Forced Endings in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis: Attachment and loss in retirement

I bought this book as a client who had recently been given a very abrupt ending by a long term therapist who wished to take a sabbatical. I felt aggrieved and wanted to know if I was right to feel how I did. It was a forced ending, not a mutual one. So in someways I wasn't using this book as a retiring therapist - which seems to be what the book is mainly aimed at, however I did feel vindicated in feeling things weren't handled right and so it was validating for me. However there were many chapters irrelevant but I think this would be a great book for the intended audience!

This is a terrific book, and not just for those therapists contemplating retirement, but for all therapists who at one time or another may have to close up their practice, move cities or take a sabatical. Power's voice is both accessible and compassionate and encourages us to consider what is so often difficult to bear - the ending of our relationships with clients and patients and, possibly, the closing down of our professional selves.

As advertised.

Excellent. Essential reading for any psychotherapist who is about to retire, has recently retired or who has to interrupt their practice due to unforeseen circumstances.

An excellent book, and also extremely helpful. It shines a light on difficult dilemmas, which we all need to think about.

This insightful publication clearly shows not only the rigour of the therapists' training, but also the weight they carry through the counter-transference of each of their clients. Framing her argument within attachment theory, this book's critical analysis will a ring bell with every reader whose upbringing has hindered their development from new born baby to secure, confident, balanced adult. Its clear approach applies not only to 'retirement', but to every stage of change/transition in life.

This book gave me more 'permission' to do what I was already going to do, but helped me feel much better about doing it. It helped hold my hand through the process of retirement and helped articulate my passing thoughts and feelings about letting go of very needy, lonely or difficult clients. It helped me feel I had a right to leave them. It helped me have more of an understanding into my guilt and to use it as counter-transference. This book also helped me have more of an eye out to what I might expect from clients and how I might think these things through beforehand. Most importantly, it gave me a very useful reminder and further insight into the impact the client's and my own attachment patterns being activated could influence the therapeutic work at this very powerful time of the final separation.

Doing therapy is like remembering all the time that you are going to die.SHELDON KOPPYalom writes that at the bottom of the soul there is a „silent murmuring” constantly warning us of mortality, and thinks that every human act and doing has something to do with the unceasing war we are waging unconsciously against this highly feared knowledge.Tarachow traces back the whole therapeutic adventure to the unconscious motivation that aims at creating a symbiotic relationship behind the illusive walls of which we try to hide ourselves away from the transient nature of being.But we don't need to go that far on the path of existential or deep psychological thought to see that the outcome of any relationship of considerable emotional significance can contribute much to our development taking a turn either for the better or the worst. And many a time the way we treat the end itself becomes the deciding factor in this respect. But, beyond informal wisdom and entrancing sporadic intimations of our natural empathy, we haven't had much at our hands that could help our orientation in the minute particulars of how to make the parting itself deeply therapeutic.Anne Power's Forced Endings in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis is a marvelous and thought-provoking exploration of the various ways how we, in the domain of psychodynamic psychotherapy, manage to work through the emotional tangles and repercussions of this phase carrying essential teachings about the possibility of trust, hope, love, mourning, and about the limits of human connection. Or how, not rarely, we miss, eventually. The book is a persuasive distillation of many years of rich experience of psychoanalytic psychotherapy written in an exceptionally lucid language. Sincere and honest, genuine and edifying in the true sense.I warmly recommend to anyone interested in psychotherapy from students and rookies to old troupers. Jonathan Lear writes that „basically, there are two different types of endings: betrayal and termination.” Power teaches us the tender wisdom of the latter. The first and the final thing we owe to our patients after all, is that we learn to compassionately and bravely reckon with our mortality.And Anne Power is exactly like that: compassionate and brave.