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Temporal psychology arose as a synthesis of philosophy, science and many years of psychotherapeutic practice.

The first book on this topic, which I published in 2017, summed up years of reflection on the interaction of consciousness and time.

Since then, much has become clearer.

The field of inquiry has consistently gone beyond the bounds of academic psychology: it has touched the very foundations of consciousness, spiritual practices and those domains of knowledge that explore the limits of the knowable.

The philosophical roots of this approach run deep – from Platonic ideas and the mysteries of eternity to contemporary reflections on the limits of formal systems (Gödel).

All these lines point to the fact that time and consciousness cannot be reduced to a simple sequence of events.

Jung introduced into the science of the psyche the notion of supra-temporal structures – archetypes and synchronicity.

Grof described in detail transpersonal states in which ordinary temporal reference points disappear.

Modern cognitive science and neuroscience increasingly consider consciousness as a process with its own temporal thickness—

one that includes predictions, counterfactuals and nonlinear temporal structures.

My own development in this field unfolded gradually:

from work with dreams and autogenic training—

through decades of psychotherapeutic practice—

toward creating authorial methods such as the «Face of Personality» and temporal mask-therapy, presented here in detail for the first time.

These methods are not abstract schemes:

they grew out of practice, from those «building materials»

that memory, tradition and the unconscious bring.

This book is an invitation to a new paradigm:

to a space where past, present, future and eternity meet within the human being.

At times this theme goes beyond the expectations of its own author—

and this is precisely what makes it a living testimony to the search for and formation of a new field of knowledge.

Historical and Theoretical Precursors of Temporal Psychology

Temporal psychology is grounded not in a single line of tradition but in a whole polyphony of thinking about time: from ancient philosophy to modern neuroscience, from religious teachings to transpersonal research, from cultural memory to futures studies. Below is a map of these origins.

1. Ancient, Spiritual, and Religious Traditions

Plato (c. 427—347 BCE)

Time as the «image of eternity,» a shadow cast by the world of ideas. Plato was the first to distinguish the temporal from the atemporal. This is the foundation of the future therapeutic vertical «time—eternity.»

Aristotle (384—322 BCE)

Time as the measure of movement; the link between order, causality, and subjective experience. His analysis of temporal categories influenced understandings of development, becoming, and change.

The Stoics (3rd—1st centuries BCE)

The doctrine of fate (heimarmene), cosmic order, and active consent to the flow of time. The Stoic idea of inward acceptance of destiny is a direct predecessor of existential and temporal therapy.

Buddhism

The doctrine of impermanence (anitya), the «momentariness of consciousness,» and the illusory nature of a fixed «self.» Buddhist practices provided the first tools for working with atemporality and transitions between temporal states.

Christian Tradition

The concept of kairos – a special, grace-filled time in which purpose is revealed. The distinction between linear and sacred time is an important component of existential work with destiny.

2. European Philosophy and Psychology of the 19th—20th Centuries

Henri Bergson (1859—1941)

The contrast between measurable time and lived duration. He showed that consciousness lives not by seconds but by the inner flow of experience. His ideas underlie the analysis of temporal handwriting.

William James (1842—1910)

The «stream of consciousness,» and how the perception of time changes with emotion and motivation. His observations on time dilation and contraction are early descriptions of temporal pathology.

Sigmund Freud (1856—1939)

Psychoanalysis turned the past into the working material of therapy: trauma never «goes away,» it becomes part of the present. Temporal psychology treats this as axiomatic.

Alfred Adler (1870—1937)

The future as the driver of behavior: a person shapes themselves through goals not yet realized. Adler introduced the psychology of the future long before cognitive science.

Carl Gustav Jung (1875—1961)

Archetypes, synchronicity, the collective unconscious – work with trans-temporal structures. Jung took dreams of the future seriously and created a language for analyzing the deep future.

Jean Piaget (1896—1980)

The development of temporal categories in childhood. Piaget showed that temporality is a construct formed gradually. Without mature temporal schemas, personality cannot be built.

Kurt Lewin (1890—1947)

The concept of «field» and vector-like behavior: motivation as movement toward the future. His topological psychology is one of the first dynamic models of time.

Viktor Frankl (1905—1997)

Meaning as an orienting point toward the future. A person exists in tension between what is and what must be done. Frankl gave therapy a language for working with destiny and existential future.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908—1961)

The body as the bearer of experienced time. Perception, movement, gesture are forms of temporal organization. This is an important source of body-based temporal therapy.

3. Existential, Phenomenological, and Hermeneutic Traditions

Edmund Husserl (1859—1938)

The structure of inner time-consciousness (retention, protention). He was the first to propose a model of the continuous temporal structure of experience.

Martin Heidegger (1889—1976)

Being-time: the human being as a project oriented toward the future and death. His analysis of authenticity is the basis of therapeutic work with temporal responsibility.

Paul Ricoeur (1913—2005)

The triadic structure of time: cosmic time, historical time, narrative time. Ricœur showed that humans live in stories – a key argument for working with autobiographical time.

Hannah Arendt (1906—1975)

The time of action and the time of beginning. Arendt demonstrated that political crises are disruptions of collective temporality: the breakdown of memory, hope, and the horizon of the future.

4. Culture, Memory, Society

Jan Assmann (b. 1938)

Cultural memory and long layers of collective experience transmitted through rituals, texts, and symbols. The basis for collective temporal therapy.

Maurice Halbwachs (1877—1945)

Founder of the concept of collective memory: social groups form their own temporal frames – what is remembered and forgotten.

Michel Foucault (1926—1984)

History as a discursive construction. Foucault showed that power governs the time of society: norms, rhythms, archives.

Benedict Anderson (1936—2015)

Imagined communities – nations as collectives of shared time. History, holidays, and symbols as mechanisms of synchronization.

5. Scientific, Technical, and Mathematical Foundations of Time

Isaac Newton (1643—1727)

Absolute time as a universal coordinate. Important as a contrast for psychological models.

Albert Einstein (1879—1955)

The relativity of time, its dependence on the observer. Established a paradigm in which time ceased to be singular.

Kurt Gödel (1906—1978)

Einsteinian solutions with «closed timelike curves,» the incompleteness theorems. His work shows the limits of the formalizability of time.

Ilya Prigogine (1917—2003)

Irreversibility, bifurcations, time as the creative force of nature. The foundation of the philosophy of development and crisis.

Norbert Wiener (1894—1964)

Cybernetics as the science of prediction and control. Wiener anticipated the idea of the brain as a future-modeling machine.

6. Contemporary Cognitive Science, Neuropsychology, and ASC Research

Daniel Schacter, Randy Buckner, Donna Addis, and others (2000s—2020s)

Research on the «prospective brain»: episodic future thinking, counterfactual models, the default mode network. This is the scientific foundation of all temporal psychology.

Karl Friston (b. 1959)

Predictive processing – the brain as a prediction machine. Time arises as the result of continuous expectation-updating.

Evan Thompson (b. 1962)

Phenomenology of consciousness and the neuroscience of time. He demonstrated that temporality is not a computational result but a fundamental mode of conscious existence.

7. Transpersonal, Psychedelic, and ASC Traditions

Stanislav Grof (b. 1931)

Altered states break linear time and open perinatal and archetypal layers. His work is key for understanding atemporality.

Abraham Maslow (1908—1970)

Peak experiences – «eternity in a moment.» Maslow gave scientific language to higher states.

Charles Tart (b. 1937)

Psychology of altered states: transformed temporal structures and subjective duration.

Timothy Leary (1920—1996)

The model of «inner times» of consciousness, the experience of psychedelic temporal shifts.

Conclusion

Temporal psychology is not a «new school» but a point of intersection of numerous traditions:

– philosophical (Plato, Husserl, Heidegger, Ricœur)

– psychological (Freud, Adler, Jung, Rogers, Piaget)

– cultural (Assmann, Arendt, Halbwachs)

– scientific (Einstein, Prigogine, Wiener, Friston)

– transpersonal (Maslow, Grof, Tart)

All these approaches converge in one idea: a person lives within the time they experience, create, and transform.

Temporal psychotherapy becomes not a narrow direction but an attempt to weave these lines into an integrated methodology working with the past, present, future, eternity, and atemporality – at individual, group, and collective levels.