Temporality and psychopathology

The paper first introduces the concept of implicit and explicit temporality, referring to time as pre-reflectively lived vs. consciously experienced. Implicit time is based on the constitutive synthesis of inner time consciousness on the one hand, and on the conative–affective dynamics of life on the other hand. Explicit time results from an interruption or negation of implicit time and unfolds itself in the dimensions of present, past and future. It is further shown that temporality, embodiment and intersubjectivity are closely connected: While implicit temporality is characterised by tacit bodily functioning and by synchronisation with others, explicit temporality arises with states of desynchronisation, that is, of a retardation or acceleration of inner time in relation to external or social processes. These states often bring the body to awareness as an obstacle as well. On this basis, schizophrenia and melancholic depression are investigated as paradigm cases for a psychopathology of temporality. Major symptoms of schizophrenia such as thought disorder, thought insertion, hallucinations or passivity experiences may be regarded as manifesting a disturbance of the constitutive synthesis of time consciousness, closely connected with a weakening of the underlying pre-reflective self-awareness or ipseity. This results in a fragmentation of the intentional arc, a loss of self-coherence and the appearance of major self-disturbances. Depression, on the other hand, is mostly triggered by a desynchronisation from the social environment and further develops into an inhibition of the conative–affective dynamics of life. As will be shown, both mental illnesses bear witness of the close connection of temporality, embodiment and intersubjectivity.     

Temporal experience in mania

The paper examines both the phenomenology of the manic self as well as critical aspects of manic neurobiology, focusing, with respect to both domains, on manic temporality. We argue that the distortions of lived time in mania exceed mere acceleration and are fundamental for manic affectivity. Mania involves radical acceleration and radical asynchronicity, which result in an instantaneous existence. People with mania rebel against the facticity of reality and suffer from an existential leap towards the future, in which the self abandons normal temporal boundaries. Excerpts from the interviews with persons with mania who experienced psychosis illustrate this phenomenon. Commenting upon disrupted circadian rhythms in mania and the role of lithium in its treatment the paper posits manic temporality as the link through which manic phenomenology and manic neurobiology intertwine.     

Can Virtual Reality Increase the Realism of Role Plays Used to Teach College Women Sexual Coercion and Rape-Resistance Skills?

The present study evaluated whether virtual reality (VR) can enhance the realism of role plays designed to help college women resist sexual attacks. Sixty-two female undergraduate students were randomly assigned to either the Role Play (RP) or Virtual Role Play (VRP) conditions, which were differentiated only by the use of VR technology in the VRP condition. A multimethod assessment strategy was used to evaluate the effects of VR on the experienced realism of sexually threatening role plays. Realism was assessed by participant self-reports of negative affect and perceptions of realism, direct observation of participants' verbal displays of negative affect during the role plays, and measurements of participant heart rate during the role plays. Results indicated that VR can indeed heighten the realism of sexually threatening role plays. Discussion focuses on issues regarding the use of VR-enhanced role plays for helping college women resist sexual attacks.     

Schemata, Hammers, and Time: Heidegger's Two Derivations of Judgment

In his Kant interpretations of the late 1920s and in Being and Time, Heidegger develops two distinct, yet related, derivations of the possibility of judgment from temporal conditions. This paper presents each derivation, establishes the strict analogy between the two, and uses it to explain the structure and shortcoming of the interpretation of ecstatic temporality as the unitary ground of objective experience. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Disorders of Temporality and The Subjective Experience of Time: Unresponsive Objects and the Vacuity of the Future

This paper explores how the personal sense of time—temporality—is organized and experienced in different clinical situations. It uses examples from infancy observations to draw links between caregivers’ response to infants’ capacities for motor activity and emotional communication and the development of the senses of personal security, vital intersubjectivity and temporality, that is, the feeling of a meaningful self and an open future. In illustrations from both early child–parent interaction and an extended case, it suggests how moment-to-moment interactions reflect and sustain these core, highly personal experiences of what it feels like to live in the world, that is, how an accretion of “micro” interactions can contribute to and help us understand the “macro” structures that analysts usually describe, such as intersubjectivity, the sense of self, and here, the senses of time.

With that in mind, the paper evokes a few specific “disorders of temporality.” One group of these involves the blurring of past and present, especially following trauma. Much of the paper, though, is concerned with a basic deficit in the sense of time that can be observed, when the patient presents without the hope that new experiences can emerge, however fitfully, with the feeling of a forward-moving future. In an imaginative move, the paper links this image with the experience of an infant with an unresponsive parent, one who does not afford that infant the most basic senses of personal agency that come from having her feelings and gestures recognized and responded to in a way that gives her the feeling that she is having some effect on her world. Clinical implications are drawn, often demonstrating how brief moments of analytic interaction reflect the macrocosms of the broader analytic relationship and the patient’s psychological organization.     

Success modulates consolidation of a visuomotor adaptation task

Consolidation is a time-dependent process that is responsible for the storage of information in long-term memory. As such, it plays a crucial role in motor learning. Prior research suggests that some consolidation processes are triggered only when the learner experiences some success during practice. In the present study, we tested whether consolidation processes depend on the objective performance of the learner or on the learner's subjective evaluation of his or her own performance (i.e., how successful the learner believes he or she is). Four groups of participants performed 2 sessions of a visuomotor adaptation task for which they had to learn a new internal model of limb kinematics; these sessions were either 5 min or 24 hr apart. The task was identical for all participants, but each group was given a difficult or an easy objective that affected the participants' evaluation of their own performance during the initial practice session. All groups adapted their movements similarly to the rotation of the visual feedback during the first session. However, when retested the following day, participants who had a 24-hr rest interval and had initially experienced success performed significantly better than those who did not feel successful or who were given a 5-min rest interval. Our results indicate that a certain level of subjective success must be experienced to trigger certain consolidation processes.     

Folded Futurity: Epigenetic Plasticity,Temporality, and New Thresholds of Fetal Life

The life sciences are generating a transformative view of the biological body not as fixed and innate but as permeable to its environment and, therefore, plastic: development is open and malleable. Emblematic of these new sciences is environmental epigenetics, which investigates environmental factors that come into the body to shape expression of genes across the life course; prominent are environmental exposures during fetal development, which epigeneticists propose influence not only birth outcomes but also lifelong health. How does this new emphasis on permeability and plasticity during fetal development change how the fetus and fetal vulnerability are understood in the current scientific literature? Perspectives on genomic and reproductive temporality help conceptualize environmental epigenetics as a dynamic relationship between plasticity and determinism. This epigenetic temporality links past, present, and future in way that gives the fetus a keystone role as the vulnerable space-time of environmental epigenetics. Epigenetic temporality produces a new, folded futurity that brings multiple, future generations into the present, influenced by current environmental conditions. In doing this, epigenetics shifts thresholds of fetal vulnerability and intervention to incorporate other entities, including reproductive cells (gametes and primordial germ cells) and very young children. Epigenetic temporality folds in on itself, producing new versions of vulnerable, plastic life that require protection now, in the enduring present, even as the future toward which epigenetics is oriented constantly recedes.     

Configurations of time,the body,and verbal communication: Temporality in patients who express their suffering through the body

This paper focuses on the study of temporality used as a clinical pointer to processes of affect regulation in patients who express their suffering through a discourse driven by bodily allusions. Differences between symptoms revealed by body language that conveys an experience of conflict (psychoneurotic symptoms) and somatizations are reviewed. Somatization is examined as a benchmark for the failure to resolve states of tension. The body in the session is conceptualized as a speech event. The body is considered as a psychical construction organized in the exchanges with a fellow human‐being. It is thus established as a support for subjectivity. Two discourse registers are described: the discourse of the evoked body and the discourse of the perceived body. The study of Greek mythology allows us to distinguish two different types of temporality : Chronos and Kairos. Chronos represents chronological whereas Kairos subjective time. Both are present in the subject; but if greater mental disorganization supervenes, Chronos predominates as it paves the way for a defence against suffering, designed to avoid the unbearable meaning of ceasing to be. Adherence to one or other mode of temporality signals different conceptions of analytic work. The topics addressed are illustrated by various clinical vignettes .     

Kant's Conceptualism: a New Reading of the Transcendental Deduction

I defend a novel interpretation of Kant's conceptualism regarding the contents of our perceptual experiences. Conceptualist interpreters agree that Kant's Deduction aims to prove that intuitions require the categories for their spatiality and temporality. But conceptualists disagree as to which features of space and time make intuitions require the categories. Interpreters have cited the singularity, unity, infinity, and homogeneity of space and time. But this is incompatible with Kant's Aesthetic, which aims to prove that these same features qualify space and time as intuitions, not concepts. On my interpretation, the feature is objectivity. Space and time are objective, in that they ground our judgments in geometry and mechanics.     

Heritage space,multiple temporalities,and the reproduction of Guangzhou Overseas Chinese Village

This paper investigates the everyday experiences of long-term residents during the urban heritage revitalization process of Guangzhou Overseas Chinese Village (GOCV) as China's first overseas Chinese village. Drawing upon insights from the recent theories of multiple temporalities, this paper argues that the everyday sensory experiences of long-term residents during the urban heritage revitalization process can be understood through three interconnected temporal modes (past, present, and future). These modes reflect the sociopolitical context of different periods and influence the everyday rhythms and practices of community residents. Specifically, regarding the past, patriotic fervor, a shared identity, and the experience of living collectively have created a “happy home for returned overseas Chinese”. In terms of the present, the market-oriented reform and commodification of housing has had a profound impact on the built forms and meaning systems of the neighborhood, leading to long-term residents' nostalgia for the past and resistance to present changes in the everyday rhythms. Lastly, based on an envisioned future, long-term residents carry out specific preservation practices to maintain and enhance their place identity. This article explores the approaches to enrich the urban heritage research by illuminating the importance of temporality for understanding the spatial (re)production of living urban heritage.     

Out of the body: embodiment and its vicissitudes

Body‐mind dualism and the consequent neglect of the body of the analyst can have important negative effects on the analytical process leading all too often to misinterpretations of the analysand's verbal and non‐verbal communications and to disturbances of analytical temporality. This is intensified when we are dealing with individuals where disembodiment and states of psychic deadness are central features. The paper explores the philosophical roots of the idea of a disembodied mind and the way in which this impacts our relationship with the world. While André Green's concept of the dead mother and disturbances in the sense of self‐agency have been held to play an important role in states of psychic deadness, I suggest that it is rather disturbances in the sense of body ownership and of the body image which are more central. The paper then discusses the particular kinds of countertransference that can be evoked in the analyst when we find ourselves dealing with this type of patient and suggests how we can use our embodied countertransference to become aware of and elaborate our own feelings of deadness in order to overcome the loss of temporality that is characteristic of such states. This is illustrated with reference to my work with a young man with a masochistic perversion and a severe disturbance of the body image with an accompanying profound sense of psychic deadness.     

Trinity, Temporality, and Open Theism

A number of thinkers today, including open theists, find reasons to attribute temporality to God. According to Robert W. Jenson, the Trinity is indispensable to a Christian concept of God, and divine temporality is essential to the meaning of the Trinity. Following the lead of early Christian thought, Jenson argues that the “persons” of the Trinity are relations, and these relations are temporal. Jenson’s insights are obscured, however, by problematic references to time as a sphere to which God is related. Schubert M. Ogden gives the notion of divine temporality coherent content by arguing that God’s actuality is best understood as an unending succession of experiences. This paper was delivered in the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God.     

Mistakes and Mental Disturbances: Pleasants, Wittgenstein, and Basic Moral Certainty

In his article, “Wittgenstein and Basic Moral Certainty,” Nigel Pleasants argues that killing an innocent, non-threatening person is wrong. It is, he argues, “a basic moral certainty.” He believes our basic moral certainties play the “same kind of foundational role as [our] basic empirical certaint[ies] do.” I believe this is mistaken. There is not “simply one kind of foundational role” that certainty plays. While I think Pleasants is right to affiliate his proposition with a Wittgensteinian form of certainty, he exposes himself to a tension that exists in On Certainty regarding how we acquire it: is certainty natural, is it social? In this paper, I present two ways in which we come to possess certainty: a bottom-up approach, where certainty is part of our instinctual predisposition, and a top-down approach, where certainty is acquired through positive reinforcement by family and culture.     

Actions in Slow Motion: Theoretical and Methodological Reflections on Temporality in Actions and Intersubjective Understanding

This article examines the connection between actions, temporality, and media-based observation. Slow motion technology is currently being used especially in sports to examine and evaluate athletes’ actions more precisely in order to identify potential infringements of rules. Starting with a phenomenological perspective, this article engages in a critical assessment of the degree to which the intentions underlying athletes’ actions become clearer if their actions are slowed down using slow motion. It transpires that a more in-depth understanding is not possible because the process of time-stretching using media technology tends to obscure intersubjective understanding. Nevertheless, the use of different playback speeds does increase observers’ sensitivity to the temporality of action and observation. This is particularly the case when greater emphasis is placed on the body and its role in the formation and carrying out of intentions. With the phenomenological view and in special consideration of the body and the subjective intentionality, the paper contributes to a discussion about the connection of time and (inter-)action already led in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. These findings mark a contribution to empirical social research as well, which is increasingly using video material in action analysis and should take slow motion as a possible augmented but also manipulated access to actions into account adequately. To this end, this article suggests a method for identifying the merits and demerits of using slow motion to analyse actions, and discusses the methodological implications of temporality in observation.

     

The Dignity in Multiplicity: Human Value as a Foundational Concept in Relational Thought

This paper explores the foundational status of the concept of human dignity in relational thought. The author highlights the importance of dignity in everyday clinical work, as well as the role this notion has played in inspiring what has been called the “relational turn” in psychoanalysis. Utilizing concepts from ethical theory and current analytic ideas regarding the multiplicity of self-states, the author sketches a model of psychic experience in which dignity plays a defining role. This model emphasizes the ongoing dialectic between dignity-based processes (in which Self and Other are experienced as unconditionally valuable) and processes in which we experience Self and Other as only conditionally valuable, or in many cases of pathology, unconditionally bad. A dignity-based vision of analytic process is proposed, wherein analyst and patient are engaged in the co-construction of an intersubjective space that is progressively more consistent with their intrinsic worth as human beings. It is suggested that, by explicitly affirming human dignity as an overarching value of relational thought, we would be encouraging continuous revision of our theories in order to further reflect the worth of the human subject, a process that could lead to more humane theories of analytic work.     

Analytic Work in the Bridge World: Commentary on Paper by Françoise Davoine

This discussion considers the elements of mythos and story telling that frame the case material Françoise Davoine offers and analyzes. In this discussion, I highlight the role of nachtraglichkeit, the nonlinearity of time and temporality that shapes the key events in this clinical narrative. I consider the relational aspects of countertransference, enactment, and personal analysis that shape Davoine's analytic listening and the uncanny effects of historical trauma that enter both analyst and analysand. This discussion also considers the interlocking of speech effects and temporality, the role of unconscious dialogues across history and time, that arise unbidden in clinical work. The analyst's freedom to live imaginatively in a process somewhat outside her clinical management is viewed as a key to the freeing of processes of mourning and rehabilitation in the patient.     

KIERKEGAARD ON PATIENCE AND THE TEMPORALITY OF THE SELF: The Virtues of a Being in Time

This paper examines Kierkegaard's discussion of patience in some of his Upbuilding Discourses , and its connection with his understanding of the nature of selfhood as it appears both in the Discourses and in The Sickness unto Death . That understanding stresses that selfhood is not simply given, but is a task to be achieved—although a task that can only be achieved by the self that is formed in the process of undertaking it. For Kierkegaard, an account of the self that recognizes its essential temporality must give a crucial role to patience as a virtue necessary for the formation and maintenance of personal identity. However, although the self is essentially temporal for Kierkegaard, it is also essentially such as to participate in eternity, and this complexity and tension in his concept of the self gives his understanding of patience a particular character—one that presents an important challenge to some of the dominant assumptions of recent and contemporary philosophy in both the analytic and the continental traditions.     

In search of lost time,Merleau-Ponty,Bergson, and the time of objects

The chapter on temporality in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, is situated in a section titled, “Being-for-Itself and Being-in-the-World.” As such, Merleau-Ponty’s task in the chapter on temporality is to bring these two positions together, in other words, to articulate the manner in which time links the cogito (Being-for-Itself) with freedom (Being-in-the-World). To accomplish this, Merleau-Ponty proposes a subject located at the junction of the for-itself and the in-itself, a subject which has an exterior that makes it possible for others to have an interior. This analysis will take Merleau-Ponty to an impasse where, on the one hand, there appears to be an objective world and the time of objects in that world, and on the other, there is the subject’s notion of events and the passing of time. Referring to Bergson’s notion of time, this essay proposes that there must be a temporal interval between perception, feeling and action in order for the subject to be “temporal by means of an inner necessity,” as Merleau-Ponty prescribes.     

Gender as Lived Time: Reading The Second Sex for a Feminist Phenomenology of Temporality

This article suggests that Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex offers an important contribution to a feminist phenomenology of temporality. In contrast to readings of The Second Sex that focus on the notion of “becoming” as the main claim about the relation between “woman” and time, this article suggests that Beauvoir's discussion of temporality in volume II of The Second Sex shows that Beauvoir understands the temporality of waiting, or a passive present, to be an underlying structure of women's existence and subordination. Accordingly, I argue that Beauvoir does not see “woman” as a mere becoming, as that which unfolds in time, but instead understands becoming a woman to be realized as lived time. As such, Beauvoir's account shows that gender and temporality are deeply entangled, and thus she challenges the classic phenomenological account of temporality as a general, given structure of human existence. More specifically, I argue that her account shows how a particular experience of time is an underlying structure of sexual objectification, a claim that expands on the feminist phenomenological claim that a particular relation to space becomes a way in which women take up and negotiate their own subordination and objectification.