ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the sense of time, that is, ego time, for time is experienced by the ego. It focuses on the archetypal aspect of time; free time and the devouring mother. There are patients whose sense of time is far too strong to be good. Time sequences are inevitably associated, for the baby, with the tensions inherent in these experiences. Time as the infant comes to know it then arises out of the mother-child relatedness. The drama of this interrelatedness becomes the basis for the person's later attitude to time. Time is the analyst's business in a particular and special way. During the analysis their anxious sense of time relaxed; what had been an internalized rigid clock became more flexible and more tolerant of a personal rhythm. Wasting time, or rather the fear of it, hinged on a flight from symbiotic longings which in the transference appeared as dissatisfaction with analysis.
