Time past, time present, time future: reflections on the development of the sense of duration as a foundation for a durable object, going on being and sense of self

ABSTRACT

This theoretical paper takes as its starting point a question posed by Alvarez: ‘how does a sense of a durable object get built up?’. The paper considers one dimension of the earliest processes of post-natal primitive psychic life and organisation, relevant to Alvarez’s question: the formation and development, at a micro level, of an internal sense of duration of object and self, leading to a sense of continuation and continuity; and how over time this in turn forms a foundation for the experience of ‘going on being’ and sense of self. Sander’s concept of ‘organized states of consciousness’ in earliest post-natal life is drawn on to elucidate the prerequisite for the development of a sense of duration. The role and significance of ‘biorhythmicity’ and rhythm in infancy are discussed, in relation to the development of a sense of duration. The development of a sense of duration is in turn linked to the development of a sense of time. Observational material from an Emotional State Assessment of a Looked After infant in foster care, and clinical material from the four times weekly individual psychotherapy of a Looked After two-year-old, are used to illustrate the development of a sense of duration.

KEYWORDS:

• Organised states of consciousness
• sense of duration
• rhythmicity
• embodied experience
• going on being
• trauma
• infant observation

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Anne Alvarez for helpful discussions about Archie. My thanks to Genevieve Lowes for her written record of the observation of the child Findlay.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I am grateful to Maria Rhode for drawing my attention to Henri Rey’s discussion of the introjected rhythm of the maternal heartbeat.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Graham Shulman

Graham Shulman is a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist and Head of Child Psychotherapy in CAMHS NHS Lanarkshire. He was previously Organizing Tutor for the psychoanalytic observational studies course and Senior Tutor for the Child Psychotherapy Clinical Training at the Scottish Institute of Human Relations. He is currently an External Tutor for the Child Psychotherapy Clinical Training in Scotland and is a tutor for the Human Development Scotland multi-agency and multi-disciplinary professional development Infant Mental Health Course delivered in Lanarkshire. He is joint editor and contributor to The Emotional Experience of Adoption: A Psychoanalytic Perspective (Routledge, 2008) and The Non-Linear Mind: Psychoanalysis of Complexity in Psychic Life (Karnac, 2016). He is a past Editor of the Journal of Child Psychotherapy and is currently an Assistant Editor of the Infant Observation Journal. He has published articles and chapters on clinical work, infant observation, and links between psychoanalysis, literature, and chaos theory, including a chapter in the recent book Psychoanalysis and Other Matters: Where are we now? edited by Judith Edwards, published by Routledge.