The author describes and reflects upon his clinical experiences with both mutually desired terminations and coerced endings. He addresses issues of technique, in termination and post-termination contact in addition to offering his perspectives on the role of theory in determining the phenomena of termination, retraumatizing aspects of termination, termination and death, and the question of whether analytic relationships could or should be ended.

In this paper, the Primal Scene (PrS)-a par excellence primal phantasy, is considered in its function as a central scheme of the primordial psychic world, a kind of core template, which not only constraints the symbolizing urges of mental life "into certain channels" (Freud 1938, p. 187) but also canalizes, contains, and organizes them, thus furthering their elaboration. Through extended clinical vignettes taken from different phases of a long analysis, this symbolizing and channeling function, under the aegis of the PrS-enhancing and containing at the same time-is demonstrated, as the material is gradually transitioning from under-represented, archaic psychic derivatives to repressible, sublimated (e.g., symbolically higher) organized imagos.

We explored the dynamics of treatment termination in a patient with borderline personality organization who underwent eight years of transference-focused psychotherapy (TFP). A previous paper examined the beginnings of this treatment (Bernardi and Eidlin 2024). In both papers, we aim to strengthen the clinical evidence through further contextualization and triangulation of perspectives. We analyze the relationship between the end of treatment, therapeutic gains in relation to self and other, and the likelihood that these gains will be maintained and extended once the patient is on his or her own. The contributions of complex systems models to the study of dynamic, open, and non-linear clinical interactions are explored.

I consider the place of termination in contemporary psychoanalytic practice. A more flexible approach to therapeutic endings represents one dimension of a broader paradigm shift away from rule-boundedness and toward clinical flexibility. In any event, final, less-than-final, and absent goodbyes have always been part of psychoanalytic reality despite the power of our termination ideal. I first describe the broader move toward flexibility within the field and then address its complex implications for psychoanalytic endings. In that context, I explore the varied ways in which we don't always end treatment relationships. The implications of not entirely ending a treatment are also addressed.

Psychoanalysis focuses both on the patient's inner life history and on what happens in the actual analytic situation. Psychoanalysts differ in the extent they pay attention to memories and the past or to the actuality of the analytic session as such and in the extent they link both. The main goal of this paper is to give an overview of ideas in the history of psychoanalytic thought on the relationship between past and present. The paper examines five possible positions: historicization (the past colors the present), actualization (back and forth between past and present), dehistoricization (the here and now), posteriority (the present colors the past), and (present without link with the past). New positions are added to old ones rather than replacing them. Together, all the positions testify to a lively dynamic in psychoanalysis that both repeats and transforms itself in everyday analytic thinking and practice.

The utility of Sebastian Leikert's technical approach of somatic narration is illustrated in a detailed clinical presentation working with a psychotic patient with gaze aversion. In conjunction with Riccardo Lombardi's emphasis on focusing on the patient's transference to her own body rather than the conventional transference to the analyst, the author shows the value of moving away from gaze aversion and focusing, instead, on the patient's experience of her neck as an . The role of bodily movement in the consulting room as a critical ingredient in supporting the narrative process will be illustrated.

There are many myths about how a psychoanalysis ends. In reality, there is no one way. In this paper, I describe what I learned from interviews with eighty-two analysands who volunteered to tell me about how they ended their analyses. Their experiences illustrate many different ways in which analyses end-some very satisfactory and others in disappointment. I also describe many different ways I have concluded psychoanalyses with my patients. I try to end each treatment to fit the needs of each patient and the nature of our work together. There are no formulas to how we end. I consider and explore the issues of being an older analyst: the risks and responsibilities of continuing to treat analytic-or any-patients. I discuss what we psychoanalysts gain from our work with patients-how it is sustaining and how we learn about ourselves as well as our patients. In doing psychoanalytic work with our patients, we stretch our own capacities and change. We, like our patients, though not to the same degree or intensity, mourn our endings.

Vermeer's masterpiece, "The Allegory of Painting," which is the one work that he refused to sell, brings to mind the successful outcome of psychoanalytic treatment. In its incongruities, this painting presumably contains and reflects the conflicted inner world of the artist, but it also evokes a remarkable sense of coherence and harmony. To develop a credible explanation for Vermeer's achievement in analytic terms, I found it helpful to employ several major theoretical models; this finding suggests that for clinical analysis as well, a multi-theory approach would be optimal.

Employing an applied psychoanalytic lens to Spike Jonze's (2013), this paper expands on meaning-making opportunities available to the film. Such expansion is pursued by focusing additional attention to cinematic strategies and language, attended to by a psychoanalytic appreciation of object relations and Andre Green's thoughts on negation. With such considerations in place, the paper further articulates unconscious material pertinent to the film and culture at large, as it better appreciates the developmental crisis endured by the film's protagonist.

This introductory essay provides an integrative summary and critical analysis of seven papers on endings in psychoanalysis. There is strong agreement regarding the essential individuality of each ending, rather than any usual criteria that apply to some but not to all endings of treatment. Recent developments in analytic theory and practice that focus on early trauma, dissociation, and the need for development of missing and inadequate structures and capacities raise new and newly emphasized questions regarding analytic endings. The advantages and disadvantages of different forms of post-treatment contact are considered, as are the implications of remotely conducted analysis. The analyst's resistance to ending emerges as a consistent emphasis in this series of papers.

Analytic process is a poorly understood concept often thought to have an agreed upon meaning despite evidence to the contrary. So long as it remains ill-defined, its value as a metric of both candidate progression and whether a presented case demonstrates said process is dubious. To rectify the matter, the author proposes an expansion of what is thought to constitute analytic process in order to bring that concept in line with evolving trends in our collective thinking about clinical practice.

Lacan's return to Freud gravitates around his aphorism that . This is often cause for criticism from non-Lacanian analysts. However, this aphorism has multiple meanings beyond the unconscious consisting of word-forms. This paper sketches relational, affective, neuropsychological, and Freudian criticisms of this linguistic unconscious. I will then highlight that the key signifier is "like": to be structured "like" a language is to be structured according to differential representatives. I conclude with a Lacanian neuropsychoanalytic functional model of differential representatives that need not be words.

Is the erasure of memories truly possible? What existed prior to this erasure, and what remains afterward? In this paper, I will explore the concept of erasure within the art of second-generation, Holocaust survivor artists and its implications in psychoanalysis, particularly examining its connection to the phenomenon of dissociation among these individuals. I will distinguish between two types of pathological dissociation through second-generation, Holocaust survivor artists: one in which a link between different states of consciousness is preserved, allowing individuals to experience phantom pain, and another type where symptoms are less accessible for processing and analytical work. In the latter case, these symptoms are primarily sensorial and primal, which calls for a specific set of clinical recommendations. Additionally, the paper will outline strategies for clinical responses to trauma experienced by second-generation Holocaust survivors.

Black Studies and psychoanalysis both consider how socio-sexual dynamics contour the skin. Black Studies scholar Hortense Spillers (1987) alongside psychoanalytic theorist Didier Anzieu (1985) trace the skin as a porous enclosure, albeit in different discursive environments. Also a scholar of psychoanalysis, Spillers's work emphasizes the intersubjective nature of embodiment: history carries notions of race, which frames interactions between desiring subjects. As a case study, the journals of writer and English doctoral student Gary Fisher (1961-1994) provide a narrative surface to place both traditions in conversation. This article investigates the fraught relationship between the imagined and historical in the psyche's processing of racial trauma. Fisher's exploration of his racialized fantasies and sexuality unfurls across his writing at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, an epidemic which continues today. Fisher's prose reveals that abject sexual practices, those which rely on racial tropes to efface and excite the desiring subject, can inspire meaningful self-actualization and broaden understandings of race and sexuality.

The author describes her emotional reactions and counter-transferences in ending analyses in lieu of her personal situation, in which she was anticipating retirement. Through a clinical case of a patient who had difficulties in ending treatment, and her own dream which occurred during this time, the author shows how both she and the patient shared unconscious fantasies about aging and stopping the passage of time. The analyst's resistances about retiring from clinical practice in concert with the patient's resistances about ending analysis created a barrier against analytic progress. The author suggests that the analyst's feelings and needs to keep going may be a part of their holding on to patients and extending their treatments interminably.

Starting with the English translations of Freud's 1937 nuanced concept of ending analysis, the author touches on the history of subsequent ego psychologists' more exact notions of . Merton Gill's radical shift in perspective away from that attempt, shows how more modern, post-1990 theoretical developments have evolved toward more subjective, intersubjective, and ranging judgments about what may be (Freud's own final 1937 word). Resuming ego development as a goal, for example, and the role of analyst as (Loewald 1960 for example), is linked to a creative process of a patient's increased subjective well-being-one feature of ending that cannot be precisely measured. There are two clinical examples of terminations: (1) The author's experience of hearing Hanna Segal tell impressively about a case and its ending, circa 1970; (2) a longitudinal account of a four-part analytic involvement, from a patient's teenage to middle years, that demonstrates different kinds of endings over a patient's life. The last analysis, with a new analyst, after the original analyst's death, was supervised by the author. Summed up, the is a deep study of the complexity of human existence for both analyst and analysand. This appreciation, including its limitations, helps many analysands fruitfully continue their life journey.

To understand fascistic group movements, it is necessary to understand the dynamics of fascistic states of mind within all of us. Following a note on the American polity, the author differentiates from before reviewing the dynamics of fascistic states of mind, including the omnipotent longing for purity and its relationship to destructive narcissism. Considering the role of the death drive, the allure of the fascistic state is explored, based largely in the need to avoid primary terrors of annihilation. In addressing the movement of such states from the individual psyche to the larger group mind, the author examines the symbiotic fit between the leader and the group's unconscious fears and phantasies, as illustrated by perverse containment within the cult of Trumpism. Finally, in noting the inability of reason alone to contain destructive forces, he ponders how we might deal with fascistic states of mind most effectively in individuals, groups, and ourselves.

Reflections on the process of psychoanalytic termination led to reexamination of a long-term case of a person who experienced major dissociation in response to severe neglect in infancy and beyond. Her need to return one year after our ending led to a reconsideration of what ending is possible for our more traumatized patients. This essay also considers larger themes of aging, dying, and departure as they relate to increased access to aliveness in the present.

The psychoanalytic field continues to struggle with the dilemmas of conceptualizing gender and the experience of gender transition, even though gender appears to be very present in its multiple and transitional forms in the realm of the psyche as it manifests through the affective situation of the transference. In this paper, I want to move to an understanding of different situations of transitions that are grounded in gender but that suggest a wider world of experience with the claim that understanding the self is a complicated matter; and while this in itself is obvious to everyone, its complexity still comes as a surprise because of the unconscious. I turn to four memoirs: P. Carl's ; Susan Faludi's ; Masha Gessen's "To Be or Not To Be"; and Jane Gallop's . Each text depicts different notions of transition that suggest a wider world of experience: physicality (age, illness, disability), generation, sexuality, and relationality. In unpacking each narrative as unique figurations of transitioning, I show how each gives us a foothold into a new way of imagining gender. I argue that by reading memoirs the analyst enters a world that is theirs and not theirs. It is a way into an imaginative realm that allows us entrance into conflicts, questions, and representations of being in the world.

To emphasize how interwoven and factors are in the aetiology of mental disorders, Freud introduced the concept of . Today, current genetic research data is shedding new light on this hypothesis. The development of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) has highlighted the interaction of genetic and environmental factors in the aetiology of psychiatric diseases. By reinterpreting the evolution of Freud's positions regarding the aetiological role of heredity through the prism of current literature, this article aims to introduce a dialogue between psychoanalysis and contemporary genetics.