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There are moments in a personal analysis that are remembered with great clarity. These moments are thought of as nodal points even if the reasons for their importance are not clear. One such moment in my own analysis occurred when, after a session in which I felt that a great emotional weight had been lifted off my shoulders, I had the absurd thought: “Even living and dying is not a question of life and death.” Although I do not remember the content of the session in which I experienced this lifting of an emotional weight, I remember exactly where I was when I had this thought—on the Illinois Central train platform on the way to my home from downtown Chicago. Not only do I recall breathing more easily at the time, but, as I write, I also find myself breathing more easily and more deeply now. The world seemed brighter and colors more vivid, and when I focus on the memory I experience even now an echo of that change and a widening of the world.
I realize that I am describing the lifting of depressive affect, but the reference to depression is too broad, too vague. Examining the connection between the awareness of time and the sensation of pain, Freud in his paper “On Transience” (1916[1915]) links our experience of transience to the specific process of mourning. He begins:
Not long ago I went on a summer walk through a smiling countryside in the company of a taciturn friend and of a young but already famous poet. The poet admired the beauty of the scene around us but felt no joy in it. (p. 305)
What explained the absence of pleasure, the deprivation of meaning, which the friend experienced as well? He continues: