ABSTRACT
Change is the quality that defines time. Regardless of scale, the nature of time is progressive alteration, existence always carrying a before, during, and after movement. Time’s being out of joint is built into the human condition. The moment we register an experience in mind or form a word, that representation or word is in some part wrong. The word fixes something as stable in our minds while the world continues to change. When psychoanalysts speak of character, they refer to the relative permanence of a person’s psychic structure over time – a seeming permanence that, in fact, is relative. It is easy to forget that psychic structure means no more than a relatively stable set of functions. Respecting the fact of death as a fact of life can dissolve fears and inhibitions.
