"Time and the Unconscious"

VEGH Isodoro

I will try to extend the question of "time" in the perspective of psychoanalysis, for this is "Time and Unconscious". And as from the beginning, time plays, we are not in the time of Freud, it is an Unconscious that comes intertwined to a subject that inhabits the world and whose body quivers between pleasure and enjoyment.

The question of "Time", has persisted for centuries, mileniums. In the traditional western world we have the first reference in Parmënides when it was said that "the being is one, therefore it never was nor will be, the being is"; it is the time of permanence. At the other extreme we know the phrase of Heräclito "noone dives into the same river twice"; the philosophy of fluidity, of movement. Plato tries the articulation between permanence, situated in the world of the gods, and the time of transcourse that ties us to our lives, that the shadows of the cave warn us.

Another question that is frequently posed in the metaphisical area is, "is time merely subjective" as Kant cited in the trascendentalist concepts, or is there time in the objectivity. Which also establishes the polemic between an absolute time as afirmed by Newton or a time related to the things during which the time passes, as expressed by Leibnitz.

Using the most accepted form, I propose to start off from Heräclito. I am going to take a dialogue from Eugen Fink with Martin Heidegger (1), about a piece from the Fragmentos by Heräclito – in the presentation of H. Diels it is n° 88 -, that says: "Und es ist immer ein und dasselbe was in uns whont (?): Lebendes und Totes und Waches und Schlafendes und Junges und Altes. Denn dieses ist umschlagend jenes und jenes zurück umschlagend dieses." In English: "It is one and the same that which is in our mora (?) : that living and that dead, that awake and that sleeping, that young and that old. This is traveling, the other, and the other traveling backwards, is this one." A phrase the Heräclito wrote more than 2500 years ago, a voice that is still heard. A message comes to us from ancient Greece, the land of Olympus where the gods walked; we are offered this phrase: it says that as we, he saw it, his body grow and then decompose. How Borges regretted that in our times the human being is the only living thing that is witness to the discomposition of its own body.

Maybe this Greek was surprised: " And it´s one and the same..." What does "one and the same mean? Could it be that one is equal to the same, with reference to the parmenidium being that is one – "the being is one" says Parmënides – and this is the same.

For us, in the psychoanalytical perspective, the answer is not simple. Why does each one of us think that we are one? This does not insure that we are in agreement with ourselves. But this does not prevent one to see a picture of oneself in childhood and say,- "Ah, yes. Me as a child.". And thus confirm a unity of that and this which I am today. Where "one" meant the identity of the being that is. But for some reason Heräclito proposed "one and the same", two words. Where "one" could be something different from "the same". "One" could be a question about who decides that we, who are inhabited by so many ideas, thoughts, and contradictory desires, say that we are one. I always present myself by the same name. What decides this unity? We have a question.

It could also be that where it says, "this one and the same that lives" will be an inherent quality in our structure. There are two possibilities: either the "one" is the same structure or something that inhabit the structure. I would anticipate another answer: maybe the two meanings: a subjective effect that makes us feel like this and something of the structure that makes one.

On the other hand, "the same" speaks of two possibilities: either the same persists identically to itself, this is the time of permanence, or the same returns to itself. Here we coincide with the Freudian concept: repetition as a returning of the same.

The text continues: " And it is always one and the same that in our mora (?): that living and that dead. We are going to write:

Here I put life and death, that living and that dead, "...it is one and the same..." a life that is also death and a death that is also life. Or as we said, equality that also said to be a difference: a life that intersects with death, that is not life if it does not include death, and a death that is not death if it does not also include life.

The text goes on: " And it is always one and the same in our mora (?): that dead and that living, that awake and that sleeping". Awake and sleeping. Who is awake and who is sleeping? Could we say this of a mountain? Only as a metaphor. Could we say this of the sun? Only as a metaphor. If we say that awake and that sleeping, we are talking about a living thing, of a body that can awaken and can go to sleep. The awakening is often related to life, life and awakening; and that sleeping is normally compared to death. It would be a body that intersects with life when awake and intersects with death when it sleeps.

But it is said that it is one and the same, that awake and that sleeping. We could think that there is something that connects the sleeping in the awakening, that sleeping, a dreamer can find himself with a dream that wakes him up; and it could be that when he believes he is awake, when he enters watchfulness, he is still dreaming, as when he is sleeping.

The text continues: "...and that young and that old. This is, traveling, the other, and the other traveling backwards, is this one." It allows us to think of two different journeys. How could we write about them?

Knot A

When the arrow goes in this direction (knot A), and in this way, it goes forward, it is young. Because the human being is not born young, we are born old. With luck and a lot of effort, maybe we will find a new significant. But if the arrow goes in the opposite direction (Knot B) and goes backwards, it is old.

Knot B

"...this is, traveling, the other, and the other traveling backwards, is this one.", nothing insures the permanence. You can say old things, you can utter phrases that are really new. They show times of progression and of regression.

But the text insists: "It is always one and the same...", we are back at the beginning and if there can be a time of progression and a time of regression, it is thanks to that there is a time of permanence. Only if there is one structure well knotted, if there is one, is it possible that you can pass from permanence to a time of progression an of regression.

Here it is worth putting into movement again a phrase that we could have put in the beginning: Freud said that in the Unconscious there is no time. What did he mean to say with that statement? Freud spoke of the palimpsesto, that indelible inscription that persists, that cannot be erased, that can come back at any time. He also spoke of the indestructable desire, the desire that persists. So to say "there is no time" means that in the Unconscious time is not governed in chronological succession.

If we accept the commentary about this fragment as a first approximation to the question of time, we would make a retroactive interpretation of Freud and we would say that in the Unconscious there is no chronological, successive or unidirectional time. The intertwined Unconscious - and intertwined to a subject that inhabits a world, a subject that inhabits a body that alternates between pleasure and enjoyment – sustains the permanence. There is One because there is a knot. Against whose horizon, against the horizon of that permanence, you would play time as passage. A time that, as passage, is a circular time, it is the time of repetition, or a lineal time, that with each new significant makes a series.

The difference between the repetition of the same and the insistence of the significant that make the series of the new is the cut with the fixation of enjoyment – that in the proposed writing is described as "a".

Provisory Conclusions:

1. The subject advised that it is One, is the effect of a good liaison of the rings that make the knot.
2. The subject advised of time as passage, is the effect of the cutting of and re-encounter with the varients of enjoyment.
3. The subject advised that it travels another time, is the effect of a change in the preference of enjoyment.
4. A good union is the condition of the cut (coupure)
5. In the direction of the cure, the ‘épissure’ makes present the liaison.