Ending is for Life

Abstract

It is easy enough to talk about a therapy having ended. After all, it had a beginning, so why should it not come to an end? The author suggests this is true only in the concrete sense. No matter whether the therapeutic outcome is felt to have been successful or a failure, it can be argued that once psychotherapy has been set in motion, the process is genuinely `without end'. An exception of a kind is to be found where the relationship is transformed from therapy to friendship; but is not true friendship also an opportunity for continuing personal development? Freudian, Jungian and Group-analytic approaches are compared. The whole question of beginnings and endings is concluded with reference to the recurring nature of the individual lifecycle, which in this author's view is indispensable to a meaningful account of the evolutionary universe.