Читать книгу Temporal Psychology and Psychotherapy. The Human Being in Time and Beyond - - Страница 15

Brief Idea

The original ternary metaphor (1 – chronological; 2 – psychological; 0 – atemporality) unfolds into three large sets. Each of them is not a single sign, but a multiplicity of elements and connections. It is important to distinguish two levels:

– the multiplicity of people (each person is a bearer of their own psychological time);

– the multiplicity of states within one person (subpersonalities, altered states of consciousness, different modes).

1. Chronological (Linear) Time – A Simple Structure

Image. This is the axis of clocks and calendar: an ordered sequence of moments.

Feature. The present should be conceived not as a point, but as a small «blurred» interval, because phenomenologically moments are indistinguishable from one another.

Practical function. Linear time serves as a common framework, a coordinate grid for events and their dating.

2. Psychological (Subjective) Time – A Multitude of Lines of Subjectivity

It is important here to distinguish two layers.

First layer – multiplicity of people.

Each person has their own time-line, depending on their history, culture, biorhythms.

Second layer – multiplicity within one person.

The same person can experience time differently depending on the inner mode or subpersonality. For example, «working Self,» «parental Self,» «creative Self,» «traumatized Self.» In special altered states of consciousness these modes may radically restructure time perception.

Consequence. Psychological time is not one line for each person, but a whole family of lines: different modes of one subject overlap and interact with each other.

Practical conclusion. When building an empirical model, we cannot average data «across the population» without taking into account that within each person there is their own multiplicity of time-lines.

3. Atemporality (Field «0») – The Space of Timelessness

Intuition. Atemporality is not emptiness, but a multiplicity of states and perspectives where the usual order «past—present—future» ceases to operate.

Examples. Experiences of eternity, peak states, deep transpersonal insights.

Feature. There is no natural linear order here, and the connections between states are better imagined as a network in which elements are linked not by sequence but by semantic resonances.

Transitions. A person can enter this field as a result of practice, crisis or a spontaneous surge. After returning from a timeless state, integration of the experience is required.

Scheme of Connections and Transitions

– The chronological line is the general framework.

– Each person has a family of subjective lines that are superimposed on this framework.

– Transitions into the state of atemporality are special shifts where the line of subjective time seems to fold into a «point of eternity» and then unfold back.

In graphical imagination, this can be depicted as follows: a horizontal axis – linear time; above it – a multitude of colored lines of different people and modes; vertical arrows – transitions into atemporality and returns from it.

Simple Applied Indicators

To make the model workable and applicable in psychotherapeutic practice, we can use simple observable indicators:

– Divergence of subjective and objective time. How much a person’s perception of duration differs from calendar time.

– Frequency of modes or subpersonalities. How often a person manifests this or that inner «Self» (working, creative, parental, etc.).

– Probability of transition into atemporality. How often the person shows experiences «outside time» – for example, as a result of practices or crises.

– Sequence of transitions between the three domains (1, 2, 0). We can code the states and observe how the person moves between them: from linear time – into subjective, then into atemporality and back.

– Variability of temporal handwriting. How diverse the person’s temporal transitions are: the more flexibility, the richer their inner «handwriting of time.»

Conclusion

The original ternary scheme («1 – linear, 2 – subjective, 0 – atemporal») remains a convenient intuitive map. But the complicated model shows:

– linear time – the general framework;

– subjective time – a multiplicity of lines for different people and their inner modes;

– atemporality – a field of states not reducible to linear sequence.

Such an approach makes the model suitable for practice: it can be described in words, observed in experience, recorded in diaries, and explored in therapy.

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The Complicated Model of Chronological Time

The model of time becomes much more complex if we look closely at the chronological (linear) time of an individual person. At first glance, as we have already defined, this is the «external» axis – clocks, calendars, biological cycles, social schedules and institutions. It provides the world with measurability, predictability, and coordination of actions between people. In the therapeutic context, chronological time is above all the sphere of regulation: sleep, nutrition, daily routine, prescriptions, planning, and adaptation to social demands.

However, on closer inspection it becomes clear that chronological time is not a neutral grid. Each person is born at a particular moment of chronos – at a specific time of day, day of the week, season, year, epoch. At that moment, their individual «temporal matrix» is launched – inner rhythms that enter into a complex resonance with the rhythms of the outer world. From that moment on, a person lives not just in time, but in their own time, in a unique combination of biological, social and cosmic cycles.

We can say that at birth each living being receives its own code of chronological time – a unique configuration of rhythms and phases that influences the characteristics of temperament, adaptation, and even susceptibility to illnesses. This is not mysticism, but an empirically observed phenomenon of biorhythmology and chronobiology. As early as F. Halberg (1967) showed, humans have stable circadian, ultradian, and infradian oscillations of physiological and mental functions, forming an individual chronotype. Research by K. Honma and J. Aschoff (Aschoff, 1981; Honma & Honma, 1988) confirmed that the internal «biological clocks» are capable of functioning autonomously, and that their synchronization with external time requires complex adaptation mechanisms.

In clinical practice, the psychotherapist encounters the fact that disruptions of this synchronization – desynchronosis – often underlie anxiety, affective and somatic disorders. Returning to one’s own rhythm of time, aligning internal and external chronos becomes part of therapeutic work. In this sense, individual chronotuning is not only a topic for physiology, but also a phenomenological, existential process of restoring concord between personal and cosmic time.

Therefore, we should speak of «chronological time» not as a single universal continuum for everyone, but as a multitude of unique times woven into the fabric of human life. And whereas astrology tends to turn this uniqueness into a scheme, modern psychology of time can view it as a manifestation of the deep connection between a person and the rhythms of a living Universe.

Network Experience of Time – Yet Another Level of Complexity

Personal, familial, cultural and epochal time, intertwining, create a field

An even more complex model of time arises when we begin to take into account the collective dimension of time (Chapter 38), symbolized by the ornament «Knot of Times,» representing the multiplicity and interweaving of collective times. Personal, familial, cultural and epochal time, intertwining, create a field. This is not a linear but a networked and nodal experience of time, in which it is important to distinguish layers and find points of conjunction.

Key Sources

Aschoff, J. – Biological Rhythms (Springer-Verlag, 1981).

A fundamental work by one of the founders of modern chronobiology. The author describes the principles of circadian and other biological cycles, the mechanisms of their synchronization with external factors (zeitgebers), and the adaptation of the organism to changes in the environment.

Klein, David C.; Moore, R. Y.; Reppert, Steven M. – The Suprachiasmatic Nucleus: The Mind’s Clock (Oxford University Press, 1991).

A monograph revealing the neurophysiological basis of human internal time. It shows the role of the suprachiasmatic nucleus of the hypothalamus as the main biological oscillator coordinating circadian rhythms and the body’s physiological processes.

Halberg, Franz. – «Circadian (About Twenty-Four-Hour) Rhythms in Experimental Medicine» (Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 1967, vol. 60, no. 12, pp. 1423—1440).

A classic study that gave rise to the concept of endogenous biorhythms in humans and animals. Halberg’s work laid the foundation of chronobiology as a science, linking daily oscillations of physiological processes with clinical manifestations and health states.

Honma, Kazuo & Honma, Satoko. – «Human Circadian Rhythms and Sleep: Individual Differences and Their Clinical Significance» (Sleep, 1988, vol. 11, no. 6, pp. 536—547).

A study of individual differences in circadian rhythms and chronotypes. The authors show that variations in sleep and activity timing have distinct psychophysiological significance, influencing emotional stability and a person’s adaptation.