Freud on Time and Timelessness

230 Pages·2016·4.468 MB·English

by  Kelly Noel-Smith (auth.)

FREUD ON TIME AND
TIMELESSNESS
S
T
U
D
I
E
S

I
N

T
H
E

P
S
Y
C
H
O
S
O
C
I
A
L
KELLY NOEL-SMITH
Studies in the Psychosocial
Series Editors
Stephen   Frosh
Department of Psychosocial Studies
Birkbeck University
London ,  United Kingdom
Peter   Redman
Department of Social Sciences
The Open University
Milton Keynes ,   United Kingdom
Wendy   Hollway
The Open University
Hebden Bridge ,   West Yorkshire, U nited Kingdom
Psychosocial Studies seeks to investigate the ways in which psychic and
social processes demand to be understood as always implicated in each
other, as mutually constitutive, co-produced, or abstracted levels of a sin-
gle dialectical process. As such it can be understood as an interdisciplin-
ary fi eld in search of transdisciplinary objects of knowledge. Psychosocial
Studies is also distinguished by its emphasis on aff ect, the irrational and
unconscious processes, often, but not necessarily, understood psycho-
analytically. Studies in the Psychosocial aims to foster the development
of this fi eld by publishing high quality and innovative monographs and
edited collections. Th e series welcomes submissions from a range of
theoretical perspectives and disciplinary orientations, including sociol-
ogy, social and critical psychology, political science, postcolonial studies,
feminist studies, queer studies, management and organization studies,
cultural and media studies and psychoanalysis. However, in keeping with
the inter- or transdisciplinary character of psychosocial analysis, books
in the series will generally pass beyond their points of origin to generate
concepts, understandings and forms of investigation that are distinctively
psychosocial in character.
More information about this series at
http://www.springer.com/series/14464
Kelly   Noel-Smith
Freud on Time and
Timelessness
Kelly   Noel-Smith
London , United Kingdom
Studies in the Psychosocial
ISBN 978-1-137-59720-5 ISBN 978-1-137-59721-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59721-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016940563
© Th e Editor(s) (if applicable) and Th e Author(s) 2016
Th e author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identifi ed as the author(s) of this work in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Th is work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and trans-
mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
Th e use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
Th e publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made.
Cover illustration: © Freud Museum London
Printed on acid-free paper
Th is Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature
Th e registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London
For Beatrice

Preface and Acknowledgements
On my sixth birthday, I realised that, even if I lived to 100, which I
sensed was unlikely, I had a maximum of 94 years left…and counting.
I understood profoundly the inevitability of my death and, regardless of
the uncertainty of when it would happen, that ever-decreasing time was
left to me before it took place. I remember trying to stop the temporal
unravelling by saying ‘now’ in my mind over and over again, trying to
contain the present in its description; but what I was trying to grasp, if
it existed at all, was, of course, gone before I could. Th is current work
is, I suspect, all part of the same endeavour to catch hold of time by its
tail but one inspired by Freud’s enormous contribution to the temporal
debate, making the task meaningful and rewarding. Th e following para-
graph from Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Freud 1920) was my
principal inspiration. It contains the kernel of Freud’s thoughts on time
and timelessness and questions the Kantian model of time and space:
At this point I shall venture to touch for a moment upon a subject which
would merit the most exhaustive treatment. As a result of certain psycho-
analytic discoveries, we are to-day in a position to embark on a discussion
of the Kantian theorem that time and space are ‘necessary forms of thought’.
We have learnt that unconscious mental processes are in themselves ‘time-
less’. Th is means in the fi rst place that they are not ordered temporally, that
time does not change them in any way and that the idea of time cannot be
vii
viii Preface and Acknowledgements
applied to them. Th ese are negative characteristics which can only be
clearly understood if a comparison is made with c onscious mental processes.
(Freud 1920, p. 28)
What follows is my attempt to provide the ‘exhaustive’ treatment of
temporality that Freud suggested was necessary back in 1920.
My special thanks to Professor Stephen Frosh and Dr Laurie Spurling,
both of Birkbeck College, London, who supervised my PhD from which
this book followed. I enjoyed and benefi ted from our discussions and
I will always be grateful to Stephen for his careful reading and insight-
ful and helpful comments on the various drafts of my thesis and this
book. I benefi ted, too, from the thoughts of Professor Charles Stewart,
of University College, London, and Ginny Th omas on the manuscript.
I am grateful to Michael Molnar for his help whilst curator of the Freud
Museum and for showing me some of the unpublished manuscripts of
Freud held there. I am grateful, too, for Dr Leonard Bruno’s advice on
Freud’s still unpublished correspondence with Princess Bonaparte, when
he was head of the Manuscript Section at the Library of Congress.
Finally, a big thank you to my family, friends, colleagues and mentors
for their diff erent sorts of support, all appreciated, whilst I was writing.
Most of all, my heartfelt thanks to EF for helping me fi nd my own time
and space, SJ for sharing it with me, and Beatrice, to whom this book is
dedicated, who is so wonderfully forging her own.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 Time and Psycho-mythology 25
3 Loss, Lack and Refi nding 39
4 Th e Importance of Discontinuity: Palpations, Feelers
and Quanta 63
5 Time and Guilt 83
6 Tragic Time 97
7 Timelessness is what Time is not 133
8 Th e Role of the Drives in Temporality 157
ix