“Don’t Just Leave—Let It End”: On the Transformative Power of Saying Goodbye in Therapy

“Endings are not just moments of departure, but moments of deep transformation—where the past, present, and future briefly touch.”
— Unattributed clinical reflection
In therapy, patients often fear endings almost as much as they long for them. The final phase of therapy—the so-called termination phase—is sometimes dismissed as unnecessary, sentimental, or even artificial. Why linger when the work is „done“? Why draw out the inevitable?

But in psychoanalysis, endings are not just logistical—they are psychic events. They activate deep layers of attachment, loss, memory, and mourning. A thoughtful goodbye phase is not a formality. It is the final act of the therapy itself.

The End Is Part of the Process
Psychoanalysis recognizes that the relationship between patient and therapist is not a neutral container—it becomes part of the patient’s internal world. As Freud (1917) argued in Mourning and Melancholia, loss is a fundamental psychic process: when we lose someone meaningful, we must also reconfigure the parts of ourselves that were bound up with them.

A therapeutic goodbye is not just about the therapist. It is about what the relationship has come to symbolize—often, it stands in for early caregivers, unmet longings, or healing forms of connection. To leave without marking the ending risks repeating the very relational injuries that brought the patient to therapy in the first place.

The Goodbye as Mourning and Integration
Melanie Klein (1940) emphasized that the capacity to mourn is a developmental achievement. It means being able to hold in mind both love and hate, presence and absence, without splitting or denial. In the goodbye phase, patients are invited to experience these tensions: I’m grateful for what we had, and I’m angry that you’re leaving. I want to stay, and I want to go.

These contradictions are not problems to solve, but truths to be tolerated. As Winnicott (1960) would say, the capacity to sustain ambivalence and survive loss is a sign of emotional maturity.

The goodbye phase helps the patient to:

Process the loss of the therapeutic relationship, rather than deny or idealize it.
Review and internalize the work that was done—naming the changes, struggles, and meanings.
Link the therapy relationship to past patterns, and consciously choose different ways of ending.
Say goodbye to a version of the self that no longer needs therapy in the same way.
The Internalization of the Therapist
In the absence of a goodbye phase, patients may unconsciously feel abandoned or rejected—even if they initiated the ending. But when a proper ending is made possible, something else can happen: the therapist becomes an internal figure.

As Joseph Sandler (1987) described, the “representational world” of the patient shifts through therapy. The therapist is no longer just an external person, but becomes part of the patient’s internal dialogue. This allows the patient to draw on the therapist’s voice, attitude, and presence even after therapy ends.

Without this internalization, the patient may feel that the therapist—and all they built together—simply disappears. A goodbye allows the internal relationship to survive the ending.

When Endings Are Skipped
Patients who terminate abruptly often do so as a defense—against sadness, dependency, or fear of being hurt. The goodbye is skipped because it touches a wound too raw to face.

But in doing so, they may reenact an old story: relationships end suddenly, people leave without warning, emotions are dangerous. Therapy becomes another chapter in the same trauma, rather than a place where a new relational narrative could be written.

The goodbye phase, by contrast, offers a corrective emotional experience. It says: we can say goodbye, and it doesn’t have to destroy us.

Saying Goodbye Is Saying Something True
A meaningful therapy ending often feels paradoxical. There is grief, but also pride. There is a sense of loss, but also integration. Something is ending, and something has been made.

The goodbye is not about perfection or closure. It is about naming what happened, what mattered, and what remains. As Thomas Ogden (2004) wrote, therapy often moves us not toward resolution, but toward “living with” complexity. A proper ending is part of that.

When the patient can look the therapist in the eye and say, “Goodbye,” what they are really saying is: I am leaving you, but I am not abandoning myself.

References
Freud, S. (1917). Mourning and Melancholia. Standard Edition, Vol. 14.
Klein, M. (1940). Mourning and Its Relation to Manic-Depressive States. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 21, 125–153.
Sandler, J., & Rosenblatt, B. (1987). Endings and Beginnings: On Terminating Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. London: Karnac.
Winnicott, D. W. (1960). The Theory of the Parent-Infant Relationship. In The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment. London: Hogarth Press.
Ogden, T. H. (2004). The Analytic Third: Working with Intersubjective Clinical Facts. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 85(5), 857–877.