Time in psychoanalysis and the psychoanalysis of time

Journal/Book: Forum Psychoanal. 2000; 16: 175 Fifth Ave, New York, NY 10010, USA. Springer-Verlag. 189-203.

Abstract: The psychoanalytic cure is characterized by a basic antinomy of time and time-lessness. Freud based the daily psychoanalytic work on the order of the mechanic clock (the time of the machine) to regulate a relationship which is unique in our culture. The temporal order of the cure responds to the logic of the temporal path. On the opposite, in the world of the unconscious the familiar concepts of cause and effect as well as of before and after are abolished. Temporal differentiations become meaningless. ''Symmetrical madness'' prevails (Matte Blanco). The temporal core of the analytic situation is bi-logical. This ambiguity is reflected in the technical principles. Free Association breaks through the logic of the temporal path, again and again. There are, however, different defence strategies defusing its unforeseeability. The tension between the time that determines the analytic setting and the timelessness of free association gets once again a process of temporal order going. Present social changes and in connection with them the changed time strategies endanger the temporal order of the analytic cure.

Note: Article Wellendorf F, Kuhsenbarg 6A, D-28870 Fischerhude, GERMANY

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