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THIS IS THE THIRD IN A SERIES OF PAPERS ABOUT TIME. IN IT I EXPLORE THE contributions of adolescence to a developmental line of time sense. As in the two preceding articles (Colarusso, 1979), (1987), my primary focus is the normal development of the subjective or intrapsychic sense of time, in contrast to objective or perceptual considerations. This developmental line is considered to be lifelong; the present focus on adolescence bridges the two earlier efforts about childhood and others yet to come on developmental aspects of time sense in adulthood. The data for my observations and hypotheses stem from analytic work with adolescents and young adults, and the discussion is divided into four sections: a brief recapitulation of time sense in childhood followed by similar considerations in early, middle, and late adolescence.
In my initial study of time sense from birth to object constancy (1979), I presented a developmental line of subjective time sense for the first three years of life. In earliest infancy, because of the undeveloped state of the ego, there is little organized time sense, little differentiation of past, present, and future or sense of duration. The existing precursors are homeostatic regulatory mechanisms and alternating sensations of frustration and gratification (Seaton, 1974) such as hunger and satiety as well as diurnal and physiological rhythms such as the heartbeat (Gifford, 1960) and breathing which convey kinesthetic sensations