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THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL
OF
PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

VOLUME XVIII OCTOBER 1937 PART 4

ORIGINAL PAPERS

ANALYSIS TERMINABLE AND INTERMINABLE

BY
SIGM. FREUD

I

Experience has taught us that psycho-analytic therapy—the liberation
of a human being from his neurotic symptoms, inhibitions and abnorm-
alities of character—is a lengthy business. Hence, from the very
beginning, attempts have been made to shorten the course of analysis.
Such endeavours required no justification: they could claim to be
prompted by the strongest considerations alike of reason and expedi-
ency. But it may be that there lurked in them some trace of the
impatient contempt with which the medical profession of an earlier
day regarded the neuroses, seeing in them the unnecessary results of
invisible lesions. If you were obliged to deal with them, you simply
aimed at getting rid of them with the utmost despatch. Basing his
procedure on the theory formulated in Das Trauma der Geburt (1924)
Otto Rank made a particularly determined attempt to shorten analysis.
He assumed that the cardinal source of neurosis was the experience of
birth, on the ground of the possibility that the infant’s ‘primal fixation’
to the mother might not be surmounted but persist in the form of
‘primal repression’. His hope was that, if this primal trauma were
overcome by analysis, the whole neurosis would clear up, so that this
one small piece of analytic work, for which a few months should
suffice, would do away with the necessity for all the rest. Rank’s
argument was certainly bold and ingenious but it did not stand the
test of critical examination. Moreover, it was a premature attempt,
conceived under the stress of the contrast between the post-War
misery of Europe and the ‘prosperity’ of America, and designed to
accelerate the tempo of analytic therapy to suit the rush of American
life. We have heard little of the clinical results of Rank’s plan. Prob-

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ably it has not accomplished more than would be done if the men of
a fire-brigade, summoned to deal with a fire from an upset oil-lamp,
merely removed the lamp from the room in which the conflagration
had broken out. Much less time would certainly be spent in so doing
than in extinguishing the whole fire. The theory and practice of
Rank’s experiment are now things of the past–as is American
‘prosperity’.

Before the War, I myself had already tried another way of speeding
up analysis. I had undertaken to treat a young Russian, a rich man
spoilt by riches, who had come to Vienna in a state of complete helpless-
ness, accompanied by physician and attendant.¹ It was possible in
the course of several years to restore to him a considerable measure
of independence, and to awaken his interest in life, while his relations
to the principal people in his life were adjusted. But then we came
to a full stop. We made no progress in clearing up his childhood’s
neurosis, which was the basis of his later illness, and it was obvious that
the patient found his present situation quite comfortable and did not
intend to take any step which would bring him nearer to the end of
his treatment. It was a case of the patient himself obstructing the
cure: the analysis was in danger of failing as a result of its–partial–
success. In this predicament I resorted to the heroic remedy of fixing
a date for the conclusion of the analysis. At the beginning of a period
of treatment I told the patient that the coming year was to be the
last of his analysis, no matter what progress he made or failed to make
in the time still left to him. At first he did not believe me, but, once
he was convinced that I was in dead earnest, the change which I had
hoped for began to take place. His resistances crumbled away, and
in the last months of treatment he was able to produce all the memories
and to discover the connecting links which were necessary for the
understanding of his early neurosis and his recovery from the illness
from which he was then suffering. When he took leave of me at mid-
summer, 1914, unsuspecting, as we all were, of what was so shortly
to happen, I believed that his cure was complete and permanent.

In a postscript to this patient’s case-history (1923) I have already
reported that I was mistaken. When, towards the end of the War, he
returned to Vienna, a refugee and destitute, I had to help him to

¹⁾Cf. the paper, published with the patient’s consent, ‘The History of
an Infantile Neurosis’ (1918). It contains no detailed account of the
young man’s subsequent illness, which is touched on only when its con-
nection with his infantile neurosis requires it.

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master a part of the transference which had remained unresolved.
Within a few months this was successfully accomplished and I was
able to conclude my postscript with the statement that ‘since then
the patient has felt normal and has behaved unexceptionably, in spite
of the War having robbed him of his home, his possessions and all his
family relationships’. Fifteen years have passed since then, but this
verdict has not proved erroneous, though certain reservations have
had to be made. The patient has remained in Vienna and has made
good, although in a humble social position. Several times, however,
during this period, his satisfactory state of health has broken down,
and the attacks of neurotic illness from which he has suffered could
be construed only as offshoots of his original neurosis. Thanks to
the skill of one of my pupils, Dr. Ruth Mack Brunswick, a short
course of treatment has sufficed on each occasion to clear up these
attacks. I hope Dr. Mack Brunswick herself will report on this case
before long. Some of these relapses were caused by still unresolved
residues of the transference; short-
lived though the attacks were,
they were distinctly paranoid in character. In other instances,
however, the pathogenic material consisted of fragments from the
history of the patient’s childhood, which had not come to light while
I was analysing him and which now came away (the comparison is
obvious) like sutures after an operation or small pieces of necrotic
bone. I have found the history of this man’s recovery almost as
interesting as that of his illness.

Since then I have employed the method of fixing a date for the
termination of analysis in other cases and I have also inquired about
the experience of other analysts in this respect. There can be only
one verdict about the value of this device for putting pressure on the
patient. The measure is effective, provided that one hits the right
time at which to employ it. But it cannot be held to guarantee perfect
accomplishment of the task of psycho-
analysis. On the contrary,
we may be quite sure that, while the impending termination of the
treatment will have the effect of bringing part of the material to
light, another part will be walled up, as if buried, behind it and will
elude our therapeutic efforts. Once the date for discontinuing the
treatment has been fixed we must not extend the time; otherwise
the patient will lose all his faith in the analyst. The most obvious
expedient is to let him continue his treatment with another analyst,
although we know that a change of this sort involves a fresh loss of
time and the sacrifice of some of the results of the work already done.

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No general rule can be laid down as to the right time for resorting to
this forcible technical method: the analyst must use his own tact
in the matter. A mistake, once made, cannot be rectified. The saying
that the lion springs once and once only must hold good here.

II

The discussion of the technical problem of how to accelerate the
slow progress of analysis suggests another deeply interesting question:
is there such a thing as a natural end to an analysis or is it really
possible to conduct it to such an end? To judge by the ordinary
talk of analysts we should presume that it is, for we often hear them
say, when deploring or excusing the admitted imperfection of some
fellow-mortal: ‘His analysis was not finished’ or ‘He was not
thoroughly analysed’.

Now we must first decide what is meant by the ambiguous term,
‘the end of an analysis’. From the practical standpoint it is easily
defined. An analysis is ended when analyst and patient cease to
meet for the analytic session. This happens when two conditions
have been approximately fulfilled. First, the patient must no longer
be suffering from his former symptoms and must have overcome his
various anxieties and inhibitions and, secondly, the analyst must have
formed the opinion that so much repressed material has been brought
into consciousness, so much that was inexplicable elucidated, and so
much inner resistance overcome that no repetition of the patient’s
specific pathological processes is to be feared. If for external reasons
one is prevented from reaching this goal, it is more correct to say
that an analysis is incomplete than to say that it has not come to an
end.

The second definition of the ‘end’ of an analysis is much more
ambitious. According to it we have to answer the question whether
the effect upon the patient is so profound that we can be certain that
no further change would take place in him if his analysis were con-
tinued. The implication is that by means of analysis it is possible
to attain to absolute psychic normality and to be sure that it will be
maintained, the supposition being that all the patient’s repressions
have been lifted and every gap in his memory filled. Let us first
consult our experience and see whether this really happens and then
examine our theory and learn whether there is any possibility of its
happening.

Every analyst will have treated some cases with this gratifying