A sense of time

This chapter focuses on the psychology of the development of the sense of time in the first months of the infant's life. In order to do this, it refers to psychoanalytic concepts elaborated from child observation and from clinical work with adult patients. More specifically, the chapter dwells on the parallel between the development of the sense of time in the child and its achievement of a sense of identity. The first nucleus of the sense of identity requires a capacity for object constancy. This capacity to tolerate frustration involves a capacity to experience ambivalence in object-relationships. The chapter further suggests that problems in the experience of either the sense of time or the sense of identity are reflected in forms of psychopathology that affect them both. It presents the clinical material from the analysis of Kate, an artist with a borderline personality, to illustrate this point.