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This paper is the fifth of a series portraying the postoperative adaptations of a group of colostomy patients evaluated five or more years following surgery. All the patients had abdomino-perineal resections performed for rectal carcinoma with resultant dry colostomy. The earlier papers were by Sutherland et al.,8 Orbach et al.,4 Orbach and Tallent,5 and Orbach.8 The characteristics of the sample and the methods employed in obtaining data for this clinical paper have been reported in considerable detail in the papers by Orbach et al. and Orbach. In brief, the sample was composed of 48 patients, 24 men and 24 women with a median age in the low sixties. The group was predominately Jewish of Eastern European origin, and its educational level was relatively low.
The data reported in this paper were obtained from interviews focusing on behavior, affect, and thinking before, during, and between irrigations. In addition to the interviews, which uncovered unconscious as well as conscious material, Rorschach tests were administered to 31 out of the 48 patients. Projective testing provided an independent check upon the validity of the inferences drawn from the interview data.
The concept of time, like the sensory modality of olfaction, has not been extensively explored in either the physiological or the psychological literature. In a recent review Wallace and Rabin9 reject the conception of a “time sense” which is localized in a cortical area or