Leaving Analysis and Moving Beyond Pain

Abstract

As an analyst and an analysand, we explore reasons for not “doing” psychoanalysis in the last third of life when our own experience became sufficiently intense to make self-exploration through pain undesirable. For the analyst, self-knowledge was inseparable from the therapeutic process: she discovered and created her selves in therapeutic relationships, which meant living in the pain of others. The analysand needed to know whether she could reinvent her life, after one of its lengthiest and most complex phases had ended. The analyst decided to turn away from a primary focus on the therapeutic other in order to commit herself to being alive with more pleasure. The analysand decided that she did not need to go back in order to move forward. For both, it was the formation of a new relationship in the last third of life that created the environment for mutual recognition and libratory self-discovery.

KEYWORDS:

• aging
• psychoanalysis
• psychotherapy
• termination
• transference