TIME AS “ALIVE” AND “DEAD”: FROM MENTAL SENSE OF TIME TO INSTRUMENTALIZATION OF TIME AND ANTI-AGING PRACTICES IN THE PRESENT
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32782/upj/2024-1-6Keywords:
psychoanalysis, time, present time, anti-age, sense of time, anti-aging practicesAbstract
The psychoanalytic research of the products of the psyche, begun by S. Freud, inspired him to ask questions about temporality and the mental apparatus. With the construction of a metapsychological building, psychoanalysis increasingly moves away from descriptive psychology, which considers the formation of the psyche in conjunction with ideas about the linearity of time. Instead, psychoanalytic discoveries suggest that the time associated with the subjectivity of each of us is neither linear nor cyclical. The presented article illustrates the peculiarities of the psychoanalytic understanding of time through the theoretical concepts of S. Freud, J. Lacan, J. Kristeva, A. Green, C. Colarusso, R. Roussillon, S. Lesourd, etc., and also reveals the concept of time in his mental (“alive”) and mechanical (“dead”) guises. The author notes that mental sense of time relates to the unique interlacement of drives of each subject. It develops gradually: from the period of pre-symbolic time to the time of primary symbolization and the time of verbal representations. Instead, time, captured by a human in the net of measurements, is gradually alienated from a human being and turns into a universal tool of power. In the final part of the article, the author offers to consider modern attempts to stop the flow of time, embodied in anti-aging practices, which are designed to erase from the body the imprints of time, which are nominated as a new disease. However, there are bodies that reject any anti-aging or self-care practices, these are bodies that resist the dominant notion of the body as a temple that must be preserved at any costs. Such bodies deal with jouissance in an authentic way. In the end, the author formulates the conclusion that we can reconcile with our own aging and mortal body if we are ready for the intrapsychic experience of loss, and “alive” time is the best anti-aging tool, because this is what maintains vitality in each of us regardless of how old we really are.
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