Time, Space and Phantasy (The New Library of Psychoanalysis)

Time, Space, and Phantasy examines the connections between time, space, phantasy and sexuality in clinical practice. It explores the subtleties of the encounter between patient and analyst, addressing how aspects of the patient’s unconscious past are actualised in the present, producing new meanings that can be re-translated to the past.

Perelberg’s analysis of Freud’s Multi-dimensional model of temporality suggests that he always viewed the constitution of the individual as non-linear. In Freud’s formulations, the individual is decentred and ruled by different temporalities, most of which escape their consciousness. Perelberg identifies the similarities between this and Einstein’s theory of relativity which states that rather than being absolute, time depends on the relative position and speed of the observing individual suggesting that rather than being a reality, time is an abstraction, connecting objects and events.

Throughout this text, Perelberg draws together connections between time, mental space, and phantasy showing how time is constantly reshaped in the light of new events and experiences. This book will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, psychologists, and social workers.

Rosine Jozef Perelberg, PhD is a Training Analyst and Supervisor, Fellow of the Institute of Psychoanalysis, and Visiting Professor in the Psychoanalysis Unit, Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology at University College London. She undertook her PhD in Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics. Between 1989 and 1999 she was an Associate Editor New Library of Psychoanalysis and on the Editorial Board International Journal of Psychoanalysis. Amongst her publications, Psychoanalytic Understanding of Violence and Suicide (also in the NLP), Dreaming and Thinking, Time and Memory and Freud: A Modern Reader.

She won an International prize in 1991 for her paper "What can you possibly learn from babies", published in chapter 10 of this book.