Artwork: The Persistence of Memory, by Salvador Dali (1931)
What time is this in which we live? In what is called post-modernity or late modernity for some. A time when we have never been so connected, being able to shorten the spaces and time for communication through the advent of technology and social networks. We live in the age of immediacy, or as Lipovetsky would say, ‘Time is Money’ and the culture of excess, in which we try to make a profit by getting more quantity in less time, for example with fast food, fast fashion, substance abuse, Tinder, dating apps, self-help books with magic formulas for happiness, among others. Shopping and even meeting people can be just a click away. However, there has been an adornment of form to the detriment of form. Quantity has taken precedence over quality.
Despite the great freedom of choice, from style, what to eat, lifestyles to the ideologies we most identify with, anguish is prevalent. Zygmunt Baumann tells us about liquid modernity and liquid loves, which flow and don't stay. We are left with an emptiness, a feeling of incompleteness, because when we relate to everything, we end up relating to nothing at the same time. Our personality becomes dispersed, fragmented, in which there is no historical continuity, but rather jumps between areas. There is an urgent demand to do everything, to live everything, which is impossible, and the anguish comes from the weight of freedom of choice, of having the responsibility to choose what we want to do with our time, to invest in the construction of our reality.
How do you know what to choose? There is no standard answer, and it can change throughout life, but for happiness we know that authenticity is essential, as is self-knowledge. In a world of appearances and the cult of instant happiness, emotions such as sadness, anger and fear are masked with imagery, distractors or chemical photoshops. Inattention to our emotions prevents us from truly understanding our relationship with others and the world. Sadness can indicate a need to readjust expectations, anger a revolt at having exceeded personal limits, joy the experience of something that aligns with your being, among others. It's essential to be aware of our emotions and allow them to guide us, like compasses, indicating how to adjust our relationships according to what will bring us happiness. Happiness is made up of moments, and those that make us eternal, when ‘time stops”, giving consolation to the knowledge of our mortality, are those in which there really is an encounter, an immersion in an experience in which we leave a legacy, whether through love for a person or an encounter with ourselves, in artistic expression, in the writing of a work or with the possibility of contributing to a greater understanding of reality and its improvement through some area of work. This is where psychotherapy is essential, in the need to delve into our history, for self-knowledge and to choose with authenticity in what we want to invest our time, affections and creativity.
In an accelerated shared time, the time in the consultation is subjective. Therapist and patient each experience time in their own way, which is also the result of the dynamism created in the relationship. It is in this quality relationship, which doesn't promise immediate results, that one can stop and travel back in time. In the present, one travels to the past in order to reshape the present and the future. In the present of the psychotherapeutic relationship, which is continuous, attentive and immersive, a person can experience a new way of relating and being seen, also allowing them to experience emotions and to re-signify and elaborate on what has happened in past experiences. The French school talks about après-coup, when we realize that we have suffered a trauma long after it has happened. Instead of diagnostic labels, crystallizing a person in time and space, therapy seeks transformation, after all, from a phenomenological-existential perspective or one closer to relational psychoanalysis, the being never is, but is being and what it has been depends on the repetition of what has gone before.
I bring up the psychoanalytic essential that to not repeat, we need to remember, elaborate and transform. Psychotherapy is a plunge into subjectivity, allowing us, over time, to transform what has become automatic in us, our defence mechanisms, our ways of relating to objects and the transference itself, or if you like, the repetition in the present of relational patterns that were learned in childhood from parents or carers. The compulsion to repeat would also be an implicit denial of the passage of time, stuck in the past. Psychotherapy allows a person, in their historical continuity, to choose, over time, instead of acting or reacting in the here-and-now, to travel back in time to re-appropriate themselves as their own creator, knowing that they are being the way they have been for various reasons, and that they can become what they want to be. Despite our impulses and automatisms, we gain the power of autonomous choice. We can't choose what we want, but we can choose what we do, so that the freedom and happiness that results from it comes not from doing what you want, but from wanting what you do.
Psychotherapeutic time is different, sometimes the sessions pass quickly, sometimes slowly, depending on the level of involvement and immersion in the consultation. The time and space felt are closer to the unconscious dynamic, as in dreams, where we can be in the past, present and future at the same time or be different people without getting confused. Just as we can quickly change spaces. No wonder dreams also have an emotional regulation function. As a result of its processes, psychotherapy also allows a person to be more tolerant of frustration and, as Bion would put it, to switch from acting to thinking about unnamed sensations. The psychotherapist, often playing the role of Winnicott's good enough mother, allows beta elements to be transformed into alpha and contributes to the development of the patient's thinking apparatus. When you have a secure, accepting, empathetic relationship, as in psychotherapy, you gain frustration tolerance precisely because you can wait, because you know that, despite failures in the relationship or in life, care and attention will return.
A good psychotherapist will dance in the patient's subjective time to the tune they play, respecting their rhythms. Dealing with frustration allows for thinking, remembering and dreaming. In contemporary society, there isn't much room for thought, with ready-made speeches and summaries, especially with the advent of AI, which thinks for us. New challenges will arise here.
In short, psychotherapy can be a breath of fresh air, an encounter amid life's mismatches, like the joy of being seen again when we took off our masks after the pandemic. So, I'll end here with a question:
What do you want to invest your time in?
#time #subjectivetimes #timeinpsychoanalysis #psychoanalysis #liquidmodernity #contemporary #contemporaneity #psychoanalyticpsychotherapy
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