ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the timelessness of the unconscious mind, which has long been debated in both phenomenology and psychoanalysis. The temporal tension between lived time and timelessness is one of the core features of human existence. According to Freud, our unconscious mind has no temporal limitations whatsoever, no existence but outside time, and no conception of death. More contemporary theories focus instead on the multidimensional features of the temporality of human unconscious existence. “Chronestesia,” our conscious representation of time, is achieved at late stages in human development, and seems to be produced within the dialectic between need and wish-fulfillment. Traumatic psychopathology is associated with a sense of timelessness, where consciousness becomes stuck in an eternal compulsion to repeat, leaving no room for the past to be processed, nor for future plans to be conceived.
