Meetings of the Psychoanalytic Association of New York

DISCUSSION: Dr. Nathaniel Ross described a group of patients, 'chronic late-comers', who, because of fear of death, struggle desperately with time. They are seriously ill, difficult to treat, schizoid, profoundly disturbed in their object relations, often hypochondriacal, deficient in the ability to internalize objects, and prone to chronic masturbation. Because the 'terror of separation' and 'consequent annihilation through complete oral deprivation', leading to the time defenses illustrated by Dr. Orgel, are ubiquitous and elementary experiences, why are there not more latecomers such as Dr. Orgel describes? Dr. Ross suggests that the answer will be found in greater knowledge about the 'early vicissitudes of ego development'. The author's emphasis on the etiological role of oral-sadism in his patient's 'time disturbance' is extremely important.

It is difficult to elicit content in the 'timeless states' experienced by chronic 'latecomers'. In such states there may be an alteration of consciousness akin to that accompanying the Isakower phenomenon. This may represent an attempt to dissolve the distinction between the self and the object and so eliminate the need for oral supplies. Dr. Ross emphasized the need for more precise knowledge of the 'various consequences of attempts to return to this preoral period'. Further, he noted that in the disturbances in abstract thinking described by Dr. Sylvan Keiser, the sense of causality is faulty just as in Dr. Orgel's case; in both instances there is evidence of a tendency to regress to the preoral stage.

Dr. Leon L. Altman asserted that a pervasively deficient sense of time indicates early developmental failure in object relations and ego functioning. In the patients he studied who manifested what he called the 'waiting syndrome', the deficient ego reflected in the 'temporal ataxia' could be inevitably traced to an identification or persistent infantile relationship with the mother. One might speak of 'mother time'