The absence of theoretical and practical provisions for the patient whose therapist dies or becomes seriously ill reflects underlying problems regarding termination. Therapy is unique among human intimacies in that its goal is separation, a paradox that informs both the near-silence of early termination theory and the confusion in more recent writing. The therapist's emotional involvement must be understood through the therapeutic relationship as part of "mortal" life, that is, as a specialized category within ordinary human interactions. The profession has neglected the therapist's mortality, in figurative as well as literal senses. This neglect, a covert grandiosity, is the "Olympian Delusion." On one level, inadequate termination theory underlines failure to confront the therapist's mortality; more profoundly, failure to confront the therapist's mortality underlies deficiencies in termination theory. The mystique of the superhuman therapist can lead to a professional reticence that is less than fully human, abrogating the patient's right to a decent, human leave taking.

Let us stop to ponder the magnitude of Freud's discovery. For centuries men and women have searched for mandrake roots and other substances from which a love potion could be brewed. And then a Jewish Viennese physician uncovered love's secret. There is indeed a way in which one human being can make another fall in love, and the prescription is remarkably simple. -Martin Bergmann (1986, p. 30) Nothing takes place between them except that they talk to each other.-Sigmund Freud (1926, p. 187)T his is an essay on an unpleasant subject: a subject so painful that some within the discipline of psychoanalysis wince and turn away from it-the sexual exploitation of patients. The psychoanalytic situation is an audacious endeavor that purposely courts risk: for a time placing one human being as if at the center of another's emotional life. In that power-imbalanced relationship, behind closed doors, what is the patient's protection?Lawrence Friedman (2008) says the following about Freud's Papers on Technique, six essays written between 1911 and 1915:Papers on Technique floats the buoys that mark out psychoanalysis from other human relationships. You can argue about whether to steer this way or that around those markers, but without them you have nothing but open sea [p. 1032].In these pages, I try to consider what the bouys mean, and the perils they aim to mark. In my view, Freud's most fundamental "buoy" is the principle of abstinence. I am concerned in this paper with abstinence and integrity, and the shoals and depths that endanger them. I hope to raise more questions than I answer.Faculty, Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. The author is grateful for the suggestions and encouragement of many friends and colleagues in writing this essay, and thanks in particular, for their patient refinements and cogent suggestions and criticisms

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In one and the same act-I am tempted to say, in the same breath and the same sucking of milk-drive direction and organization of environment into shapes or configurations begin.

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