“Our time is up”: a patient’s perspective on psychotherapist retirement

Abstract

Organic terminations in a “good-enough” treatment at their best end with feelings of warmth, pride, sadness, and a letting go. Psychotherapist retirement, however, is a unilateral ending imposed upon patients, sometimes causing not only feelings of loss and hurt, but bringing about damage, breaching the age-old mandate of the Hippocratic oath: “First, do no harm”. Yet, humans can avoid ageing only by early death. They retire, sometimes forced by necessities, sometimes beckoned by a readiness for a final life chapter filled in ways that do not include professional work. Some hurts, even harm, may be unavoidable. Despite a growing literature on the topic of psychotherapist retirement, the first-hand perspective of the retired-upon patient is as yet without a public voice. A retired psycho-dynamic psychotherapist myself, in this article I share my experience as a patient who lost a much-loved therapist to retirement. I write with a patient’s heart informed by a practitioner’s eyes, ending with suggestions for both members of the therapeutic dyad and also for the professional community.