) was also interested in the temporal level; for him, the
questions raised by Freud introduce the problem of time in psychoanalysis, in
the sense of a dialectic of temporality and timelessness. This happens because
Freud invokes the opposition between primary and secondary processes in
the most important moments of his theoretical work in order to better pose
the problem of therapy’s limits and the obstacles to cure. The question of
analyzability is situated according to the coordinates of time and
timelessness, or in other words, according to the whether or not unconscious
psychism can be influenced by the process of psychoanalytic therapy. The
author then points to the connection between temporality and timelessness
and the principle of drive duality, just as with the analyzable/non-analyzable
pair on the clinical level.
After presenting a meticulous list of observational data and techniques
utilized drawn from Freud’s work, M. Bénassy (1968) deals with two
questions: the drives (the quantitative factor) and ego alterations. With
reference to the former, Bénassy claims that the quantitative factor in Freud
is to be understood in a more formal sense rather than a literal one: Freud
would not have thought in terms of literal quantities, but rather in terms of
proportion and relation, thus keeping to a formal, fully scientific level.
Moreover, he considers that in the context of Freud’s work, the drives stand
for the biological and the ego for the psychological, and he attempts to
demonstrate how an erroneous appreciation of Fechner’s law led Freud to
conceive of the quantitative and the relation between drive processes and ego
process according to this mistaken judgment, thus establishing a hypothetical
relationship between biology and phenomenology. Bénassy believes that
Freudian biology is actually philosophical, and that the life and death he
48 ENDINGS: ON TERMINATION IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
2. American Psychoanalysis
development of the analytic process which per se does not require modified
technical devices, others instead emphasize the necessity of facilitating the
impervious passage from the phantasmatic relationship to a real one, taking
on a more active and self-revealing role in the final rounds of analysis. For
the latter, the final phase of therapy requires a modification to interpretive
technique, which must aim for a greater integration of what has taken place in
analysis, to a direct discussion with the patient of areas insufficiently
explored and the emotional dangers he might encounter with the end of the
analysis. Others - for example Greenson - introduce technical modifications
with an exploratory aim, such as face to face sessions and periodic returns
after termination, which tend to shift the emphasis from being the
psychoanalyst to becoming the listener and witness of the patient’s self-
analysis.
In the 1974 panel in particular, a number of authors (including Ticho) in
our view rightly highlight the risk inherent in modifications of technique in
this phase, as well as the importance of a particular vigilance regarding the
possibility of gratifying the patient’s desires. Modifications can in fact tend to
obscure transference residues and act as powerful reassurance factors, thus
reinforcing denial of the separation. On the other hand, these authors
correctly underline the importance of attentively observing the oscillations
between transference and reality to the very end, while variations introduced
to accelerate the realistic perception of the analyst can interfere with the
analytic work, constraining residual infantile desires and transference
displacements and covertly increasing forms of dependence. Fleming (in
Firestein 1969) discusses the specific procedure for termination, criticizing its
coincidence with the analyst’s official vacation. In his view this deprives the
patient of an important task: that of being able to leave the analyst while he is
still there, and complementarily, recognizing that the analyst can let him go,
thereby giving rise to an integration which is part of the progress from
adolescence to adult life.
Conceptions relative to the connection between the transference and
real relationship inevitably also influence the way of conceiving the essence
of the work of mourning in the final phase. Some authors (such as Bell and
Jacobson, in Robbins 1975) underline the complexity of the abandonment
dynamic, as it consists in giving up the analyst as a real object, and how it is
in effect impossible to carry out this difficult task, though it is generally
presented as worked out by internalization. These authors claim that the
affective complexity present in mourning requires a delicate work of
deciphering, aimed at distinguishing what regards the separation from
neurotic attachments (Numberg and Granatier, in Robbins 1975), from what
regards object loss. Kanzer (ibid) emphasizes the presence of mature
transferences in the analytic process which make new capacities possible for
pleasure, efficiency and investment of external objects, and consequently the
presence in the termination process of positive affect capable of balancing
Theoretical Developments and Modern Orientations 53
various problems (the revealing indicators of this phase, the peculiarity of the
emotions stirred, the evaluation of the meaning of the recurrence of
symptoms), with various alternatives taking shape. As an example, let us
consider the latter point dealing with the frequent return of acute symptoms
precisely in the termination phase. Many analysts tend to believe that the
return of the repressed is a preconscious maneuver to force them to prolong
the analysis; on the other hand, this can turn out to be a counter-transference
trap that leads to placing a reductive meaning on a dynamic which is per se
complex. The exacerbation of symptoms might be a reactualization of the
conflict produced by the loss of a significant object. This can thus form a
further organization of termination as a dynamically vital phase in which the
pressure of the end can lead to a refocusing of crucial themes in a way that
was perhaps never so clear previously. Other hypotheses regarding the
reappearance of symptoms center on the peculiarity of the analytical relation
as a valid learning process in the context of a specific object relation in
which, when cast in doubt, a momentary forgetting is produced. In other
words, the disappearance of symptoms takes place in the shelter of analytical
protection. Thus, some ideas interpreted final regression as an event closely
related to the precociously clarified material in analysis, while others instead
traced it to the weakening of restructuring and adaptive processes created in
the course of the analytic process. This recalls the so-called “transference
cure” that analysts like Jones and Ferenczi – following Freud’s lead – warned
against, underlining its unreliability as a criterion for symptomatic
improvement.
Firestein’s book, Termination in Psychoanalysis (1978), not only
deeply probes the termination process in eight analyses, but also furnishes a
wide overview of the problems arising from American psychoanalytic
research with a special focus on methodology. It thus opens up a branch of
research which aims to satisfy expectations of greater sophistication (cf.
Schachter 1990). In the chapter dedicated to methodological aspects,
Firestein identifies a distance of a year and a half in follow-up as the most
suitable period for the observation of results produced by the analysis. The
author also discusses a study carried out by analysts on psychoanalytic
therapies non conducted personally but completed by training analysts, for
the interesting aspect regarding the reproduction of reactions to the
researchers provoked in patients by the end of analysis. This fact appears to
confirm the force and persistence of the transference investments which can
be subject to displacement.
In the beginning of the 1980s, the American journal Psychoanalytic
Inquiry devoted an entire issue to the subject of the termination of analysis.
According to the editor, the unresolved problems taken into consideration in
preparing the issue regarded the criteria-outcome pair in termination, the
disagreement over the definitions of and dynamic formulations of a “phase”
of the analysis with uncertain boundaries, and the exploration of the
56 ENDINGS: ON TERMINATION IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
and his parents are subject to ambivalence in regard to this process: each is
called to deal with the new, to resist the desire to take shelter in the old, to
give up tested relational models and patterns; analogously, the analyst and the
patient have complementary roles in the course of the termination process.
The article by Novick (1982) is of great importance for the breadth of
its themes and their systematic treatment. Basing his work on a survey of the
results of studies on termination, he begins with an exploratory attention to
the various “termination typologies” as essential variants for understanding
the complex dynamic entailed by the termination of an analysis. Novick
differentiates three types of termination: mutually agreed-upon; forced, that
is, imposed by the analyst; and unilateral, on the patient’s initiative and not
agreed upon with the analyst. The latter two are defined as premature
terminations. Following Dewald’s hypothesis that termination conflicts are
analogous to the normal developmental phase of adolescence, Novick
identifies in uninterrupted analyses the reproposing of an adolescent pattern
which, if adequately understood or analyzed, can impede a premature
termination. This hypothesis, drawn from a rich clinical experience with
adolescents, is expanded and deepened in a later article (Novick 1988) that
shows how in interrupted analyses the repetition of an adolescent pattern
implies the regression from a differentiated transference to an externalizing
one. In the latter, it is not the analyst as a real or transference object that gets
left or mourned, but rather a part of the self which gets clearly and guiltily
rejected because it contrasts with the assumption of an adult identity. Another
important feature of this dynamic appears to be the inability to accept the
analyst’s imperfection and the limitedness and to deal with the crucial
experience of disillusion, which is a dynamic that has important points of
contact with the adolescent problematic and the illusion-disillusion dialectic
in regard to the parental figures.
It must nonetheless be noted that while the study of premature
terminations has been careful and precise, the same cannot be said of
interminable analyses, a typology which Novick (1988) deals with in a
subsequent article. In it, along with terminated analyses and prematurely
terminated ones, he considers overdue terminations, which we will examine
further below. The author strongly insists on the importance and difficulty of
an adequate termination and hypothesizes that many of the controversial
questions - for example the reappearance of symptoms and the postanalytic
transformations - can usefully employ a clear distinction between analyses in
which termination is agreed upon and those in which it is not. Another key
point regards the frequent confusion between the criteria for the beginning of
the termination phase and the broader ones for treatment or analytic goals.
This confusion is often responsible for a wearisome prolongation of an
analysis not concluded at the appropriate moment. The lack of this crucial
distinction may render the terminal phase banal, whereas it is instead a
decisive phase for satisfying those criteria of treatment required in advance
Theoretical Developments and Modern Orientations 59
for termination. The terminating phase begins after a mutual recognition and
acceptation of an approach to termination based on significant changes in
transference, the therapeutic alliance and counter-transference. According to
Novick, since it begins at the highest point in the development of the
transference of the Oedipus complex, this entails conducting an intense and
important work. In Novick, we find an echo of a classic question: the
relationship between the work alliance and transference, which he prefers to
maintain distinct, at the same time underlining a further assimilation and
fusion of the former with the capacity for self-analysis. However, we do not
think this fusion is wholly successful in clarifying the problem of how to
consider the development of an self-analytic aptitude, if it is to be a condition
for terminating or a meta-goal of therapy.
In addition to the previous contributions cited, we must also mention
those of Gillman (1982) and Firestein (1982), written in the wake of the
results of more recent studies (conducted with questionnaires administered to
analysts who had completed training and training analysts with over thirty
years of experience). These papers converge in outlining a terminal phase of
well-defined temporal contours and recognizable characteristics (dreams,
affect, etc.). In particular, Firestein’s article can be seen as an update of
earlier studies, influenced by the same framework of the 1978 volume, that
is, by the attempt to deal with the theme from three points of view:
theoretical, clinical and pedagogical. Firestein proposes the following
descriptive definition of the termination of the analysis: “Termination is that
phase of analysis in which we seek to determine what this complex enterprise
has meant in the life of the patient, and when and how to conclude the
collaboration” (Firestein 1982: 473). For Firestein, the results of his own
research are connected to those obtained by Glover in his questionnaire in the
1930s: he claims a general tendency to aphorisms which conceals a difficulty
in the clinical application of the guidelines represented by such aphorisms,
and he observes the clear difference between the elegance of
metapsychological formulations and the degree of approximation present in
the efforts to apply them to a clinical setting. In her writing on training,
Firestein complains about the inadequacy of analytical training relative to the
termination of analysis, observing that the difficulties are both on the part of
the candidates (who often conclude their training before concluding their
control analyses), as well as on the part of more expert analysts (who,
according to Firestein, are often reluctant to expose their own experience due
to the emotional intensity of the questions connected to them).
attempt to make them coexist, although they contain different vantage points
for examining the problem of termination. These two authors emphasize how
the criteria for termination depend on the therapy goals; if these goals are
exclusively therapeutic, the most common clinical formulations are ego
synthesis, the capacity for sublimation and reparation, or theoretical ones like
“where id was, there ego shall be”. In contrast, consonant with Bleger’s
notion (1973) of “maieutic goals”, the authors place particular emphasis on
the acquisition of the psychoanalytic function of personality which contains a
quality - intuition - defined as the specific capacity to perceive emotional
states.
Grinberg (1980) also looks at the problem of termination through a
questioning of the medical model. He considers termination inevitably
influenced by an emphasis on the cure of the mind, or on the contrary, its
exploration. In this framework, the central aim of psychoanalysis for
Grinberg is the search for truth, and in regard to the psychoanalyst’s identity,
the psychoanalytic function. The latter is characterized by features such as a
particular curiosity in the investigation of humanity, the mind and psychic
reality; a capacity for intuition, introspection and self-analysis; the capacity
to think in adverse situations and a negative capacity to come to terms with
uncertainty, as well as the capacity to bear the feeling of loneliness. In likely
disagreement with the theoreticians of the termination phase, Grinberg
underlines how the search for truth and the emergence of the new can be
obstructed if everything in this phase is filtered through the prism of
termination.
These contributions certainly appear influenced by Bion’s work, which
privileged attention to modes of mental functioning seen in constant
oscillation. In the Bionian psychoanalytic model, there is no space for the
conception of a complete analysis, and there is a prevailing interest in
methodological and cognitive aspects of the analytic experience. The way in
which separation is considered - normally a touchstone for identifying the
strength of subject-object differentiation - is emblematic of this tendency. As
Bion wrote:
4. Final Reflections
Notes
1
The most recent critical rereading of Freud’s essay in English has been the one
promoted by the IPA in 1987 (Sandler, ed. 1987), whose particular interest lies in
comparing the perspectives of authors from vastly different backgrounds.
2
In contrast, in a special international issue of the Argentine Revista de Psicoanalisis
(1994) devoted to the theme of the beginning and end of analysis, drawing together
Argentine, European and North American contributions, it is not possible to
extrapolate homogenous and comparable tendencies.
3
[Transl. note] The original Italian plays on the word conclusione, which is the Italian
term for termination.
Part Two – Process and Event in the Termination of Analysis
Four
His ideas on the language of action are based on these criteria. Furer
concentrates his report on the conception of the analytic process in
developmental terms, drawing from studies of infant observation and citing
Spitz, Mahler and Winnicott. Calef supports the classical theory of conflict,
as does Lipton, who observes how the biography achievable in
psychoanalysis is a by-product of the analytic process and does not constitute
the entire history of the therapy, which instead includes the vicissitudes of
transference and resistance. Stein likens Lipton’s particular notion of
psychological biography to Kris’s “personal myth”.
In his concluding observations, Stein argues that the theme of PP arises
from a widening of analytic aims, requiring further work on character, and
from the perception of the analyst’s role as someone seeking to understand
psychic processes rather than acting as a therapist. Stein recalls the Congress
of Marienbad in 1937, pointing out how the emphasis then placed on the
therapeutic process had impeded an understanding of the importance of the
development of character analysis as a refinement of the definition of PP.
In 1990, a monographic issue of Psychoanalytic Quarterly presented
the work of the Study Group on Psychoanalytic Process, established by the
74 ENDINGS: ON TERMINATION IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
output that represents the goal. In this meaning, there is not only the idea of a
direction and an end, but also one of necessities and operative constraints
which organize a linear series of progressive changes up to the point of
termination. Abend disputes that this is a valid representation of analysis, and
on the contrary, he reaches the conclusion that the concept of PP is entirely
useless.
In the same vein, Compton’s article seeks greater clarity; he decisively
asserts that the PP does not concern solely concern or take place within the
patient. Compton summarizes four meanings of PP:
On the European side of the Atlantic, the positions in the debate over
psychoanalytic process bear the same characteristics described above with
reference to the debate over the termination of analysis. Both French and
British psychoanalytic thought keep to a vision of the PP that is coherent with
their fundamental theoretical choices, the latter especially so in among
Kleinians and post-Kleinians.
On the whole, French psychoanalysis has had trouble accepting the
term PP, assigning it a meaning which is strictly bound to Freudian
metapsychology and therefore marked by dynamic approaches,
Nachträglichkeit and transference vicissitudes. The visible absence or at least
scanty use of the concept of PP in French thought is nonetheless a complex
point, whose deciphering entails examining a certain range of positions
which span from a radical and explicit criticism to uses which are more
implicit, deduced from the treatment of contiguous subjects. The overall
impression is that the concept of PP in the French milieu constitutes a
theoretical reference with a more problematic and diversified status than
those adopted by Anglo-American psychoanalysis, even where it presents
points of contact, as we will see below.
According to Green (1974), it is precisely the interest in object relations
(a term whose meaning can differ greatly) that has promoted the concept of
PP, with its gradual substitution of transference neurosis. Green understands
PP as a form of organization of the inner development of the patient’s
psychic processes in the course of therapy or patient-analyst exchanges. In
this view, he embraces authors like Meltzer who, as shown above, adopted
the concept of psychoanalytic process in a clear and recognizable way, as
well as Bouvet and Diatkine, whose perspectives certainly do not overlap
with Meltzer’s. It is nonetheless significant that, though both indicate
“weaning” as the last phase in the analytic process, Meltzer and Bouvet have
a way of understanding it which illuminate its different conceptions. Leaving
Meltzer aside for the moment, we would like to recall that for Bouvet, the
assumption of the conceptual model of weaning for the end of analysis in the
so-called typical therapy appears simultaneously inappropriate and rich in
meaning. It is inappropriate in tying the present level of the subject to a
regressive condition - typical of some analytic moments – whereas in
preparing himself for termination, he must have achieved the Oedipal stage.
As Bouvet puts it:
The Psychoanalytic Process 79
Unlike Bouvet, Green places his vision of the PP in the context of the
psychoanalysis of extreme states, and he is therefore led to create a much
stronger connection between setting and process, in keeping with
contributions such as those by Winnicott and Bleger. His conception of
process, centered on the analytic object as it is formed by two doubles - one
situated on the patient’s part and the other on the analyst’s - does not escape
the key question of regression. Regression in treatment “… is always
metaphorical: it forms a limited and reworked model of the infantile state, to
which it is related through homology, exactly like the interpretation
clarifying its meaning, which would have no effect whatsoever were there not
a relationship of correspondence” (Green 1974, Ital trans. p. 78). This is a
complex position which we might say does not reject the reference to
regression, but at the same time it problematizes the affirmation of the
genetic point of view (held in France, and in particular by Lebovici) to the
extent that such a point of view promotes visions of development that do not
utilize the psychoanalytic conception of time.
The attempt to think of PP in metapsychological terms, following
Freud’s idea of “psychic process”, was the theme of a Congress held in 1995,
entitled Metapsychologie: écoute e transitionnalité, whose acts were
published in a special issue of Revue Française de Psychanalyse. The
keynote address by R. Roussillon (1995) proposes a rereading of Freudian
metapsychology in which there is no space for the PP concept, if not in terms
of a probing of the relationship between Freud’s first and second
topographies in view of a further theoretical articulation of the modes of
functioning of psychic processes. Rather than taking into account PP,
Roussillon considers the “process” element of psychic functioning, in which
various items have a place and demand theoretical attention: mnemic and
structural ones, as well as ones related to the drives and repetition-
compulsion. In other authors, such as C. and S. Botella (1995), the “process”
element of psychoanalysis is viewed above all in relation to infantile
sexuality and its vicissitudes.
The recent positions of Pontalis and Laplanche are among the most
interesting: contrary to what one might expect, we examine them here not so
much to demonstrate their affinity as to point out a subtle and productive
difference. Writing in the wake of the aforementioned French Congress of
1995, Pontalis dedicates a brief and dense piece to this subject, in which he
argues his aversion for the concept of PP on the basis of two essential
80 ENDINGS: ON TERMINATION IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
considerations. The first regards the risk implicit in an idea of process which
he describes as follows:
from the superego to the ideal ego - the main consequence of abandoning the
omnipotence of the infantile portion of the self. Meltzer clarifies:
somehow overlap and are identified with each other, and the space-time
separating them is short-circuited and compressed in both theory and in
clinical practice. Actually, we are aware that this concise consideration
embraces a wide range of theoretical-clinical positions that have instead
important and differentiating nuances. Let us cite some of these positions as
examples.
A conception such as Laplanche’s (1987) “temporal window” is
certainly different from that of Quinodoz (1991) or Rosenfeld (1964). In
Laplanche, the attention is directed above all to the conditions which make
exiting from the analytic frame and the induction of a transference of the
transference feasible. In the other two authors, however, there is a careful,
meticulous and accurate observation of events and separation dynamics
mobilized by the end of analysis. In Laplanche, then, the discourse on the
termination of analysis is limited to a discourse on the conditions of
terminability, whereas the other two authors privilege the actual vicissitudes
of the termination and their connection to the particularities of primary
relations. All the same, what these conceptions of termination share is the
emphasis, in each case, on just one of the aspects of what we believe to be the
termination process. From this point of view, Novick (1988) must be credited
with having highlighted - explicitly and with exemplary clarity - the need to
avoid a confusion created by superimposition between criteria and indicators
of termination and the achievement of analytic goals. In his review of the
problem of the end of analysis, Novick emphasizes the lack of indications for
beginning the terminal phase, whereas generally one finds the formulation of
criteria for cure: “a cure which should be effected in part by the work done in
the terminal phase” (Novick 1988: 312). This yields the necessity of
differentiating the useful criteria for deciding when to begin the terminal
phase from the criteria for cure which can also be used for evaluating the
outcome of therapy.
This crucial distinction opens a conceptual space which is, in our view,
highly significant for the examination of the termination process, urging us to
deconstruct it in its multiple combinations and to explore and recognize its
different forms and configurations. A first important implication of this
perspective on termination is that it postulates a termination process which is
not reduced to demonstrating a simple final phase, one understood as the
gradual epilogue of a process which has already taken place and is solely to be
perfected. Instead, it is a matter of individuating a mental experience of great
intensity which, in order to be dealt with, requires the mobilization of all of
the combined energies of the analyst and the patient. The judgment of their
presence in the field, to the extent it may be relied upon, can be considered a
version of the so-called therapeutic alliance, operative only in this moment.
This alliance does not, then, constitute a initial premise of the analysis, but
rather an important achievement promoted by the analytic process and which
has, for example, an expressive linguistic indicator in the appearance of the
The Termination Process 91
pronoun “we” designating the analytic couple. Together with other elements
which, as we shall propose, regard the changed relationship over time, this can
form the basis of what some consider the most important interpretative act of
the entire analysis: the beginning of a terminal phase. And yet this beginning
does not offer per se any guarantee or prefiguration of the actual termination,
since there is, on the contrary, the risk that in the handling of this phase the
meaning of the entire analytical experience can be jeopardized. For
psychoanalytic reflection on this theme, a consequence is the theoretical-
clinical necessity of identifying and reflecting on the criteria of termination, or
rather, on the indicators not so much of termination as rather of the formation
of an inner willingness in the patient to face this theme and its ramifications.
The handling of the entire process thus turns out to be an increasingly complex
operation, quite distant from the model of exhaustion or from that of the
patient’s progressive assumption of the analysis, and closer instead to a more
dynamic and constructive vision of an unrepeatable experience.
An attention to grasping the first signs of termination process is
supported by an awareness that the termination of analysis is such an
important event, it requires being lived to the fullest symbolic capacity. This
capacity in turn needs a lengthy working-through, without which the analysis
cannot terminate, but may instead be interrupted or head down the path of
interminability. Indeed, interruption of the analysis can be a way terminating
without passing through the process of termination. Moreover, the complexity
of this working-through refers directly to the analyst’s counter-transference,
which can determine either a tendency to stalemate or a stimulus to
acceleration in order to reach a tacit agreement aimed at avoiding or canceling
the tumultuous work which goes along with ending. In fact, the analyst can be
quite tempted to abbreviate this phase, sparing himself the vehemence and
anger of infantile lived experiences and colluding with the patient’s need to
make it painless. Instead, it is in this interval that an irreplaceable psychic
work gets carried out which is an integral part of analytic historicization.
A second significant implication of the concept of the termination
process then emerges relative to the possibility of having a conceptual
apparatus available and a method for reflecting on the variety of analytic
outcomes which make up the complex geography of termination (interrupted,
intermittent, or interminable analyses, re-analyses, etc.). It is certainly no
coincidence that it was Novick, once again, who forcefully drew attention to
the scarcity of terminated analyses as compared with those he defines as
premature or overdue. We will return below to these typologies to examine
them more closely and to point out some of the subtypes which are important
to distinguish. First, though, we will clarify that our intent is not to provide a
taxonomy of termination, but rather to increase awareness of the complexity
of the task of ending analysis and refine the analyst’s skills in carrying it out.
A third implication is that speaking of process instead of a phase more
clearly opens a perspective on the relationship between the type of termination
92 ENDINGS: ON TERMINATION IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
1. it leads the prior analytical work to its highest point (at least in ideal
cases), achieving the couple’s analytical project in terms in which it has
been elaborated;
2. it introduces a scenario of change which goes beyond the initial premises
and the work already carried out, as well as the termination itself. The
situation we describe is intrinsically dual, in that termination can be
defined in a first approximation as a second moment in the analytic
process and at the same time as a possible first moment of further
psychic work, whether analytic or post-analytic.
Notes
1
Di Chiara (1978) uses the concept of separation in this sense, making it an additional
element with respect to those indicated by Bion.
2
We speak of a spiral of anxiety in the sense that in the various theorizations it seems
difficult to escape the connotation of more primitive anxieties as the backdrop upon
94 ENDINGS: ON TERMINATION IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
which more circumscribed forms of anxiety are delineated. Consider, for example, the
following: paranoid and depressive anxiety, automatic and signal anxiety, anxiety for
the loss of self and integration (Gaddini 1981), fragmentation-intrusion anxiety versus
castration-penetration (Green 1990). The latter author rejects a binary temporal
causality, following Freud in preferring to position castration as an organizing center,
with the consequent search for what corresponds to it in other registers.
Six
A further step along this path was the recognition of the peculiarity of
termination, which led to the attempt to interrogate it rather than ignore it or
remain silent about it as something of which we do not (and cannot) have
knowledge. The termination of analysis is an event in the etymological sense
of occurrence or happening, and thus features a minimum of characteristics -
the coordinates of the event itself. But it also possesses an additional meaning
in the semantic direction of a “success”, with the implications of
“accomplishment” and “attainment”, often reinforced by an adjective (great,
significant, unprecedented, etc.). In point of fact, the termination of the
analysis can be the successful completion of therapy or else an event which,
far from having to do with the completion, has instead to do with the
meaning of event or occurrence, whose value is unknown. The interaction of
these two semantic areas appears suitable for defining termination as a
psychoanalytic event (and henceforth we will italicize the term, so as to
distinguish it from the common usage), employing it as a theoretical
framework of reference whose aim is the investigation of analytic
termination, conceiving it “as a composite and polymorphous structure,
precipitate which condenses variously mixed symbolic components of acting
and communicating, both individual and as a couple.” (Ferraro and Garella
1997a). Thus the event of termination is not distinctive because of its internal
structure, but because of the definition we give it: its constitution is complex
and more easily related to a network made unique (single, individual) by the
nodes and connections forming it. We further underline the gap between the
event that we attempt to conceptualize here and the common “factual”
conception of the event: what renders the termination particular as an event is
the network of relations characterizing it, more so than the single elements. In
our view, this is a key point: if ignored, the event can evoke the impression of
“thingness”, that is, of a factuality unyielding to comprehension. The more
the quality of achievement and its complement – nonachievement or lack of
success – slips away from event, the more event narrows to the meaning of
“fact”. The unanalyzed and unanalyzable residue (but is it correct to call it
that?) present in every therapy endows the event with an opacity or hardness,
evidence for future memory (we are thinking here of cases of reanalysis) of a
situation which precipitates toward an unsaid point. Thus, termination is not a
fact (or at least, not only that), but an analytic situation which can interest all
of the elements of the process. This perspective allows us to appreciate the
weight of each element in the single termination (patient, analyst, analytic
couple, setting, etc.) as well as observe the resemblances and differences
between various terminations at a finer level, opening the way to a typology
of termination which in turn would be useful for further definition of the
termination process and for investigating postanalytic processes.
The definition we have given of the event aims at giving it a complex
representation which guarantees the singular and non-reproducible quality of
its occurrence in therapy. But all this alone would not take us much further
98 ENDINGS: ON TERMINATION IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
1.1 Direction
1.2 Communication
taking place within the analytic couple in the course of the termination
process – defined as shared and communicatively worked-through
understandings, such as the intention of terminating, the interpretive work
and working-through connected with it, the setting of a date for the end, etc.,
- and the emergence in the analytic field of the event as a message requiring a
decoding that is necessarily incomplete and only partially shared by the
couple as such.
From the point of view of the couple, the termination event is a message
that the couple sends to itself and/or its members regarding a state
(termination) and a prospect (breaking up into single members). As sender
and receiver together, the analytic couple finds itself in the difficult situation
of deciphering a message formulated by itself, whose central content is an
end to the messages and the closure of the channel. In this perspective, the
couple that terminates analysis is faced with the communication “this
message is not (or is no longer) a message” - a paradoxical and irreducible
situation. The single individuals making up the couple will inherit the
paradox, breaking it down at an individual level in the form of their own
lived experiences and psychic contents.
Generally and in the abstract, this is the case of shared, ideally complete
terminations. But what about others - for example, those interrupted by the
patient or declared terminated by the analyst, or in those in which termination
has been substituted by interminability? In such cases, we argue, an
asymmetry between sender and receiver prevails: one of the roles is carried
out by the analytic couple and the other by one of the members of the couple.
The patient who interrupts or the analyst who declares the termination of the
analysis in any case carries out the role of sender of a message that the couple
cannot receive and make its own (for a variety of reasons we will leave aside
here). This impossibility obliges the single individuals to an inner work,
unshared because it is not communicated, that no longer represents the
resolution of the paradox outlined above, but rather its transformation into a
form of traumatic nucleus. The centrifugal component of the termination
event in the single individuals thus predominates over the centripetal one of
the couple.
The situation of interminability can in turn be characterized by the fact
that the couple does not succeed in sending the message and therefore it
cannot receive it either. The single individuals do not manage to
communicate as a couple, that is, in a sufficiently shared and open way; and
so an impasse is formed as a situation in which the potential receivers
indefinitely postpone the choice of the sender. There is no one who thinks
that there is a message and searches for the sender, and even if someone gets
close, he does not find an adequate level of reception. Neither the analyst nor
the patient manages to take on the role of initiators (senders) of the message
relative to termination, and thus the work of the couple on the theme cannot
take place: the situation gets blocked while awaiting the non-existent
The Termination of Analysis as a Psychoanalytic Event 101
message. In this case, the termination event does not come about due to the
lack of a termination process, or else it impetuously invades the scene
disguised as the need for external reality (thus even more intractable to
analytic work), appearing as an interruption. Another possibility is given by
the analyst’s counter-transference work, which can allow him to get out of
the difficulty of being one of the poles (either sender or receiver), and thus
initiate a terminating phase with the related process.
1.3 Temporality
several vantage points, such as the relationship between acted-out time and
represented time, or between the perception of time (connected to external
reality) and self-observation as absorption in an inner time, and even through
the relationship between conscious representations and unconscious fantasies
influencing temporal lived experiences. This is because the phenomenology
of temporality is formed by an interconnection which is always varied in the
quality and intensity of these features, which can lie in harmony or in
contrast, and even present singular contradictions.
Details related to the final session such as delay, earliness, or absence,
forgetting the circumstance that it is the last one, confusing the day or hour,
etc., are examples of the acted-out time which may yield indications
regarding the manner in which the subject is facing the imminent termination,
the direction in which he attempts to manipulate its incidence (accelerating it
or prolonging it, blocking it out so as not to show up, etc.), and more
indirectly, regarding the way the announced termination is taking shape. A
rather macroscopic, and in a certain sense “classic”, epiphenomenon regards
the last payment (for example, paid in advance in the next to the last session
or “forgotten” in the last one, with the consequent “necessity” of having yet
another contact with the analyst). In these cases, time is present through the
association with money and can thus reveal a contrast with other lived
experiences and representations characterized by a greater harmonization
between the conscious and the unconscious.
The explicit communications that have temporal lived experiences as
their object during the last session or sessions can regard a wide range of
aspects. These range from the lived experience of the act of passage –
improvised, gradual, surprisingly continuous and developed from within, or
on the contrary, as a abrupt irruption straying into a time tyrannically
imposed from without – to the specific lived experiences of the last session.
They include all of those notations on the perception of the duration – too
brief or intolerably long, etc. – and on the use which can be made of them.
For example, the patient can associate up to the very end, with the meaning
of using up the whole last hour, or else leave a bit unutilized through a
prolonged silence which anticipates the closure.
As we have emphasized, the aspects of the temporal lived experience
most immediately influenced by affects can refer to feelings of trust, hope
and the capacity for planning, or on the contrary to impotence, block, and the
inability to envision a future. If we want to identify an essential
discriminating element, we could say that a radically different dimension of
the present is implicit in these temporal lived experiences. In the former case,
we find the present as a lived experience of contemporaneousness, that is, as
a mental quality that bears an element of transience and is thus imperceptibly
in relation with the past and the future, a time which flows but precisely
because of this stirs the desire to fill it with events and emotions. In the latter
case, the eternal present of immobility prevails, a frozen time in its own way
The Termination of Analysis as a Psychoanalytic Event 103
crushed in the vice of the past, which appears to be the sole dimension of the
future. In one last analysis dream, a patient asked a gypsy to tell her future,
while the scene concluded in uncertainty and in the absence of answers.
Strangely, this did not make her disappointed or frightened; she commented
that she had learned from analysis that “the future actually depends on one’s
relationship with her past.”
As for representations of time, these can be found in both verbal and
oneiric language. Arlow (1986) has proposed their distinction from temporal
lived experiences by virtue of the fact that the conception of time can be
reified or anthropomorphized - that is, treated as an object or a person, and in
this way be employed as a conscious presenting element, as the manifest,
derived representation of a fantasy or unconscious desire. Among the most
common representations, we find spatialized time (a hole-abyss; flowing sand
or a river; a series of places or rooms) or those figurations marked by
fantasies of voracity or control, influenced by pregenital impulses. In
personalizations, time has the form of an allied, friendly presence, or on the
contrary, of a pursuing oppressor or a strict regulator, these being
connotations of Oedipal time. It is clear that even the representations of time
entail affects; all the same, a unified study of lived experiences and
representations with particular reference to the metaphors of time (Arlow
1989) can refine our plotting of the means of relating to time and its
variations in the course of analysis.
From this point of view, a rich source of information appears to be the
attention to all of the instances of temporality in the last analysis dream.
Oremland (1973) has proposed an exploration of the last analysis dream as an
indicator of different typologies of termination, but temporal aspects are not
explicitly mentioned in his hypothesis despite the fact that, in our opinion,
they constitute a fundamental element of differentiation. Indeed, in
termination dreams he identifies two fundamental aspects which differentiate
a successful termination from an unsatisfactory one: references to the
patient’s symptomatology, with the representation of an eventual
transformation, and the way in which the relation with the analyst is depicted,
who appears undisguised in dream in an analysis actually brought to term.
These two aspects, respectively related to what we might indicate as “the
living history of the subject” and “the evolution of transference”, demonstrate
the work completed in the course of analysis. Last dreams in analysis can
thus be illuminating for the way they demonstrate the recovery of a
temporalizing memory that establishes connections between past, present and
future, or else is on the contrary blocked in repetition-compulsion,
reproposing the initial situation practically unchanged. Complementing
Oremland’s approach, Ferrara Mori (1993) hypothesizes the last dream in
analysis as a precursor (avant-coup) of post-analysis. Using the experience of
patients who requested supplementary analysis after the termination of
therapy, she investigates last dreams with the hypothesis that these implicitly
104 ENDINGS: ON TERMINATION IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
measured his life, varying the duration and intensity of his sense of
responsibility (and of that of guilt and inadequacy) in a painful and
implacable way.
In both cases the termination event extended beyond the last session,
pointing to a part that could not be worked-through and was thus extraneous
to the analytic couple. Although the termination of the analysis had been
reached with an adequate understanding of its meanings, keeping to our
discussion of temporality, an element remained which manifested the
presence of a quantity of affect regarding time experienced as something that
was not wholly controllable. In the first case, this was a time tied to processes
of identification, the time of the analysis as the time of the analyst, which
could perhaps lie in the background as a time of dreaming (to sleep in order
to dream). In the second, time was a feature of Oedipal aggression, intrusive
and castrating, “domesticated” and softened, but which always remained
under an intimidating effigy, that of the superego which requires an ego that
measures up to its own ideals.
We have another important source for investigating temporality in the
plans that take shape during the termination of analysis. By its very
definition, this domain of planning lends a strong continuity to the entire
process of termination from beginning to end, in that at a certain point in the
analytic process we often see plans emerge which take on consistency and are
carried out in the course of the process itself. Vice versa, they may simply
surface as outlines, and there will be no opportunity to follow their progress.
Having identified these plans as further articulations of the conclusion event,
we intend to explore them in relation to the temporal aspects forming them,
as paradigmatic of the relations between the psychic agencies - in particular
of the relationship between ego and superego, as mentioned in the preceding
case. Loewald (1962) has incisively emphasized that if we conceive of the
superego as a psychic structure representing the ego’s future, from whose
point of view we are judged, loved or hated with respect to the planned
achievements, the specific characteristics and qualities of the plans presented
can offer precious indications about the modes of interaction of temporality,
understood as organizing and ego’s connective action. For example, an
excessive distance between the plan and the subject’s possibilities to carry it
out in fact establishes an interaction between the psychic agencies marked by
a fragmented temporality: the future will never become present, and seeing as
the past as unconscious drives cannot be introduced within the plot of
becoming, it will thereby continue to function as a devilish (or regressive)
attraction rather than as a container for propulsive desires. On the other hand,
plans which are long-term but commensurate with the subject’s resources can
be conceived of as expressions of the ego ideal which animates and supports
the incessant search for self-realization. In an analogous vertex from which to
describe this difference, based on a different temporality, the former are plans
marked by a narcissistic time and the latter by an Oedipal time (Di Chiara
106 ENDINGS: ON TERMINATION IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
2. A Typological Reflection
the consideration that the most common experiential and definitional modes
of the end of analysis are a common ground for the majority of analysts and
are the reference of our discourse; and the conviction that our hypotheses can
refine our observational framework, revealing similarities and differences
where the continuum of experience sees only differences or only similarities.
As our point of departure, we have chosen Novick’s (1988)
classificatory scheme for the termination of analysis: terminated analyses,
prematurely terminated analyses - in forced and unilateral versions
(respectively, on the initiative of the analyst and the patient) - and overdue
analyses. We believe that this scheme provides the basis for a first attempt at
categorization, in that it establishes common experiential reference points: all
analysts have the experience of interminable analyses or interrupted
therapies, or situations in which they feel the need or obligation to terminate.
Let us repeat that the scheme should not be confused with the reality of
analytical therapies, which appear instead to lie along a continuum, of which
the above definitions are conceptual clippings. What counts, in the end, is the
ability of the scheme to capture experience with increasingly fine degrees of
resolution. We therefore propose to articulate and enrich the proposed
typological configurations with more subtle differentiations within them,
pointing out elements of a different type within each type of termination, if
only in a problematic form.
We note, for example, that although the unilateral feature of termination
is actually common to both of the variations proposed by Novick for
interrupted analyses, it becomes in any case necessary to distinguish between
cases in which the analyst “pushes” for termination, usually with a certain
range of “heroic measures”, and those where it is instead the patient who
imposes a termination that appears premature to the analyst. An important
difference between these two outcomes consists precisely in the particularity
of the process of termination, which in the first case probably takes on
particular characteristics; in the second case, however, it instead collapses
into the event of termination to the point of nearly coinciding with it.
Similarly, in overdue analyses - in which the analytic process seems to have
missed the crucial goal of termination - we can find situations of impasse,
now as prefigurations of subsequent outcomes of interruption, now as
outcomes of an unbearable fantasy relative to the process of termination.
Moreover, analysts quite frequently seem to have rather satisfactory
experiences of terminated therapies which nonetheless appear partial, due to
the presence of areas which remained obscure and off-limits. Had they been
prolonged, these analyses might have touched those areas, too, or perhaps
they would have gotten bogged down in them. In any case, they are analyses
whose success does not erase a sense of incompleteness and certainly not that
type of incompleteness which theory clearly tells us is inherent in every
attempt to deal with the unconscious.
108 ENDINGS: ON TERMINATION IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
The patient’s comment was that she thought she was ready to be on her
own. The analyst drew attention to the name of the important woman,
identical to the patient’s; having already thought of this detail, the patient
observed that ending the analysis made her feel important, but she detested
the traits of the homonymous character. The woman was the professional
rival of the patient, who felt that she had been unjustifiably criticized by her.
After a prolonged silence, she added that her own mother, who for years had
never asked anything about the analysis, had suddenly asked that day, “Is the
person you see young?” With a certain surprise, she answered, “Yes,” but
silencing her implicit thought, “Not old like you [the mother]”. The detail –
age - which likened the two women (the patient and the escort in the dream),
was forcefully reproposed in the transference relation, in this way addressing
a detail which had already appeared at the beginning of the week in the
dream of the two cars (the woman/younger-looking mother that the patient
saw slowly driving off in the vintage auto). The assumption of responsibility
- but also the expansive dizziness connected to being alone - lies at the center
between the recognition of reality, especially of finiteness as the expectation
of the death of one’s own parents, suddenly seen as truly elderly, and the
perception of a future-oriented potential present in the metaphoric
representation of rejuvenation (a feature identifying both the analyst and the
patient), conveying elements of hope for planning.
In the last dream, the patient was with a man, not clearly
identifiable, “an imaginary presence”, and was faced with her
hairdresser, to whom she replied smiling. Yet addressing her
imaginary interlocutor, she commented (alluding to her
hairdresser), “He says a lot of nonsense.” She saw him heading
off with his two daughters (he has a brunette and a blonde) and
saw the brunette (the patient’s hair color) from behind, a twelve-
year-old girl who appeared to be six or seven. She has always
wondered if the father was aware of the difference between her
real and her apparent ages.
Once again, the patient is reluctant to accept the likening of the analyst
to the hairdresser; then she remembers a phrase pronounced by the latter
which sounds like a confirmation: “You don’t yet know what it means to have
your head in my hands.” In this, too, the dream reproposes a duality: in the
preceding dream, in concomitance with the request for a single room for
herself, a hostile woman appeared. On the one hand, there is a “smiling”
communication here, of the “putting on a good face” sort; on the other hand,
talking to her self, she expresses a significant reservation. The analyst points
out the double scene of the dream: the imaginary dialogue, a likely precursor
of the internalization of the analytic function, and the ambivalence connected
to separation, which makes hateful both the self that desires emancipation as
The Termination of Analysis as a Psychoanalytic Event 111
of analysis on the part of the patient may be little surprising or not at all, but
for the analyst it almost always constitutes the patient’s final alienation from
analysis.
In “forced” analyses, the element of acting-out is present in a more
ambiguous way, because it does not necessarily coincide with some form of
“heroic measure”. Paradoxically, it may instead show up in a figure-
background relation, beginning precisely with elements of the patient’s
acting-out which inevitably lead the analyst to think about less evident
counter-transference actions.
In one case, through a termination event whose principal feature was a
dissonance of temporal lived experiences, the analyst understood that it was
an interrupted analysis, and more exactly – in Novick’s terminology – a
forced termination. Despite the fact that the problem of termination had long
been discussed in the analysis, and the date had been set far in advance, the
patient was surprised when he got up at the end of the last session, and as
confirmation of this and in contrast with his usual behavior, he left without
paying. Looking back in the light of postanalytic developments (after a
difficult experience, the patient resumed and then interrupted the analysis
again), the last dream of analysis appeared to the analyst to contain a number
of signs as to how premature the termination was.
3. Conclusions
Seven
The Liminal
1. Introduction
being identical to it. The form assumed by relationality clearly concerns the
integration and coordination of corporeal functions and rhythms.
Most recently in psychoanalytic thought, psychic temporality appears
irreducible to mere corporeal temporality, which is essentially cyclical,
automatic, conservative and non- representational (whose most striking
expressions might be the extreme forms of life of the fetal period and coma).
The different forms of temporality are conceived to be the result of processes
that organize experience (Jaques 1982), or else the expression of functioning
of psychic structures whose nature is intrinsically temporal (Loewald 1962).
Modell (1990) conceives of the ego as a structure engaged in the elaboration
and reorganization of time.
On the social level, social habits of regulating time - including
judgments, behaviors, techniques, and explanatory and normative patterns
relative to time - form a continuum whose fabric is made up of multiple
forms of social relations: public and private, personal and group. For German
sociologist Norbert Elias (1984), continuum, relationality and triangularity
are the three reference points for a sociological discourse on time. As we see,
the routes of time can be quite similar for different disciplines. In the social
sphere, the rhythms and forms of temporal organization have a symbolic
nature and expression: the structure of language, the symbology and
iconography of time, and the formal organization of social behaviors are all
examples of areas in which individual psychic processes, collective psychic
processes and cultural processes all mix. It is in the social sphere - thus a
symbolic one - that we find the anthropomorphic operators of time
(Brockmeier 1996), a metaphor that helps us to construct our temporal
synthesis on both an individual and social level. These are symbolic “acts of
signification” which organize the meanings of the culture in which we live
and together express a dimension intrinsic to the meanings and their creation.
The anthropomorphic operators of time - which for Brockmeier are
chronology, activity, language and space – appear to resemble and be
connected to unconscious figures of time, as described by Arlow (1986) for
example.
In a discussion that is of interest to analysts, Brockmeier argues that it
is not possible for humans to have a stable epistemic distance from
diachronicity or from their experience of it, since they are immersed in this
very diachronicity. Brockmeier then supposes that one of the psychological
functions of our temporal concepts is that of enabling us to find a sort of
“theory” for our life, a temporal framing of life which makes intentionality
and the meaning of life possible. This scheme of temporal reference consists
in the ordering of a succession of diachronic events in a meaningful way,
whose final outcome is continuity, autobiography and identity. For
Brockmeier, the narrative plot is a fundamental form of temporal ordering:
each autobiography underlines or summarizes an implicit autobiographical
temporal theory. This is articulated through many spatial references,
The Liminal 121
2. The Liminal
In 1909, Arnold van Gennep published a book which had little success
in its day, only to rise to the status of a fundamental volume around the
middle of the last century when it was adopted in the work of other authors,
such as Victor Turner. In this book, the scholar – a German assimilated into
French culture – formulated the concept of the rites of passage, including
among these a variety of sacred and social rituals which up to that time had
been viewed as variegated and scattered. In the Introduction to the Italian
translation of the text, Remotti defines them as follows:
96). On the one hand, the neophytes are neither alive nor dead, and on the
other they are both alive and dead: theirs is an ambiguous and paradoxical
condition which all of the traditional categories are confused. In societies in
which gender distinctions have great structural importance, the neophytes are
seen now as neither male nor female, now as both. Another negative
characteristic of transitional beings is that they have nothing (status, property,
rank, etc.). Turner further elaborates the concept of liminality: “We are not
dealing with structural contradictions when we discuss liminality, but with
the essentially unstructured (which is at once destructured and
prestructured)” (ibid: 98). He also writes the following:
The two authors deal with the study of such morphologies and
ecologies along three temporal dimensions: linear, cyclical and liminal.
Leaving aside the first two, where the authors are basically close to common
opinions, they conceive of the third in the following:
The Liminal 125
Ricoeur draws from the literary critic Frank Kermode, who is also cited
by a psychoanalyst, Arnold Cooper (1987), precisely in relation to the theme
of the termination of analysis. According to Kermode, there is no real closure
or end to any great story: stories, at least worthwhile ones, have in fact
always been planned in such as way as to provide a continuation of the life of
the characters and of the narrative interpretation which can be made of them.
130 ENDINGS: ON TERMINATION IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
Just as every great story is valid for every period and generates an endless
exegesis of its own text, so too, for Cooper, every analysis generates an
infinite number of terminations: different readings and re-readings of the
story are always possible.
Although its reasoning takes place on the level of philosophy and
narrative theory, the work of Ricoeur and Kermode highlights the
coexistence of two elements that are apparently incompatible. First, there is a
“sense of an end point” and the importance of a certain closure of the story,
making it perceptible in relation to the meaning it bears and comprising
various temporal modalities. Second, closure is like a transition, a liminal
zone or a passage whose end is favored by the opening of sense through
possible and always new re-readings. In this way, it avoids the equivalent of
sacralization, which is represented in psychoanalysis by repetition-
compulsion in its most overwhelming and harmful form.3 In a certain sense,
the family romance of neurotics - and even more so, Kris’s personal myth -
are the equivalent of a movement of rigid confirmation of a past that is
simultaneously present and future, and thus quite near to timelessness in its
non-differentiation of times and events.
The operation of configuration described by Ricoeur illustrates an
aspect which, we repeat, concerns not only the narrative sphere, but also the
psychological one as well, offering suggestions for a brief reflection on the
aspects of psychic reality illuminated by liminality in the beginning of the
termination process in analysis. We start by evoking Eliade’s work on myth:
“…myth is… ‘living’, in the sense that it supplies models for human
behavior and, by that very fact, gives meaning and value to life” (Eliade
1975: 2). Myth is true history because it always refer to reality: “Myth, then,
is always an account of a ‘creation’; it relates how something was produced,
began to BE” (ibid: 6). In these features, Myth differs from History; modern
man’s attitude toward them differs from that of a man from archaic societies.
The former considers himself the result of a universal, irreversible History,
but he does not feel obliged to know it; the latter is obliged to remember the
history of the tribe and must periodically re-actualize much of it.
At this point, we recall what Freud said in the Leonardo da Vinci and a
Memory of His Childhood: a people already constituted in its historical
identity does not turn to myth, but rather it mythologizes the documents
attesting its own history (for example, the Jews with the Tables and the
Pentateuch), eventually rewriting them and submitting them to a process of
reworking (the Torah). A young people or one tied to a primeval cultural
state maintains myth as a guarantor of the actuality of history, understood as
the history of the existing. In his much later Moses and Monotheism (1934-
38), Freud reproposes the essence of this thesis: historical reality arises from
a historicization of the reality of events and is therefore subject to re-
inscriptions and transcriptions on the basis of the need of a people’s or an
individual’s present. That is, history is always a history in two times. If we
The Liminal 131
story a people gives itself, we can certainly keep the idea that giving oneself
a story constitutes a need and an enterprise of maturity, corresponding to the
acquisition of wealth as opposed to the difficult period of origins coercively
encumbered with the problem of survival. Instead, with regard to the feature
of falsification (embellishment of one’s own origins), we may introduce a
distinction in order to better clarify how in a specific sense it converges with
our concept of the liminal, which includes and subsumes that of
Nachträglichkeit. We are keeping something of the Freudian concept of
embellishment in other terms, but not so much in its dominant sense of
falsification (humble origins hidden by grandiose genealogies), as that of an
enigmatic aesthetic quality assumed by the subject’s story as viewed from its
end point. It is here that the passage by way of the model of temporality
inherent in Freud’s theory of trauma appears crucial, bearing in mind the
interrelation of meanings between Nachträglichkeit and liminality.
Notes
1
In the classical Greek world, Kronos and Kairos respectively identify the objective,
serial time of events and the cyclical time of rites and myths.
2
This necessity must have been constantly present for Freud, since we find traces of
it as early as in Draft M of 1897, with the mention of a romance of alienation in
paranoia and a romance of prostitution in agoraphobia, and in the letters to Fliess of
January 24 and October 17, 1897, and of June 20 in the following year, in which
appears a reference to myth in his own family origins.
3
We recall Turner’s statement cited above regarding the sacred ceremony, which has
powers of confirmation, in contrast to ritual, which has transformative qualities.
4
We are well aware of how much the concept of liminality recalls some historically
consolidated concepts such as symbolization, sublimation and tertiary processes,
which nonetheless do not fully render the particularity of the specific opening phase
of the termination process, which we are attempting to grasp through this concept.
Eight
Forms of Time
Similarly, Flournoy (1979) presents the idea that the time of analysis
absolves the same function as the interval between event and symptom in the
schema of Nachträglichkeit. For this author, at the moment of the decision to
undertake analysis, an intersubjective, secondary time begins that manages to
organize the material forming the analysand’s personal myth. Through the
analyst’s interpretive activity, such material gets pushed outside the chaotic
temporality of the unconscious into a historical context particular to the
single patient in his specific analytic situation. The chronological temporal
order is unimportant, since recollections and associations are reorganized in
the course of therapy. Through the analytic work, a new personal myth gets
developed, a new historical version whose construction/reconstruction takes
place through the direction provided by the myths of Oedipus and Narcissus.
According to Flournoy, the analyst imposes or superimposes these two myths
on the patient’s personal myth to create order and permit understanding. In
this way, then, it becomes possible to give a name to and modify the personal
myth, and remove the obstacles that the personal myth has posed for the
analysand.
From what has been stated above, we may note how the discourse on
Nachträglichkeit and trauma quite often involves the theme of temporality,
on the one hand, and repetition, on the other. In our discussion of it,
Nachträglichkeit possesses neither a deterministic linearity nor a strict
circularity1. Moreover, it compels us to also take a stand on the concept of
Forms of Time 139
analysis, for example, the danger lies in the opposition to the analytic work of
the termination itself. In this sense, repetition-compulsion has long been
perceived through the observation that as termination approaches, the patients
seem to have a revivification of their initial symptoms. In the case of the
ego’s restorative tendency, instead, things are more complex, depending on
whether one emphasizes the “curative” element or the “negative” (in the
sense of ego’s negation of the traumatic event) one.
What space does Nachträglichkeit have in the semantic-conceptual
spectrum of repetition-compulsion? There is no doubt that it presents an
intrinsic feature of repetition, following a dual necessity: that is, in requiring
two times, it implies that the constitution of the trauma arises from harping
on a point, a repetition of something, and not just an addition or extension of
the original event. Moreover, the second time possesses some kind of feature
which enables it to function as such and this cannot but be isomorphic or
homologous to a characteristic of the first time. The original Freudian
approach is clear: in the drive model of (sexual) trauma, the two times are
conceived of as homologous, since both deal with sexual development and
identify crucial periods in this development. Instead, in the dual-drive model
(Eros-destructiveness) there is little space for Nachträglichkeit, since the
action of the destructive drive establishes a cyclical and isomorphic
temporality. Finally, in the conception of trauma based on different models –
object or relational – there seems to be no place for Nachträglichkeit, since
the constitution of the trauma includes a form of autonomy from which the
repetition follows.
For various reasons, then, in each of the models discussed
Nachträglichkeit is not fully taken into account. In our view, this is not due to
an inadequacy of the models or of the very concept of Nachträglichkeit. The
fundamental reason is that Nachträglichkeit is a more general concept,
related to the functioning of the psychic apparatus and its conservative
nature: in its explanatory range, Nachträglichkeit embraces all of the
phenomena of normal and pathological repetition, since the representational
game of the working-through and re-working-through of lived experiences is
located in the continuous dynamic of mnemic traces and the traces they
leave.
The concept of repetition-compulsion features a more limited range,
referring to the sphere of pathology (psychopathology and pathology of daily
life). The phenomenal field which it attempts to encompass is more that of
repetition with cancellation (of the emotional impact, sense, or organic
vitality itself in Beyond the Pleasure Principle [Freud 1920a]), than that of a
repetition which – we must insist – has constructive elements (but no less
conflicting and traumatic). We cannot offer here a more detailed discussion
of Nachträglichkeit and its relation to repetition-compulsion, but the idea of
conservation it conveys takes on very different features according to whether
Forms of Time 141
termination (phase) of analysis. One may intuit from this the importance and
delicacy we attribute to the beginning of the termination phase of analysis
and the effort to identify in liminality a conceptual constellation which helps
us in the work of recognizing and starting the termination. In fact, liminality
serves as a key to identifying various, concomitant elements: as a threshold, it
indicates a line of both boundary and rupture between different phases of the
analytic process; as a border [margine], it refers to a third place with respect
to territories of the unconscious and the consciousness, not necessarily one of
interposition; as temporal modality, it characterizes the emergence of a
temporal lived experience in which the representation of self begins to get
reorganized according to a scheme equipped with a closure, described above
with the expression “sense of the end point.” Unlike the rigid structure of the
family romance or the personal myth, whose defensive aim prevails to the
point of closing it off to development and turning it into the premonitory
symptom of pathology, the closure of the liminal is that of an open,
transitional area with nuanced and mobile borders. It is closure as a
organizational necessity of the ego, so to speak, and for this reason it is
certainly also defensive, but at the same time it is open to re-transcription,
reworking and redefinitions of the subject’s self and his own history, making
each reworking into a foundation for the subsequent one.
However, liminality does not seem to form an strict indicator of the
process of termination, or at least not in the precise sense of its presence as a
criteria of the existence of such a process, if only in the beginning stages. We
see it instead as the signal of a possibility for reorienting the analytic process
in a direction whose most desirable (though perhaps not most common)
feature is the termination of the analysis. On the whole, liminality can show
up but turn out to be unbearable: the threshold can appear to the patient or to
the analytic couple as hardly practicable or transitive, the border too unstable
and permeable to allow one to dwell on it, and temporality too alien to
proceed into it.
to utilize them most of the time. After a brief summary of her latest
undertaking (a short trip alone for an out-of-town weekend, an unthinkable
achievement for her which was experienced with great pleasure – this, too,
unusual), she announced that she wanted to tell a dream which had troubled
her very much, thereby demonstrating that she was sensitive to the use of
time in the session. The dream was as follows:
crossed through. We tend to think that where the event that has a cardinal
function in Meltzer’s view (the parents’ death) has not actually taken place,
there may be other psychic events which function as the first time of the
trauma.
The time of the analysis as a liminal time is a place from which one can
look simultaneously at the past and the future, tied not only – as Freud says
(1908) – by the thread of desire, but also by that of necessity. In short, as we
propose it, the finding of this specific dimension of time in the recurrent
figuration of death in the termination phase of analysis differs from the usual
readings in that it seeks to highlight, not only or so much, the double
mourning of object loss and the belief in one’s own immortality, as instead
the work of the Nachträglichkeit as differentiating work.
In the context of our discussion, the problem of setting the date merits
special reflection. This problem is sometimes downplayed as an
inconsequential technical detail, but in our view it instead takes on an
interesting paradigmatic value. Paradigmatic of what? In the first place, of
the complex suffering inherent in the termination process, and second, of the
relational entanglement between termination’s transference and counter-
transference elements, which are intensified by the task of leading the
analysis to an end. In our opinion, greater attention has been given to the
other aspect interconnected of the termination process, that of the setting
utilized with this aim. The debate over this opposes two ideas: one of a
gradual reduction of analysis sessions, supported by an analogy with the
developmental task of weaning, and the opposite idea of an unchanged
constancy in the setting motivated by the need to not dilute the psychic
impact of the analytic separation. In the first model, it is possible to recognize
a theory of the end of analysis which is closer to Ferenczi’s discourse on
analysis by exhaustion, whereas in the second, we see a more radically
Freudian point of view that appreciates the aspects of potential traumatism as
those which are most in line with the analytic enterprise. In point of fact, in
our experience we have found an instinctive propensity in patients for the
first model, so that acceptance of the second in most cases requires a
significant cognitive mediation which makes it possible to take on the
analyst’s reasoning. Generally, once the motivations are understood, a fairly
practicable acceptance is created that indicates the shared perception of how
arduous the task of ending is, such that it requires the maximum use of the
analytic couple’s resources, including the optimal functioning of the setting.
An initial hint of resistance dissolves in what we might consider the tolerance
of a paradox: the horizon of the end is reconnected to that of the beginnings;
lived experience is amplified by the rather frequent observation in the final
148 ENDINGS: ON TERMINATION IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
moments of analysis, “I think that it is only now that I would like or would
know how to begin.”
Once the temporal coordinates of the setting are renegotiated and
reaffirmed, the last hurdle on the path of termination arises: the date of the
last session. There is no doubt that a real battle is waged over this necessary
preliminary, one which makes the sharpening of a significant conflict
evident. The lines of the conflict are simultaneously internal and external:
they express the patient’s ambivalence, but at the same time they reflect the
delicacy of a subtle counter-transference monitoring which, as we have
already argued above, grapples with the temptation of colluding with an
impulse to speed things up aimed at evading the complex work of ending.
The oscillation between contrasting aspects (signs of being ready to terminate
consistently nullified, the reappearance of symptoms or the sudden
appearance of signs of bodily affliction) is at its greatest in this moment,
inducing understandable effects of disorientation in both members of the
analytic couple. Taking a cautiously atypical position, Goldberg and Marcus
(1985) question the necessity of setting a date, appreciating the condition of
uncertainty that is the most typical feature of this sub-phase of the
termination process. They reflect on a case which ended without the
indication of a date for termination, though we might reasonably wonder if
this was in response to the analysts’ needs rather than the patients’ and
suspect a possible gap in their goals.
Our own orientation is instead marked by an equal distribution of
responsibility. We feel that that it is the analyst’s duty to signal the opening
up of a prospect for ending, whereas it seems useful to leave the patient the
task of proposing an end date. Obviously, neither of the two moves indicated
schematically above coincides with or is completed by the first and unilateral
indication, which in any case is entrusted to the joint work of the couple. In
the unpredictable space opening between the two moves, we have been struck
by the recurrence of some dynamics (to be examined below) that imply that it
may have to do with identifying some sort of path leading to the end. In his
dense and richly meaningful essay, Luchetti (2000) effectively employs the
expression “traumatic strait of the end” to indicate the unavoidable necessity
of carrying out a passage in conditions that appear impervious to the point of
sometimes triggering the illusory temptation to postpone the end.
We wonder if this expression cannot find a specific application in the
search for that “tenuous path” revealed precisely when a precise date of
termination manages to get delineated. The date might represent the hurdle
which in Flournoy (1985) must allow for the passage from a circular,
spinning-top movement to that of a wheel. Faced with this hurdle, we have
noticed a typical oscillation which generally entails presenting a date that is
either too near or, on the contrary, too far off. How do we probe this fact of
lived experience? Above all, by attempting to place it alongside another
aspect which has struck us as a recurrent oneiric scenario: one of the
Forms of Time 149
unconscious responses deployed in the prospect of the end often takes the
form of a scene of seduction. We have already seen this feature present in the
case of A., and we propose it again more extensively in two other cases,
which regard patients C. and D.
C. associated immediately with the analysis and said that the dream
expressed all of the negative things she had gone through, which the analyst’s
presence had allowed her to overcome: “I have always been afraid of getting
raped.” She then mentioned a roguish comment by a male friend and the
difference between fun and involvement in sexual relations. After having
drawn attention to the fact that the prospect of ending seemed to have
activated not only a recapitulation (as C. had proposed) but also specific lived
experiences in this regard, the analyst hypothesized that the first dream also
referred to the analysis. C. immediately accepted this, saying that she felt
entirely dependent on the analysis and feared its loss. This thought allowed
for a passage to the second dream, in which a celebration turns into a
potentially dangerous situation. It is moreover possible to perceive some
conflict between the desire to remain inside and claustrophobic anxieties of
remaining imprisoned without a way out.
A few months later, the patient arrived on time for the last session and
began by relating that in the elevator the initials “US” came to mind along
150 ENDINGS: ON TERMINATION IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
The patient further related that the colleague touched her breast
and she very naturally rejected his advances. She said something to do
with feeling left helpless and disorienting oscillations of her moods.
The analyst asked her to think about the dream.
She is told that she would like to take away something tangible and that
she can instead reflect on her use of the last session, where fighting against
the initial impulse to run away, she was able to remain in contact with her
own feelings and to use the time to think about her emotional experiences.
The analyst then asks her about the initials US and two other meanings.
earthquake and now has a house, but the walls have traces of the
earthquake that once took place…as for being in contact, I have
always been in contact with my emotional states… but here
something has happened which depended on your presence more
than mine, and I’m afraid that this will get lost…how can I
substitute it? When my husband finished his analysis, he tried to
do it with me, but I wasn’t up to the task… I feel a bit more
confident in myself and I realize that this is no small thing;
coming here I told myself, I hope I can get through it… From the
moment one decides to end, every moment is a good one, but it’s
not like you ever really end….
The analyst comments that this is exactly the way it is, and that she has
an awareness of an end that is converted into a beginning alongside the fears
of ending as total extinction. Then she asks: “and the united states6?”
We are five minutes from the end, and these last minutes have passed in
silence.
As we look at the beginning of the termination phase and the
termination proper as a whole, a common element appears in the two sessions
despite their distance: the emergence of an oral sexuality masked as a genital
act. And yet in the intervening space between the session indicating the date
and that of the termination, we can perceive a process of a taming of the
drives, intending with this the work of control and regulation made possibly
by the bond with the object. A distinctive, significant feature of the
termination event is the set of initials US in which we find condensed an
autoerotic background of the “oral fun” of the dream of sexual assault, as
well as the polysemic communication of “united states”. However, as always
happens, only in retrospect was the analyst able to reflect on a counter-
transference motion of sharing which she had restrained in avoiding verbal
comment. This regarded the reaction provoked by the patient’s observation
about the United States as a successful power, which had never garnered her
152 ENDINGS: ON TERMINATION IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
D.’s associations regard the desire to end the analysis, with the
expression of an attenuated but unshakable ambivalence. On the one hand,
the analysis was a test passed with high marks, associated with the thought of
completing some intellectual work that had been procrastinated for a long
time, of which a copy or proof was to be sent to the analyst. On the other
hand, though, there was the difficulty in modifying obsessive behaviors (the
Forms of Time 153
anancastic ritual): there was no longer much time to use the analysis for
change.
The analyst comments on the figure of the father, who initially
sponsored the patient’s intellectual work, noting a link between D.’s thoughts
and a paternal figure that is activating and at the same time inhibiting. He
recalls the way in which the discourse had begun on necessity of setting a
date for the termination of the analysis, which by then could no longer be
postponed: there had been a dream the month before in which it was as if
there had been a sort of sexual relation with his parent; this dream had
simultaneously opened an area of sexuality (passive, anal and homosexual)
and clearly posed the risk of interminability. The analyst observes that had
been a chain of events that had led D. to modify the interior image of his
parents and to experience the anancastic ritual as a problem for the first time.
D. thinks about the homosexuality of the dream recalled by the analyst
as a danger instilled in him at puberty without really understanding it. He had
never received blows from his father, but he had never played with him,
either. He reached puberty with a father who treated him as a “man”, without
really understanding his parent’s meaning and intention. Sighing, D. remarks
that perhaps the analyst is the father that he would have wanted.
A. comments that D. had never been able to play or fight with his father
or feel him physically. There was only an obscure fear of paternal violence,
experienced as a sudden and drastic intervention, as happened in his
childhood. Subsequently, in adolescence there was the feeling that he was
required to give proof of his masculinity and again, an obscure threat (the
imposition of being masculine, otherwise being immediately suspected of
homosexuality).
Approximately three months after the session described above, in the
third to the last session of analysis, D. tells of two dreams:
Dream I: I was home [in his native city]. X., that French
singer, was there with me. He was performing fellatio on me. I
was half-naked, leaning on the door which divides the apartment
in two parts, and he was also half-naked. I realized that my
mother was moving about in the same room, but she did not seem
to notice anything. I then realized that I had already had oral sex
with a young student. At the time, I thought I should tell you [the
analyst]. Then, I thought that a long time before I had had an
incestuous relation with my mother. I remembered myself in bed
with my mother, making love. I had a doubt as to whether it was
true or a dream, and I thought I should tell it.
D. associates the French singer with the name of a healer as well as the
analyst. He recalls having sex years earlier with a transvestite, but then he
had had an active role. This demonstrates that he is male and not
homosexual. Upon the analyst’s comment that analysis is an oral relation7, D.
thinks about his initially passive behavior: it was as if he had been sent to
analysis by others. He thinks that in the beginning he came to analysis and
said: “Let’s see what you’re able to do.”
In the last session of analysis, D. feels anxious and restless. He tells a
dream:
finish. This is his remorse. Now he fears precisely this remorse. The analyst
adds that it is due to the strength of this fear that the termination of the
analysis has required all of the necessary time: to feel the regret without
being crushed by it or escaping from it. D. says he feels calmer. He is
consoled by the thought that he can always return if he needs to.
Viewing the oneiric and associative material reported as a whole and in
the temporal sequence described, the case of D. is striking for a sort of logical
inversion: close to the determination of the end date, the first dream stages
the termination of the analysis, representing it in the manifest content as an
event halfway between a final achievement and a leave-taking that takes
place in a friendly atmosphere. Alongside a good atmosphere for termination,
the dream reveals unresolved elements (for example, the ritual, homosexual
sexuality, etc.). The forgotten payment seems to anticipate what might
happen in the last session. Perhaps it is an anticipation that serves to
neutralize the danger that this actually happens, a representation of a possible
termination event which is thereby removed from the domain of behavior.
Moreover, the money-feces association brings the anal element back to the
fore, present in both the patient’s obsessiveness and in part of his relation
with the father figure. The termination of the analysis can thus be read as a
necessity to “settle accounts”, but the accounts do not fully square. The risk
of impasse, of which the difficulty in setting the date was a signal, appears
connected to the difficulty in facing the task of settling accounts with the
separation-sexuality connection in a way that is not based on control and
repetition, and therefore experienced as more diffuse but more dangerous.
The real termination event is identifiable in the last sessions through the
oneiric material, and it bears the traces of a much more evident conflict
which reproposes the theme of seduction (the fellatio of the first dream) and
the many variations on the impulse to avoid “docking with my father”, as D.
himself verbalized it (jumping in the channel before arriving in the port,
renouncing a departure for the problem with the ticket, etc.). The
reappearance of the homosexual theme at the beginning and especially at the
end of the termination process can be traced to a specific problem of D.’s,
and it is certainly not a coincidence that the problem is reproposed in the
termination event, condensing all of its defensive meanings. In this, it is in
fact possible to perceive the passivity-activity dialect, the recourse to a
position aimed at avoiding confrontation and competition with an Oedipal
father, and on the contrary, the compulsion to exhibit a phallic masculinity as
a double defense from oral and incestuous fantasies and from a passive
Oedipal investment in regard to an authoritarian but secretly loved father.
Last but not least, we cite an eroticization of the oral elements of the analytic
relation, re-presented by a dream of drunkenness, a dream which -according
to Oremland’s work - presents the analyst undisguised and at the same time
marks the fear of falling that is a sign of separation anxiety. Can the difficulty
in termination thus be understood in the difficult passage from orality (incest
156 ENDINGS: ON TERMINATION IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
This task, just like dream work, guarantees infinite and creative possibilities
of assembling psychic material.
Notes
1
According to Haynal (1992), it was Ferenczi who denied a linear causality and
instead supported an interaction between lines of development with a very modern
position.
2
Recall Rangell’s ideas on the analytic process outlined above (Rangell 1982), as
characterized by an ascending phase in which the analytic work is one of discovery
and interpretation, and a descending phase of absorption and working- through. It
seems no coincidence that Rangell identified the second phase as the one in which the
resistance expressed in repetition-compulsion is greatest.
3
This clinical excerpt and the subsequent one were utilized in a prior work (Ferraro
and Garella 1997b).
4
[translator’s note:] In contemporary Italian in the authors’ area (Naples), Lei is the
most formal form of second person singular address. Voi is less formal, but not as
informal as tu, marking social distance or an inequality of age or status. At the same
time, Voi is also you as the second person plural pronoun, and it therefore corresponds
to the first person plural noi [we] .
5
[translator’s note] The least formal Italian pronoun for you; see note 4 above.
6
[translator’s note] Lower case in the original, implying “states of being united”, but
also the past tense plural “were/have been united” (see the lines which follow).
7
[translator’s note] In Italian, rapporto [relation] is also a synonym of the sex act
[rapporto sessuale]. Rapporto orale therefore has the dual meaning of both oral sex
and an oral relationship (such as analysis).
Nine
A Map of Termination
1. In Praise of Incompleteness
As was already shown in the first chapter of this volume, the idea of a
connection between trauma and the terminability of an analysis appears
explicitly in Freud’s Analysis Terminable and Interminable, and we have
drawn upon it with necessary clarifications (Ferraro 1995; Ferraro and
Garella 1998). Indeed, we have shown how within an essay universally
considered to be pessimistic about the prospects of analysis, there is on the
contrary a rather encouraging sound to Freud’s idea of the particular
incisiveness of the analytic method in cases of traumatic pathology with
regard to those cases which can be traced to the strength of the drives and ego
alterations.2 In a certain sense, then, this chapter forms a resumption and
expansion of the idea outlined above, now explored in reverse: that is, on the
side of an impossibility of leading the analysis to an end that requires being
deciphered in its multiple ramifications through the lens of transference
temporality. The theoretical-clinical assumption that identifies interruption as
an acting out, if it can be valid as a point of departure, or as a constant shared
by all of the various forms of interruption which we are setting about to
describe, can at the same time be faulty due to an excessive or simplifying
schematism which obscures the different temporality in action in different
clinical situations.
Acting out as repetition in alternative to memory necessarily invokes
the problem of temporality to the extent that this problem makes an
actualizing memory evident that compresses the distinction between past and
present. Nonetheless, with respect to the drastic alternative of a work like
Remembering, Repeating, Working-Through (Freud 1914), the foundation of
early psychoanalytic theorization, we can certainly state that the conceptual
status of acting out3 has changed through the years, as we have sought to
demonstrate with the effort, no less full of consequences, of distinguishing
between repetition-compulsion and the tendency to repetition (Garella 1991).
This is a crucial point whose heuristic potential has been developed in at least
two directions: a growing awareness of how the theme of acting out is
imbricated with that of trauma, and a finer attention to the meanings of acting
out in relation to psychoanalytic process (Gaddini 1981). From this point of
view, we might say that the interruption of analysis is acting out par
excellence. It is a movement that is simple and complex at the same time, in
an ambiguous relationship with the dynamics of transference; it bears a
A Map of Termination 163
The telling of this nightmare, and above all the patient’s insistent
request at the beginning of analysis that he be explained its meaning, was a
way to avoid being present to the emotions of the analytic relationship. Still,
in the light of subsequent developments, it seemed to capture a central and
problematic theme that was re-presented without being worked-through in
one of the dreams which preceded the interruption of the analysis a year and
a half after its start.
In the first scene, Silvia was with a foreign boy with whom
she got along splendidly. The scene changed and the patient found
herself with her brother near the home of an aunt [where she
often used to go after her mother’s death] and walking alongside
a path, she saw a glass building. This was a skyscraper, and
inside of it there was a dinosaur with an enormous belly. The
patient realized that something moved in it. At this point she
noticed that her brother was no longer there; he had disappeared,
and everyone was fleeing to safety. She learned that a bomb had
hit the dinosaur on the head; she saw sparks and a blinding light.
Terrified, she looked at the city, waiting for the dinosaur to strike
it.
In some ways this dream forms a milestone in the analysis to the extent
that it was certainly evidence of a work of symbolization that, through the
creation of oneiric thoughts, aimed at representing the annihilation anxieties
provoked by the maternal pregnancy and its catastrophic outcome. Despite
this, the traumatic nucleus had long remained encysted, excluded from the
temporal sequence of events as if immobilized in a repetitive fixity that
reproposed it with the transparency typical of extreme situations, soliciting
no less extreme defenses in denial and falsification. It was only when the
third interruption took place, much longer than the two which had preceded it
and lasting for four years, that it was possible to begin making a connection
between the repeated acting out constituted by the “ritual” trips and the
traumatic experience. Upon resuming analysis after the third interruption, a
dream-nightmare was told whose atmosphere of powerful fascination
suggested a correspondence with the trips made during the interruptions.
168 ENDINGS: ON TERMINATION IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
relationships, which she felt incapable of keeping alive for very long. Vice
versa, this highlighted the analytic relationship as a fragile continuity of
experience which had held up in the challenge coming from her destructive
omnipotence. We may presume that for Silvia, the repeated experience of
annihilating and regaining united the double function of testing a limit to her
destructiveness and discovering the external nature of the object, which can
in this way also convey a reassuring dimension of the time that resides in the
capacity to mitigate a nameless terror and annihilation anxiety. The acting out
of the interruption can thus contain not only patient’s nuclear problem but
also the hope for a different outcome.
In an attempt to the unravel the cryptic connection suggested at the
beginning between nightmare and dream as a means to understand the
difference between interruption and termination, we may start by observing
that a nightmare is by definition finding oneself submerged in a highly
distressing situation that can only be interrupted with a reawakening ending
the nightmare. And yet viewed from another point of view, a nightmare is
already an attempt, however awkward, to master an annihilation anxiety
through the mechanism of repetition. The interruption in the context of the
cases described can be likened to reawakening from a dream to the extent
that we may suppose that the transference dynamic reproposes - not in
absentia or in effigy, but in praesentia - an original traumatic situation from
which the patient seeks an escape without actually finding it. We find it
important that the first patient’s nightmare stages the agonizing and desperate
passage between two threatening situations, one more terrifying than the
other. The interruption therefore takes on the triple meaning of escaping from
a nightmare, ending an impossible choice between two alternatives, and
translating itself into an avoidance strategy aimed at preventing that a
different path is followed. Here, temporality appears stopped and blocked.
such as the urgent need to interrupt the analysis. As we have shown, this
acting out sometimes repeats the inherited scenario of the trauma
substantially unchanged, reproducing its arrested, immobilized time in
impracticable alternatives. At other times, instead, we can perceive in its
apparent identity (as in certain repeated miscarriages which constitute a slow
and imperceptible march toward one’s own generative potential) the effort to
dismiss the trauma, substituting forgetfulness (or a tamed memory) for
reminiscence, which can only prelude a different scenario.
city’s “open-door monuments” project, which during her time out of town
had acted as a powerful call to reconnect the thread of her analytic work. The
name of a service for adolescents5 came associatively to the analyst’s mind:
this is a service which aims to suggest and encourage a coming and going
based to a freedom of request and self-referral, and it is supported by the
willingness to embrace these in an effort for constancy and continuity of
investment which are kept alive despite the apparent discontinuity.
Retroactively, it appeared meaningful that the dream which had sanctioned
the suspension of the analysis after five and a half years had staged a leave-
taking which led the patient back to age eighteen and her high school
graduation examination, a period in which she had developed an eating
disorder. We might suppose that in the dynamic of transference the patient
had attempted to operate the separation from her mother which at the time
she had not been able to carry out, rendered impracticable by a painful
oscillation between the impulse to disappear and the expectation of inducing
a catastrophic depression in her widowed mother. Her life had protracted into
a sort of perpetual adolescence whose end had been postponed; an indicative
sign of this was an amenorrhea that disappeared along with the actuation of
the project for independence and reappeared with the failure of this project.
The resumption of the analysis some years later, which witnessed a
regularization of her menstrual cycle, allowed her to focus on the central
theme hinging on her difficulty in working through the primal scene. The
specific difficulty centered on the impossibility of representing the parental
couple without being forced to sacrifice one of the couple’s two members, a
powerful phantasmatic nucleus that was articulated in a untimely and tragic
death event.
But from where does adolescence get this primacy in appearing as a
point for the emergence and clustering of traumatic nuclei? From being, as
we well know, a moment of destructuring and crisis in an identity that is
undergoing the catastrophe of bodily change, a potential activator of a
breakdown (M. Laufer and E. Laufer 1984), and that period of a working-
through of residual trauma within a definitive life project (Bloss 1962). As
Bergeret (1994) effectively points out, this is also the period which sees a
reemergence of that primary violence which is the expression of self-
preservation instincts whose diachronic integration will allow for
combinations of the drives that serve for development. Bergeret’s perspective
is quite compatible with that of Winnicott (1968), who recalls how in
adolescence “somewhere in the background there is a problem of life and
death” and who spoke of “death and homicide in the adolescent process”, a
view which places greater emphasis on the aggressive aspects, and not only
sexual ones, of the increase in the drives. We should recall here how in the
first formulation of Nachträglickeit in Project for a Scientific Psychology,
Freud locates the second time of trauma in puberty, to which he implicitly
assigns the character of a turning point and highlighter of latent traumatic
A Map of Termination 175
was not clear whether the danger came from within or without
and if salvation consisted in remaining inside the tent or leaving
it.
“developmental crisis”, the body’s time precedes that of the mind, which is
always late, but which - precisely by virtue of this temporal disjunction - is
urged to carry out a difficult work of mastery.
The first encounter with Brunswick took place twelve years after the
end of the analysis with Freud, in quite singular circumstances. It was due to
the compelling pressure of an over-determined anxiety traceable to an
apprehension over Freud’s illness and the idée fixe of a nose injury. Among
the latter’s innumerable meanings, there was one that was clearly
transferential, of revealing S.P.’s secret that his financial situation was no
longer so desperate as to justify the collection among analysts zealously
promoted by Freud.
As it emerges from Brunswick’s (1928) description, the new analysis
seems to get bogged down in the patient’s praise for the merits of the second
analyst and accusations against the unrestrained doctor who had handled his
nose so roughly. If we listen to the latent text hidden behind this manifest
one, this says a great deal about how much the second analysis is still
encumbered by the first, much more than either Freud or Brunswick is
willing to admit.
In the meantime, in the second analysis we see the reappearance of a
script which is not new to us: the unpredictability of a prospect for ending
and the recourse (which we have called “therapists’ repetition-compulsion”)
to expedients capable of getting the analysis moving.6 But the scenario of
repetition does not end here. We have been struck by another singular
recurrence centered on the famous dream of wolves. As is almost too well
known, it was precisely with regard to the Wolf Man that Freud was able to
develop the most elaborate and complex version of his theory of trauma in
two times. This was applied to the exposure of the child S.P. to a hypothetical
180 ENDINGS: ON TERMINATION IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
primal scene, an event taking place at an age between six months and a year
and an half, and reactivated (“not remembered” as Freud insists on
specifying) traumatically at age four, as inferred from the dream which to a
certain degree condenses its entire pathology. It is of extreme interest that we
reexamine what Freud said in this regard in commenting the double potential
of the dream and the patient’s preferred solution. Among the effects produced
by the oneiric reactivation of the primal scene, there is the discovery of the
vagina and the difference between male and female which could have led the
patient to genital organization. The learning, instead, of an unbearable truth
regarding the female organ gets rejected, pushing the child back along the
slippery line of passivity and anal organization.
If in staging the unrepresentable the dream constitutes, on the one hand,
a remarkable transformative passage, it nonetheless receives a pause that
ratifies the S.P.’s retreat in the face of a crucial leap of knowledge. This leap
was capable of influencing and orienting his sexual disposition, which as
Brunswick had correctly understood, could never settle on a homosexual or a
heterosexual orientation. As Green notes (1990), she had also keenly
understood this to be the pattern of the intellectual inhibition which interfered
with the patient’s desire to dedicate himself to literature. Through the famous
dream, the analytic work thus appears to be receive and reconstruct a crucial
junction in which a potential for growth and development was bogged down
and instead flowed back on itself in a condition of suspended animation.
We find this same indecisiveness in the last brief period of analysis
with Brunswick. As with Freud, this is followed by the introduction of what
we may define a “parameter,” an illusory movement of the analytic process, a
(misleading?) signal of a turning point which will not be brought to
completion and underlying an opposing and regressive movement. The two
dreams of the turning point have been labeled the dream “of the broken holy
pictures” - interpreted as the destruction of the defensive role of religious
fantasies - and the “landscape” dream, a dream which cannot but recall the
master dream par excellence – that of age four.
Notes
1
Just to name a few, cf. Balint (1952), Glover (1954), Firestein (1978), Gagliardi
Guidi (1992) and Usuelli Kluzer (1996).
2
See Chapter 1, Section 2.
3
The two most significant changes in the theory of technique in the last decades can
be considered the reduction of the role of interpretation as the sole therapeutic agent
and the attitude toward acting out.
4
Already described elsewhere (Ferraro 1992), this experience is recounted here with
special reference to the specific dynamic of the three interruptions.
5
The Walk-in Clinics for Adolescents is the name of the service for adolescents at
London’s Brent Consultation Centre.
6
The death of Professor X, curiously presented as “the aid of destiny” is announced
point blank to S.P., provoking the immediate reaction: “Oh my, I can no longer kill
him!” All this appears to create movement in the analysis, and starting with the newly
discovered desire to emasculate the father-analyst, to draw nearer to the persecutory
nucleus at the basis of the hypochondriacal anxieties of the patient who, in this time
too, responds with a rich production of dreams.
7
In Buxbaum’s paper at the 1949 symposium, an analogous situation is presented
with regard to block in proposing a date for termination.
Ending
on the one hand, by the hours spent with our patients. Our point of departure
has been Freud - with his counterpart Ferenczi - to whom it is necessary to
return each time we look for clarification or a stimulus. The termination of
analysis is a narrow and sometimes technical subject, but often, behind the
particulars, lie more general conceptions. For this reason, metapsychology
and even the ideologies of therapy and cure are inevitably the backdrop, and
without a knowledge and awareness of them, analytical action cannot
proceed.
Here we draw our work to a close. We do not know what its outcome
will be, and we are hopeful for the future as we are for our patients. But just
as the theory of evolution is a gesture of love for the variety of biological
nature, our attempt here hopes to be equally so for the variety of psychic
natures.
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