Experience of time in psychoanalytical setting – the time that does not pass

SETTING IN PSYCHOANALYSIS

Abstract

The psychoanalytic experience of time experience in the psychoanalytic setting is unique. It does not correspond to historical, linear, or cyclical dimensions. In psychoanalysis time does not flow, but expires. And the past does not pass. The unconscious ignores time, due to our Self the time is born – from the contradictions between the requirements of unconsciousness and reality, the contradictions registrated by perception. Rhythmic, intermittent, and at the same time continuous and framed – psychoanalytic setting gives the patients the opportunity to reconsider and experience new perceptions. But not in order to make a better catalog of their history, but to reinterpret it, gaining a new quality of coherence and continuity of their existence.