When Time Stood Still: Thoughts about Time in Primitive Mental States

Abstract

Deciphering the way patients experience time provides an additional key to primitive mental areas which do not express themselves in the usual verbal or symbolic ways and can help us and our patients better understand these deep layers of the psyche. It is when the issue of time moves to the centre of experience as a separate and predominant aspect of existence, that there and then occurs a disturbance in our continuous and natural transition between various temporalities, one that often exposes an inner rupture, many times of a very early origin. The paper first focuses on a number of art works which portray attempts to deal with death anxiety by capturing the moment, or watching, controlling, organizing, cataloguing the movement of time as though such attempts could freeze time and make it endlessly prolongued. Second, theoretical aspects and clinical vignettes focus on understanding the experience of time as fractured and fragmented; on experiences of timelessness, and, on stereotypical, ritualistic, autistic-like relations to time, perceived as frozen still. In addition, conceptualizing the analyst/writer's experience of time in the presence of her patients provided a unique tool for expanding the understanding of the patients' internal world.

Arid Mental Landscapes and Avid Cravings for Human Contact: Beckettian and Analytic Narratives

“…Even while in utero , the fetus experiences the rhythm of the mother's heartbeat and of her speech, alternations between engagement and rest, all creating first experiences of constancy and rhythmicity (Charles, ). The memory traces of these rhythms are absorbed in the nucleus of the prenatal psyche and constitute one of the first representations of the maternal object (Maiello, , ; Mancia, ; Schellekes, , 2017b). After birth too, sensations and experiences of rhythm continue to take root and expand, to now include the rhythms of breastfeeding, of stretching and relaxation, of breathing, of sleep and waking, of hunger and fullness, of presence and absence, of being with and away from the object (Birksted‐Breen, ).…”

“…The concept of mental void usually refers to a psychic empty area lacking content, form, structure, meaning and symbolic representations, all expressed through images such as abyss, chaos, black hole, emptiness, nothingness, stillness. The evocative power of these images reflects the very nature of the underlying, unbearable anxieties, namely of falling forever, of dissolution into a formless state, of being emptied of one's own psychic existence and thinking abilities, of losing contact with self and other (Winnicott, ; Bion, , ; Tustin, ; Grotstein, ; Mitrani, ; Eshel, ; Valdarski, ; Schellekes, , ). In all these states what is common is a mental lacuna devoid of representations, conflicts and self‐reflection ability.…”

Sentenced to Life: Reflections on the Inability to Bear Vitality, Following the Movie Turtles Can Fly

“…Everything was described as wonderful until adolescence when she suffered serious physical injury accompanied by cold‐heartedness in those responsible for the repeated occurrence of the traumas. All these left her vulnerable and cut off as if everything had come to a standstill [on time dimensions in trauma, see Terr (1984); Levine (2009b); Schellekes (2017)] and years passed without her knowing how. Her life became steadily more constricted, but in a particular way: she could care for others with an exceptional sensitivity, creativity and instinctive understanding for nuances of emotion but, on the other hand, she had not the slightest volition or capacity to care for herself beyond the irreducible minimum to get through life.…”