This volume covers a much-neglected topic: the avoidance by psychotherapists and psychoanalysts of the topic of their own mortality and that of their patients. All too often, the psychotherapist or psychoanalyst who is ill is unable to confront this reality in the presence of her patient and fails to prepare the patient for the most permanent goodbye, death. This volume includes nine essays which consider why the psychotherapist and psychoanalyst may find illness, mortality, retirement and termination so difficult.

This volume is a collection of essays by psychoanalysts covering the...