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About Three Years ago it struck me that time plays a very special role in some analyses, and I started to make notes after sessions in which time, or the discussion of time—in this or that aspect—had been prominent.
My paper has grown out of these notes on nine patients.
The first part is about the sense of time, that is, ego time, for time is experienced by the ego. It is subdivided into: (1) time rigidly imposed on the infant, and (2) the patient's actions with time, e.g. wasting time, stealing time. The second part of the paper is on the archetypal aspect of time: free time and the devouring mother.
Interest in time—I might almost say fascination with time—sent me to the poets, and I have acknowledged this in the title of the paper, which is taken from the last line of Wordsworth's poem ‘Mutability’. Time is one of the topics perennially engaging poets: they are aware of its psychic importance, they have represented it in countless images and symbols throughout the ages.
Thinking further about time, I realized that it was apposite to my emerging theme that in some languages the word for time is masculine, in others it is feminine or neuter. In this it is like the words for sun, for moon, for death. For example, die Zeit and le temps; der Tod and la mort; die Sonne and le soleil; der Mond and la lune; das Leben, das Schicksal and la vie, le destin. There are also masculine, feminine and adrogynous world-creating and lifedestroying gods. These observations in the field of mythology and etymology have I think yielded a fuller understanding of the patients’ unconscious links with an archetypal background.
Time the fact, and also the concept of time, imply division, definition, discrimination and finiteness. Consciousness, activated by the spiritual principle and having masculine connotations, separates itself from the mater, earth