This academic study by an analyst colleague examines time as it appears in the work of Freud, as well as, in Part Two, tackling certain aspects of the Freudian experience of temporality—for the time concerned is that of man in his relations with others, in matters affecting his body (disease), in the course of his existence and in his confrontation with old age.

Discreetly underlying the investigation is a solid foundation of philosophical reflection in which time is seen as an experience influenced by culture, as the introduction briefly points out. Freud's theory, movement and difficulties are thus set step by step in the context of the classical problems of the philosophy of time.

The thesis of the timelessness of the unconscious features prominently in the book, but a principle of temporality is established by the functions of repetition (cf. ‘A note upon the “Mystic Writing Pad”’). The theme of Nachträglichkeit