How Psychoanalysis is Like a Roach Motel: Better Termination Through Better Metaphors
In this article I explore how experiences I had with a former analyst are shaping my views about termination and posttreatment contact with patients. Borrowing metaphors from contemporary physics that corroborate and extend some current views of termination, I suggest ways to think about the future of an analysis. I contrast models of termination in the psychoanalytic canon and, using the lens of relational psychoanalysis, I suggest ways to think about how one might work flexibly with patients at termination, keeping in mind the relational future of the analytic dyad.