Endings: partial, abrupt and avoided endings

With Dr Joyce Slochower

Termination is one of the most consequential yet least straightforward phases of psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy. While classical psychoanalytic theory has traditionally given termination a clearly defined place within the treatment, clinical endings are often far more complex.

Treatments may end abruptly, remain unfinished, continue indefinitely, or shift into new forms of relationship. For therapists, these moments bring questions about dependency, separation, loss, attachment, professional boundaries and the meaning of the therapeutic relationship into particularly sharp focus.

In this workshop, Dr Joyce Slochower will explore the complexities of endings in contemporary psychoanalytic practice. Drawing on her relational and object relational perspectives and extensive clinical experience, she will consider what happens when therapist and patient are ready to end, and what happens when they are not.

The workshop will examine the influence of earlier experiences of separation, the dynamics of the therapeutic relationship, and the impact of practical realities such as time limits and institutional settings on the termination experience.

The programme will also explore partial endings, where contact continues beyond the formal therapeutic relationship. Partial endings raise important clinical and ethical questions about boundaries, dependency and whether a relationship can meaningfully change form without avoiding the work of separation.

The final session will consider therapy interminable: the clinical dilemmas we face when treatments continue over many years; might there be potential value in a sustained therapeutic relationship? What about the risks of prolonged dependency? Throughout, participants will be invited to think critically about their own assumptions about endings and what makes a therapeutic ending psychologically meaningful.

Dr Slochower is Professor Emerita of Psychology at CUNY and faculty at leading psychoanalytic institutes in the US. She is the author of Holding and Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic Collisions and Psychoanalysis and the Unspoken.

For full details, including CPD credits information and booking, visit TR Together