Inner obstacles to psychoanalysts' retirement: personal, clinical, and theoretical perspectives.
To live, age, and retire successfully, life must have meaning. The aged Freud bestowed passionate commitment exclusively on psychoanalysis. Therefore life lost meaning when he stopped analyzing, and so Freud sought death. Identified with this exclusive commitment, successor generations of analysts also aspired to die in harness. Successful retirement requires the conviction that there is life after analysis, with the actualizing of multiple antecedent or new passions. The reactions of three patients to the retirement announcement are discussed.
Weiss
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Department of Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Science, School of Medicine, University of South Carolina, Columbia, USA.
Kaplan
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EH
D000739:Anecdotes as Topic; D001293:Attitude to Death; D003379:Countertransference; D005260:Female; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011572:Psychoanalysis / Q000266:history*; D012179:Retirement / Q000523:psychology*; D014167:Transference, Psychology