Getting Involved with Time: Notes on the Analysis of a Schizoid Man

Time, a less examined dimension of psychic life, has recently captured the attention of psychoanalysts. This paper describes how one patient can be understood vis-à-vis the time dimension. An overview of the patient's changing state of subjective time in the analysis is described. The author defines a primitive form of subjective time, mindless waiting, and contrasts it with its more evolved correlate, reflective delay, which is conceived as an aspect of developmental time. A pivotal session elucidates the patient's unconscious dynamic of using built-up pressure from his mindless waiting state to cope with an external situation while still maintaining himself in his internal timeless cocoon. The author shows how temporal considerations can illuminate the personality dynamics of the analysand, and how awareness of temporal dimensions of the transference/counter-transference helped further the analysis. The concluding theoretical discussion relates these considerations of time to Freudian metapsychology, post-Kleinian theories of the “psychotic-part-of-the-personality,” and to Winnicott's concept of “going-on-being.” The discussion also addresses the role of counter-transference in understanding temporal phenomena in analysis.