Time and Timelessness, or, the Varieties of Temporal Experience (A Psychoanalytic Inquiry): Peter Hortocollis, M.D., Ph.D.,  International Universities Press, New York, 1983,  261 pp.

This intelligent and interesting volume is, in Dr. Hortocollis' own words “… about time and the self—the sense of time as experienced by the self both in normality and pathology” (p. 2). The organizing principles underlying the book involve existential philosophy—psychology and structuralism (William James, Henri Bergson, Piaget, Heidegger), object-relations theory (Klein, Jacobson, Kernberg, Winnicott), and an analytical approach based upon Freud's theory of conflict. Hortocollis integrates and clarifies the contributions of the various approaches to the study of time, and the analyst will find much that is relevant to the clinical situation.

The early chapters on the structural and psychological underpinnings of the sense of time are at times difficult reading, especially for the reader unfamiliar with the works of Bergson, but as Dr. Hortocollis goes on to address the clinical aspects of our temporal experience, the persistent reader will be rewarded.

After establishing the importance of the formation of object constancy for the development of an adequate time sense, Dr. Hortocollis emphasizes the centrality of affect in the human experience of time. Freud's conceptualization of signal affect is based upon the human ability to place oneself in time and to anticipate possible future occurrences. The notion that fear and anxiety are related to some future potential is contrasted with the idea that depression and grief are related to past failures and losses. The maturation of the superego adds important time-differentiating functions to the personality. Hortocollis suggests that the term “guilt” be reserved for apprehension about the future (as in Anna Freud's definition of guilt as superego anxiety), whereas remorse be used to refer to the superego response to a past event.

The three chapters on time and psychopathology, covering neurotic, borderline, and psychotic disorders, respectively, are excellent. The section on the borderline's experience and use of time is e