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The treatment of a patient, who, though completely able to speak English correctly as to tense and mode, expressed himself in a curiously ungrammatical way as soon as emotionally cathected themes were touched upon, is used to illustrate a type of patient whose neurotic disturbances are revealed in the use (or avoidance) of certain grammatical forms. In addition, a first psychoanalytic attempt is made to elucidate the foundations laid during early infantile processes of socialization for the acquisition and use of grammatical forms of language, and to explain these forms in psychoanalytic terms. The author maintains that psychological meaning and grammatical form of a tense or mode are concerned with the process of individuation, unfolding from the infant's symbiotic no-time ('ante-time') to awareness of a personal identity, with the past as its precondition and the present time as preparation for the future. Traumatic events may act as blocks to individuation, preventing the individual from experiencing the present time and anticipating a pleasurable future. In such patients the psychological defects in experiencing time are expressed in their defective grammar. The present tense is not mastered psychologically. Present time becomes 'anti-time' and future becomes 'doom'.