Time and Memory

'The various chapters of this book explore how the psychoanalytic notions of time can find expression in clinical practice, and shed light on historical events or literary creations. Patients create a characteristic sense of time and space in the transference. Patients' distortions of time reflect their psychopathology as well as their reactions to the temporal aspects of the psychoanalytic setting. Patients who deny the passage of time are resistant to change, to mourning, and, ultimately, death. They also, at times, deny bodily and psychic development. Examples are compared to demonstrate the unconscious processes underlying the particular time distortions being considered, their impact on the patient's lives, and their manifestation in the clinical setting. Psychic reality is discontinuous and the structure of the discontinuities will be revealed by the impact on the patient of the temporal aspects of the psychoanalytic setting. Together, all chapters in Time and Memory indicate the profound contribution that a psychoanalytic understanding of time can bring to the understanding of the history of the individual, of historical events, and to works of literature.' Book jacket.