TIME AS AN INTERNAL OBJECT

Abstract

The article begins with the author's reflections on a person's desire to be in an ideal object relationship, in which he will be protected from frustrations and in which all infantile desires will be realized - a temptation that can only be offered by the devil. However, the one who would agree to such an agreement will face inevitable disappointment: in the time continuum, the feeling of satisfaction in the absence of frustration cannot be achieved (and even more so, continued), only, as the author points out, if time stops at the moment of satisfaction. Due to the agreement between Faust and Mephistopheles mentioned in the article, the reader seems to be led to the fact that, to some extent, choosing such an "ideal relationship" is a rejection of the Self: over time, internal objects acquire changes, and along with them, the Self - and only then personal growth and development is possible. The author provides a theoretical basis for his reasoning, referring to the works of recognized psychoanalysts Robert Hinshelwood, Wolfgang Löch, and Jutta Gutwinski-Jegglie. In the main part, the author cites three cases from his analytical practice, preceded by epigraphs from well-known literary sources (Blake, Shakespeare, Keats). An extremely interesting technique on the part of the author is that the given examples are reproduced according to the "laws of time": everything that has a beginning has an end, and the therapeutic process is no exception. Plunging into the reproduced excerpts of the sessions, we have the opportunity to observe how the perception of time changed in one way or another by a person experiencing the presence (or absence) of an object; how a person, having accepted the separate existence of the object and at the same time acquired a "sense of time", got the opportunity to become original and capable of symbolic thinking; as the analyst himself felt the time. The author summarizes each of the given passages, referring to the works of well-known analysts, such as Wilfred Bion, Ronald Britton, and Donald Meltzer, who agree with his opinions. In the end, the author concludes the inextricable connection presented by life experience between the nature of experiencing time and the transformation of internal objects, thinking in particular about what different experiences of mental changes can be, depending on a person's willingness to allow them.