I propose a model for thinking about time as a psychic phenomenon in the context of psychoanalytic theory and practice. I speak to Freud’s postulate that the system unconscious is timeless and elaborate upon the term Nachträglichkeit as representing the process of articulating unconscious meaning from the past into the present. Time, emerging from the timeless unconscious into a conscious perception, can oscillate between experiences of “before-meaning” into the “extended present” through articulations in what I am naming an ‘analytic moment.’ I lay the foundation for thinking about the inherent meaning of an analytic moment and its articulation via the element of surprise. I conclude with a discussion of the analytic moment as an aspect of Bion’s reflection on abstraction and thinking.