Kairos and Chronos: Clinical-Psychoanalytic Reflections On Time

The present paper attempts to define “time” in clinical-psychoanalytic terms. After brief remarks on time, on timelessness, on times, and on Nachträglichkeit, the treatment of a breakdown state is described. The breakdown from the earliest period of the patient's life first manifested itself in an autistoid perversion. It finally occurred in the transference in a presence moment and could become conceivable as a thought for the patient in a turbulent process. Here two time dimensions became apparent: The timeless state of breakdown unfolds in the treatment in such a way that preforms of temporal experiences precede the event of time in presence moment, from which then the times past, future and present can become. In the presence moment and its sublation in the presentational symbol, not only did the breakdown become psychically real, but time, times, and space emerged, albeit dynamically very differently in the analyst and the analysand: for the analyst, past and place emerged with the presentational symbol, while for the patient, temporal location did not occur in the time “past,” but in the place where the perversion was practiced. Past is the place where it happened. For the discovery and use of times, it is necessary for the patient to distinguish the absent object from the retraumatizing one. Then the present absent object becomes the object that was there in the past understanding and will be there in the future. The assurance of this figure of thought is obtained in the use of the object.