Timing Development from Cleavage to Differentiation

Abstract

This paper describes a psychoanalytic exploration of eighteen years of one woman's diaries. These diaries document Hannah's struggle to come into being after a history of severe trauma and eating disorders. The diaries convey a detailed account of how the unspeakable, embodied remnants of sexual trauma become symbolized. Using her diaries as flexible transitional spaces, Hannah gradually begins playing with the structure of her text, creating bodies of herself and others within lists. Her use of lists within the diaries demonstrates that she develops the psychological capacities to differentiate and symbolize her abusive experiences only as she creates time. Integrating Loewald's (1980) concept of temporal linking, Winnicott's (1970, 1971) notion of psyche/soma development, and feminist criticism, this paper describes a theory of development where the analytic subject comes into being through the relational creation of time and space. This theory situates time as a unique and necessary space within which mind/body, self/other, and intrapsychic/culture are negotiated. Thus, this theory of time creates the potential space within which psychoanalytic and cultural subjectivities can be explored together. Hannah's use of lists illustrates this theory of temporal development.