Termination of an “Infinite Conversation”: Reflections on the Last Days of an Analysis

Abstract

I report on the conclusion of a distinctly nonmodernist analysis, one with no definitive destination or goal. Given the lack of case reports describing other such termination processes within the psychoanalytic tradition, I look outside the usual psychoanalytic literature for frameworks that might guide the experience of termination without directing or essentializing it. Psychoanalytic writing, like that of most disciplines, generally follows forms that strive for reasonableness, coherence, order, and meaning. I experiment with discussing the end of an analysis without organizing the narrative, its “truth,” images, subjects, and objects, according to more structured, scientific ways of thinking. Poststructural French literary figures Blanchot and Bataille as well as American philosopher Greene, aid my reflections on some of the mysteries mobilized in the analytic relationship and its ending.