The Analyst's Times

In this chapter, Raluca Soreanu explores ideas of time in the work of Sándor Ferenczi, with the aim of clarifying and furthering his metapsychology of the analyst's mental process during analysis. In other words, she talks about the psychoanalyst's times. Ferenczi's contributions to psychoanalytic technique have been discussed by reference to notions of active technique, elasticity, mutuality, and tact. What holds these contributions together, however, is precisely Ferenczi's unique approach to time and, in particular, his capacity to consider the mythological, historical, and intersubjective dimensions of time. In this chapter, in search of a good enough metaphor, Soreanu identifies three threads of time: a tangent, a segment, and a meandering line. Each corresponds to a Ferenczian time: originary time, organic time, and pulsating time. Soreanu brings a clinical vignette to capture the different threads of time in the consulting room and discusses the implications of this plurality of times for the position of the analyst. Ultimately, one of the analyst's roles is to re-establish the ‘polyphony’ of times.