‘There and then’, ‘here and now’, ‘when and if’: The relationship of present, past and future in the consulting room

Abstract

This paper revolves around the question of the patient’s inhabiting of time. Where is the main focus of the patient’s indwelling in time – the past, the present or the future – and what are the qualitative aspects of such indwelling? Of equal significance, is the patient able to move freely between past, present and future events and preoccupations and make links between them, or is he or she caught in a ‘time warp’? These questions are explored within a context of both psychodynamic and existential theory, drawing on the one hand on the work of Winnicott, Bick, Bion and Turp and on the other of Heidegger, Van den Berg, Merleau-Ponty, Kemp and Scheffler. The themes addressed are illustrated with clinical examples.