The relationship between body movement and the comprehension of time

Starting from the presentation of an analytical session with a patient, in which she painfully and sadly remembers a breakdown of her sense of time and space during infancy, the psychodynamic structures involved in this process are examined. On the one hand there are infant defence processes, which for example serve by merging with space and a sense of timelessness in order to cope with the unbearable feeling of being left alone and abandonment and on the other hand there are the consequences of this experience for the future development. From the perspectives of cognitive psychology and of developmental psychoanalysis, the processes of time acquisition by the child and the circumstances of endangering or losing the feeling of time are discussed. In this a special focus is on the relationship between body movement and the comprehension of time, which is somewhat crucial for children in developing an understanding of time. The interconnection of the cognitive understanding of time with the different time processes on the topical, structural, economic and dynamic levels leads to the development of a self, which is in permanent transformation, i.e. which can consistently invent itself anew but must stay nevertheless the same.