Termination

Termination in psychoanalysis refers to the planned and structured conclusion of an analytic treatment. It designates the clinical process by which regular analytic sessions come to an end and the analytic relationship is formally dissolved. While termination often coincides with significant therapeutic change, it is not identical with the end of analysis, which refers to a deeper subjective or structural transformation. Termination concerns the ending of treatment; the end of analysis concerns the status of analytic work itself.

Because termination concentrates issues of separation, loss, dependency, and autonomy, it is regarded as a distinct and meaningful phase of analytic work, rather than a merely administrative or logistical event. It has been a persistent focus of debate in psychoanalytic theory, engaging questions about cure, duration, ethics, and the limits of analytic intervention.

Definition and Conceptual Scope

In psychoanalytic usage, termination denotes the intentional conclusion of treatment, typically following a period devoted to preparing for that ending. It must be distinguished from:

• Interruption, where treatment ends due to external or uncontrollable circumstances;
• Dropout, where the analysand unilaterally ceases treatment;
• Interminable analysis, where analysis continues without reaching a mutually recognized endpoint.

Termination is simultaneously a clinical judgment and an ethical act. Clinically, it involves assessing whether analytic work has reached a point of sufficient stabilization or transformation. Ethically, it raises questions about dependency, authority, responsibility, and the analyst’s role in deciding when continued treatment is no longer warranted.

Unlike the end of analysis, termination does not necessarily imply a final or complete transformation of subjectivity. An analysis may terminate without having reached what some theoretical frameworks would regard as a full analytic ending.

Freud’s Formulation

Sigmund Freud addressed analytic endings most directly in his late paper Analysis Terminable and Interminable (1937). There, Freud questioned whether psychoanalysis could ever be said to reach a definitive end, emphasizing the persistence of repetition compulsion, resistance, and deep-seated character structures.

Freud proposed pragmatic criteria that might justify termination, including:

• substantial modification or relief of central symptoms;
• increased flexibility and integration of the ego;
• enhanced capacity for insight and self-reflection;
• and a relative working-through of transference conflicts.

At the same time, Freud cautioned against equating termination with cure. He acknowledged that unconscious conflict cannot be abolished and that some analyses may be terminable in practice while remaining interminable in principle. Termination, for Freud, is therefore a practical endpoint, reached when further analytic work is unlikely to produce proportionate benefit.

Termination as a Clinical Process

Termination is best understood as a process unfolding over time, rather than a single moment. Although its form varies across treatments, several recurrent phases are commonly described:

• Anticipation and announcement – Discussion of ending often provokes anxiety, ambivalence, or renewed dependency.
• Preparation – Analyst and analysand address material related to separation, unresolved conflicts, and the meaning of ending within the transference.
• Intensification of transference – As termination approaches, transference and countertransference reactions may intensify, reactivating earlier relational patterns.
• Mourning and separation – The loss of the analytic relationship is acknowledged and grieved, alongside recognition of internal changes.
• Post-termination effects – Although treatment has ended, analytic work may continue internally as insights and conflicts are revisited.

Rather than viewing the resurgence of symptoms or anxiety during termination as regression or failure, psychoanalytic theory understands such phenomena as intrinsic to the meaning of ending itself.

Therapeutic Aims and Limits

Termination foregrounds a central psychoanalytic tension between therapeutic improvement and structural transformation. While analysis aims to reduce suffering, increase insight, and improve relational functioning, it does not promise the elimination of conflict or the disappearance of the unconscious.

A successful termination therefore does not imply psychic harmony or completion, but a changed capacity to live with conflict, ambivalence, and desire without continuous analytic support. The analysand is better able to sustain reflection and affect regulation outside the analytic frame.

In this sense, termination marks a shift in dependency, not the end of psychic work.

Ethical Dimensions of Termination

Termination raises significant ethical questions concerning:

• the analyst’s authority and responsibility;
• the risk of premature ending driven by resistance or anxiety;
• the risk of unnecessary prolongation that fosters dependency;
• and the analyst’s own countertransference investment in continuing treatment.

Freud emphasized that both premature closure and interminable continuation can distort the analytic relationship. Later psychoanalytic traditions have framed termination as an ethical test of analytic practice, requiring the analyst to discern when continued work no longer serves the analysand’s interests.

Termination is thus not merely the end of a contract, but a moment of shared accountability for how analytic work has been conducted and concluded.

Relation to the End of Analysis

In contrast to termination, the end of analysis refers—particularly in Lacanian theory—to a structural or subjective transformation in the analysand’s relation to desire, fantasy, and the analyst. While termination concerns the ending of sessions, the end of analysis concerns the logical completion of analytic work.

From this perspective:

• Termination may occur without reaching the end of analysis;
• The end of analysis may, in some cases, precede formal termination;
• Termination belongs primarily to the clinical and institutional register;
• The end of analysis belongs primarily to the structural and ethical register.

The distinction underscores differing conceptions of what psychoanalysis aims to achieve and how analytic success is to be evaluated.

Variations Across Psychoanalytic Traditions

Different psychoanalytic schools conceptualize termination in distinct ways:

• Ego psychology emphasizes ego strength, autonomy, and adaptive functioning;
• Object relations theory highlights the capacity to internalize the analyst as a stable internal object and to mourn the loss of the analytic relationship;
• Relational and intersubjective approaches treat termination as a co-constructed process shaped by mutual recognition and limitation;
• Lacanian psychoanalysis tends to subordinate termination to the concept of the end of analysis, viewing termination as necessary but not sufficient for analytic completion.

Despite these differences, most traditions agree that termination is not a neutral endpoint, but a clinically charged moment requiring careful analytic attention.

Significance

Termination occupies a central place in psychoanalytic theory because it condenses fundamental questions about cure, dependency, authority, and the limits of analytic work. It forces explicit reflection on what psychoanalysis can reasonably promise and what must remain unresolved.

As a clinical phase and ethical decision, termination remains a key site where psychoanalytic theory, technique, and responsibility converge.

See Also

End of analysis (psychoanalysis) Analysis terminable and interminable

Transference Countertransference

Working through Resistance

Interminable analysis Ethics of psychoanalysis