Toward an expanded and updated conceptualization of termination: Implications for short-term, individual psychotherapy.

Abstract

This article examines a loss metaphor that has been used to conceptualize clients' experience of termination for over 40 years. Review of contemporary theoretical and empirical research in clinical and developmental psychology implicates directions for revising, expanding, and modernizing this approach to termination for short-term psychotherapy. Specifically, the predictions that termination is inherently a crisis for clients and therapists were not confirmed in research.