Origins of Time—A Reconstruction of the Ontogenetic Development of the Sense of Time Based on Object-Relations Theory

Object-relations theory, supported by empirical and experimental evidence, suggests that the development of psychological time depends on the integration of internal representations of self and object on the one hand, and of elementary ego apparatuses and functions on the other. An essential prerequisite is a felt change in perception, which depends on the perception of phenomenal change or movement. This ability may be available quite early, but acquires temporal significance as it becomes associated with the perception of the infant's own changes in need-tension. Specifically, a primitive sense of time emerges out of the awareness of change as experienced during the interval of suspenseful waiting that is defined by the perception of rising inner tension and the arrival of a wish-fulfilling object.

A feeling of positive expectancy, underlying the anticipation of a 'good' object, and the anxiety that develops as a 'bad' object threatens to take over from inside, promote the differentiation of self from object representations, establishing a generalized sense of time—the sense of duration. With the development of object constancy and the establishment of repression as the ego's major defense, the sense of time consolidates itself as temporal perspective, future and past. It seems that the sense of future, as a function of the experience of anxiety, develops before the sense of 'pastness', which grows as a function of subjective memory and the sense of guilt or concern. The growing influence of the superego, along with the development of language and of symbolic logic, enables the child to use the concept of time in an increasingly adaptive way, as an objective, conventional frame of reference.