“A Woman Who Found She Needed a Session of Indefinite Length”: A Look at Chapter Four of Winnicott’s Playing and Reality Through the Prism of its Modalities of Temporality

This paper offers a reflection and an open, experiential reading of one of Winnicott’s most fascinating case studies. I try to show how the question of time in the psychoanalytical context emerges not only in relation to a deviation from the traditional setting but also concerns an axis inherent to some key therapeutic issues, such as the meaning of time and the temporal as a quality of holding in regression to dependency; or as a component in the transference experience or in the therapist’s holding in mind of the patient’s potential, through holding the future. The high frequency of meetings in psychoanalysis facilitates qualitative change, allowing patients and therapists to be in touch with deep, primitive strata of the psyche. Extending time in psychoanalytic treatment, therefore, whether as an ad hoc response to the patient’s needs or as an extension of the setting, is tantamount to enabling a multi-layered experience of time across the spectrum of its manifestations. Attention to the temporal component in therapy and the experience of time in the transference is a valuable resource in our work. This paper contributes to the attempt to elaborate this dimension of psychoanalytic listening.