Termination of a psychoanalysis: Some notes on theory, technique, and clinical material

If, as Bion states, "It [analysis] does not end; the relationship between a particular doctor and a particular analysand does" (Brazilian Lectures), this brings to mind both Freud's Analysis Terminable (the analyst-analysand relationship) and Interminable (the analysis) and the heated debate between an essentially weak general theory and a decidedly strong specific model for the termination of analysis. According to the indications of Bion and Ferro, the theory presents two modes of mental functioning at the end of analysis based on the oscillations PS↔D and ♀↔♂. As proposed in this paper, this can be supplemented as PS↔/→D and ♀↔♂. The specific model for the end of analysis, strongly supported by Bion and Ferro, is only concerned with the analysand-analyst dyad. In this case, it is portrayed by "The Little Dummy Man", a clinical model jointly constructed by the analysand and the analyst during the last two years of the analysis, and is retold here by both. An archaeological metaphor is employed at the end of the paper. It is believed that an analysis thrives on the fluctuations between moments of unity and intimacy, and moments of separation and detachment, with the end of the analysis being at once an act that is the most painful and the most transformative.