Time is a human concept with which man constantly struggles. Its subjective experience is an ego function. The unconscious has no conception of time. Time becomes associated with various aspects of the Oedipal situation, hence Father Time, the symbol of creation and death. Pleasure shortens subjective time; fear increases it. Schizophrenics try to live in an autistic time world outside of reality.

The different time concepts are a steady development from a primary biological sense of time—the inner clock of the human organism—which is the ability to indicate a point in time on the world time line. Further development leads to a feeling of time, the ability to measure parts of the time line. Then comes the gnostic sense of time which marshals events along the time line into correct classifications. The highest development is that of dynamic temporalization, the experience of duration and continuity.

Meerloo discusses the pathology of these conceptions as well as their appearance in both organic and psychic dysfunction.