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Different ways of experiencing time are illustrated with clinical vignettes from children with autism, and related to their characteristic experience of dimensionality and their predominant mode of identification. Following Meltzer's categorisation, time is described as circular, oscillating, or linear and unidirectional. Circular time is associated with two-dimensionality and adhesive identification, while linear, unidirectional time is associated with three-dimensionality and introjective identification. In the vignette illustrating oscillating time, the child seemed to be moving towards three-dimensionality, but the phantasied masculine element remained unstable. A further experience of time is described that is not unidirectional and that seems to be associated with transgenerational factors. The child concerned did not occupy his own individual space in the parents' mind and was unable to live in his own time, either. He confused growing up with concretely robbing the parents by »annexing« their capacities, and imagined a male child who annexed the qualities of his female carer and grew at her expense until the process was reversed in an everlasting cycle. This phantasy (based on the idea of mother and baby competing for the umbilical cord) served as a defence against fears of damaging the mother figure.
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