Dancing Skeletons: An Analyst’s Resistance To Termination

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.