Analytic Endings: When Enough is Enough and When it Isn't with Joyce Slochower, PhD (New York)

"When I train candidates I always say start with Freud, learn the interpersonalist, learn the object relations folks, know from what you come, even if you want to be a radical interpersonalist, a radical relationalist, because having that stuff in your back pocket is organizing and creates an ideal to which you can aspire or choose not to follow, but at least you'll know what you're not following. My perspective on this stuff really comes from the idea that before we are free to break the rules, we need to know what the rules are and we need to be well grounded in them."

Episode Description: We begin by appreciating the evolution of some fundamental practices in psychoanalysis. We consider the meanings of 'rules' and 'guidelines'. Joyce shares with us her current thinking on answering patients' questions – for some, it's helpful, for others, not. We discuss the use of the word 'fantasy' with patients as contrasted with 'guesses' or 'imaginings'. Joyce considers the many ways that patients terminate their treatments and how frequently it does not accord with traditional models of ending. We consider reluctance to leave the treatment relationship from both sides of the couch – analysts, too, have needs satisfied in this work and can play a part in the nature of the ending. Joyce relates how some former patients remain in contact with their analysts, and that isn't necessarily problematic. For others, "being able to 'go it alone' represents an extraordinary achievement." She concludes that "termination remains an ideal worth holding onto. But loosely."

Our Guests: Joyce Slochower, Ph.D., ABPP, is Professor Emerita of Psychology at Hunter College & the Graduate Center, CUNY. Joyce is faculty and supervisor at the NYU Postdoctoral Program, the Steven Mitchell Center, the National Training Program of NIP (all in New York), the Philadelphia Center for Relational Studies in Philadelphia, and the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California in San Francisco. She has written Holding and Psychoanalysis: A Relational Perspective (1996) and Psychoanalytic Collisions (2006). She is co-Editor, with Lew Aron and Sue Grand, De-idealizing relational theory: a Critique from within and Decentering Relational Theory: A Comparative Critique (2018), both of which received the Gradiva award in 2019. Her latest book, Psychoanalysis and the Unspoken, was published in 2024. She is in private practice in Manhattan.

Recommended Readings:

Grand, S. (2009). Termination as necessary madness. Psychoanal. Dialogues, 19: 723–733.

Kantrowitz, J. (2025). A Personal View of Terminations and Endings. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 94:361-379

Levine, H. B. & Yanoff, J. A. (2004). Boundaries and postanalytic contacts in institutes. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 52:873–901.

Loewald (1988). Termination analyzable and unanalyzable. Psychoanal. Study Child, 43:155–166.

Peddler, J. R. (1988). Termination reconsidered. Int. J. Psychoanal., 69:495–505.

Schachter, J. (1992). Concepts of termination and post-termination patient analyst contact. Int. J. Psychoanal., 73:137–154.

Slochower, J. (2022). Sequels. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 70:845–873.

Slochower, J. (2024). Psychoanalysis and the Unspoken. NY, London: Routledge.