Time is everywhere and nowhere: The limits in which internal time is given in mental suffering

Abstract

The following analyses on inner time, in the psychological-psychiatric field, includes the addresses, research and studies of the main authors, mainly psychiatrists, philosophers, psychotherapists, who have analyzed lived time, hypertime and chronodesis. The author's clinical reflections on the relationship 'lived time/dark suffering' are collected. Thus, the difficult theme running through the present research is the analysis of the temporal constitution in patients in states of psychic suffering, the failure at the psychic level of a healthy understanding of temporal phenomena (temporal distortions). The focus is thus on the epistemological fulcrums, factors and filters related to the constructions, distortions and alterations of temporal experiences during a state of psychic suffering. The author's work in the field of the treatment of temporality focuses on fundamental themes: dark suffering/consciousness in the experience of time, hypertime (the 'tyranny of the present' in our historical horizon), and chronodesis in patients (the link to temporal horizons). This research, the subject of a series of analyses by the writer, is often underestimated by clinicians for therapeutic purposes. In the psychological-psychiatric field, the analysis of many psychic disorders focuses mainly on unconscious or relational processes and, almost never, on a deep understanding of the patient's lived time. To clinicians, the understanding of lived time mistakenly appears to be of little use and of little methodological rigour. However, the reference to the temporal paradigm opens up new perspectives for therapeutic research that may enable us to gain ground on the cure.