“Goodbye, I’m Off to Change My Life”: On Manic Flight, Therapy Endings, and the Fear of Mourning

“The manic defence is the denial of psychic reality through action, excitement or omnipotent denial.”
— Melanie Klein (1935)
“Today is my last session. I’ve decided to travel the world, live in the moment, and leave therapy behind.”

Said with a bright smile, sometimes even a sense of triumph. The decision is firm, the tone buoyant. What seems, on the surface, like a declaration of growth—freedom, adventure, vitality—can often be, in psychoanalytic terms, a form of psychic flight: a manic defense against loss, mourning, and dependency.

To the untrained eye, this may appear like healthy spontaneity. But for the therapist attuned to the emotional undercurrents, it may signal the very thing that therapy was trying to reach: the moment when the patient flees, just as something real is about to happen.

Manic Defense: Denial in Disguise
Melanie Klein (1935) first articulated the concept of manic defense as a psychic strategy to avoid pain, guilt, and depressive states. Rather than confront difficult feelings—such as sadness, loss, or dependency—the mind shifts into activity, denial, and even euphoria. The patient insists: There’s no need for sadness, because I’m already onto the next exciting chapter.

Freud (1917), in Mourning and Melancholia, distinguishes between mourning—a healthy process of grieving a loss—and melancholia, where the mourning is foreclosed and internalized destructively. In the manic patient, the loss is neither grieved nor internalized. It is simply skipped.

Behind the dazzling plans to travel or „live life to the fullest“ may lie something much less glamorous: the inability to tolerate separation, endings, and the ambivalent attachment to the therapist. Rather than feel the pain of leaving, the patient leaves first—dressed in the costume of freedom.

Termination Anxiety and the Fear of Regression
Endings in therapy are often emotionally charged. The therapy relationship, however professional, is also intimate, structured, and deeply interwoven with the patient’s internal world. It may unconsciously represent a primary attachment—a caregiving environment where the patient has been witnessed, held, and mentally “survived.”

To leave this space, especially prematurely, can provoke what some analysts call termination anxiety: the fear of losing not just the therapist, but the self that was coming into being within that relational space.

Otto Kernberg (1975) notes that patients with narcissistic or borderline traits often struggle to sustain deep attachments without triggering defenses against dependency or vulnerability. In this light, the sudden urge to „quit therapy and travel“ may mask a deeper fear: If I stay and feel the pain of leaving, I may collapse.

Idealization and the Myth of the New Life
The fantasy of a new life—a fresh start, a global adventure, a reinvented self—is a powerful lure. It often includes idealized visions of independence, vitality, and rebirth. But these can become substitutes for mourning. As André Green (1999) wrote, the manic patient uses the illusion of omnipotence to deny not only grief but emotional reality itself.

The danger here is not travel or change itself—these are often vital, liberating steps—but the psychic process behind them. When the new life is pursued against the need for reflection or separation, it can become a compulsive repetition rather than a real transformation.

Working Through: Why Endings Matter
The psychoanalytic process does not idealize endless therapy. Endings are necessary. But they are also psychic events that must be worked through. A meaningful ending involves:

Acknowledging what was shared and built
Grieving the loss of the therapeutic relationship
Tolerating the ambivalence of leaving someone who mattered
Integrating what was gained without denying what is being lost
To skip this process in the name of spontaneity may leave the internal object relations unchanged. The patient may replicate the same pattern elsewhere—leaving relationships prematurely, idealizing new starts, and never allowing themselves to feel the rupture.

In some cases, the “last session” speech is not truly about ending at all. It’s a provocation, a test: Will you stop me? Will you care? The therapist’s task is not to cling or plead, but to inquire: What does this leaving mean for you? What are you trying to protect yourself from?

Staying Long Enough to Leave
Therapy often invites patients to stay longer than they want to—not for dependency’s sake, but so that endings can be metabolized rather than enacted. The manic goodbye may feel empowering in the moment, but what’s left unsaid—the sadness, the fear, the need—often lingers in the background.

As Winnicott (1947) wrote, the patient must come to feel that someone can withstand their hate and their love—and still remain present. Only then can they leave without fleeing. Only then is the end truly an end, and not another repetition in disguise.

References
Freud, S. (1917). Mourning and Melancholia. Standard Edition, Vol. 14.
Green, A. (1999). The Work of the Negative. London: Free Association Books.
Klein, M. (1935). A Contribution to the Psychogenesis of Manic-Depressive States. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 16, 145–174.
Kernberg, O. (1975). Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism. New York: Jason Aronson.
Winnicott, D. W. (1947). Hate in the Countertransference. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 30, 69–74.