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In this article, Bernd Nissen engages in an absorbing exploration of time and timelessness as active, coexisting elements of psychic life. Much more than a mere attempt to “define time in clinical-psychoanalytic terms”, as he suggests, the author draws from the works of Freud, Winnicott and Bion to describe a process whereby time-bound and timeless psychic states can converge in a moment of transformation within the context of the analytic relationship.
Nissen's language requires some getting used to, as he organizes his thinking around several terms which he uses idiosyncratically. Following his threads of thought is, however, well worth it: Starting from the vantage point of time, Nissen goes on to provide one of the more lucid and original interpretations of Bion's theory of transformations, clarifying its relevance for working with pre-conceptual or as-yet-nameless states of mind.
The most important distinctive terms introduced by the author are: “presence moment”, which points to a particular moment or a particular quality of presence where a pre-conception in Bion's terms can eventually be conjoined with a new formative experience; “presentational symbol”, which draws from the philosopher of art Susanne Langer (1948) to depict a symbol which is not semiotic and can contain the ineffable (in Jungian terms this would simply be called “symbol”); and “sublation”, which he borrows from Hegel's dialectic
philosophy, and can be understood as the “lifting” of a prior mental state of fixed understanding into something that is more fluid and can contain elements of its opposite (Hegel, 1830/1975).
Nissen begins with Freud's reflections on time and timelessness as part of the notion of Nachträglichkeit (literal translation: “afterwardness”). Although volumes have been written on the nuances of the various translations and meanings of Nachträglichkeit, the thrust of Freud's argument is that when a past experience is recollected in present time, then a reorientation toward