The "lived time" in the psychological field and in psychotherapy

Abstract

For the following clinical research, attention to Minkowski's phenomenology of lived time, Husserl's inner consciousness of time, and Piro's theme of chronodesis, which have their own profound bearing on clinical practice, was crucial. Three concepts (lived time, inner consciousness of time and chronodesis) have guided the following reflections for treatment practice. Can it be useful to offer the patient a conscious, careful and critical reflection on the time lived during the therapeutic setting with regard to his or her life time? And which, among the temporal aspects or distortions that figure in our inner experience and in our representations of reality (those that are naive as well as those that are informed, unconscious, unknown, or known), are to be considered clinically useful elements with respect to the painful reality we go through and for the purpose of achieving a curative goal? Usually the patient does not dwell on the temporal experiences he or she experiences, perceives them alternately, on the words used when describing the perceived temporal happening. Words, when used "at random," in a pre-reflective manner, testify to the lack of a link between consciousness and emotional experience. On a general level, temporality in psychotherapy can be pronounced, according to Piro (2005), as immersion in subepochal successions and degrees (historical time), as an unstoppable protention to the future and as a telicity proper to life processes, as a possible form of understanding the other (understanding by anticipation), as a passion for the future.