Lived time : phenomenological and psychopathological studies

491 Pages·1970·8.26 MB·English

by  Minkowski, Eugène

Lived Time
Eugene Minkowski

Translated, with an Introduction by

N A N CY M E TZ E L
Lived Time

Phenomenological and

Psychopathological Studies

NoRT H W E S TERN U NIVE R S ITY P RE s s

E VAN S T O N

I 9 7 0
Copyright©

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number:

1970 by Northwestern University Press
Al rights reserved
78-101079
ISBN o-8101-0322-2

Manufactured in the United States of America

Originally published in French under the tide

Le Temps Vecu: Etudes phenomenologiques et
psychopathologiques in the series Collection de
!'Evolution Psychiatrique by J. L. L. D'Artrey.
Copyright© 1 933 by Eugene Minkowski. Second
printing, copyright © 1 968 by Delachaux &

Niesde.

Nancy Metze! is an assistant professor of philosophy
at Roosevelt University, Chicago, illinois.
Contents

Acknowledgments
Translator's Introduction
Preface to the Second French Printing
Author's Introduction

xi

XV

xx
3

PART I. ESSAY ON THE TEMPORAL

ASPECT OF LIFE

I I BECOMING AND THE EsSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF
TIME-QUALITY (The Principle of Unfolding)

I3

I. Preliminaries
2. Becoming
3· The passage of lived time to time assimilated to
space: its methodological consequences
4· Becoming and "being one or many." The phenomena of duration which flows and of succession. The principles of continuity and reiteration
5· Becoming and "to be an elementary part of a
whole." The now and the present. Homogenization
6. Becoming and "to have a direction." The phe­

nomenon of the elan. The principles of fractionation and continuation

2 1

THE EssENTIAL CHARACTERISTics OF THE PER­

soNAL ELAN. (The Points of Intersection in Be­

coming. The Principle of the Union beyond the
Ego or the Transpersonal Union)

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44
X I C O N T E N T S

I. The personal elan
2. The superindividual characteristic. The dimension in depth and the sphere of the unconscious
3· The factor of integration and materiality
4· The factor of limitation ( of loss )

3

I VITAL CONTACT WITH REALITY. LIVED SYNCHRONISM (Phenomena at the Base of Parallelism. The

Principle of Penetration or Participation)

64

I. Vital contact with reality
2. Schizoidism and syntony
3. The cycle of the personal elan

4 I
5 I
6 I

THE FuTURE (The Phenomena at the Base of the
"Further" and of "Horizon." The Principle of En-

casement)

79

I. General remarks
2. Activity and expectation
3· Desire and hope
4· Prayer
5· The quest for ethical action
6. The pfinciple of encasement ( the phenomena
"I exist," I have," and "I belong to .. . ")

DEATH ("A" Life and the Dualism in the Decline
of a Life)

THE PAST

130

q8

PART II. SPATIOTEMPORAL STRUCTURE OF
MENTAL DISORDERS

I I GENERAL ORIENTATION OF RESEARCH

I.

2.

3·

4·

5·
6.

General remarks
Our own reactions in the presence of the patient
as a means of investigating mental disorders
Psychological and phenomenological data in a
case of schizophrenic melancholia
The floating insertion of the personal elan and
the attitude of "gliding" over reality
Glischroidy ( following Mme. Minkowska)
Clerambault's mental automatism

171
Contents

2 I
3 I
4 I
5 1
6 1

I xi

THE NOTION OF A GENERATING DISORDER AND
THE STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF MENTAL
DISORDERS

I.

2.

3.
4·
5·

6.

220

From the symptom to the generating disorder
Generating disorders and organopsychic relations
The double aspect of mental disorders
Phenomenological compensation
The problem of primary and secondary symptoms. The tendency for ideo-affective expression
Example: Analysis of a case of pathological jealousy based on mental automatism

SCHIZOPHRENIA

I.

2.

Summary of my view
Franz Fischer's research

MANIC DEPRESSION

I.

2.

3·

290

The asymmetry of schizoidism and syntony in
their relations to schizophrenia and manic depression
Some suggestions on the subject of manic excitation
Melancholia ( the work of Straus and Gebsattel)

SEVERAL
STATES

I.

2 .

3·
4·

PARTICULAR FoRMs oF DEPRESSIVE

306

Presbyophrenic state of depression
Mental automatism associated with a case of
melancholia
Mental automatism and coenesthopathy
Ambivalent depression

THE HYPOPHRENIACS (Mental Deficiency. Demen-

tial States)

I. Mental deficiency ( E. de Greeff's study of the
personality of a mentally deficient patient)

356
xi

I

CONT ENTS

2. Concerning the psychology of old age (after
P. Courbon)
3· Several remarks concerning the psychopathology of senility
4· Delirium and negation in a case of general paresis (delirium and memory)

7

I

TowARD A PsYCHOPATHOLOGY oF LivED SPACE

I.

2.

399

Notions of lived distance and the fullness of life
and their application in psychopathology
The problem of hallucinations and the problem
of space (several reflections concerning a hallucinated person)

Bibliography
Index

435
453
Acknowledgments

THERE ARE ALWAYS MORE DEBTS than anyone can acknowledge in any enterprise of this kind. My thanks are extended
to all those who participated.
In particular, I wish to thank Eugene Minkowski, especially
for sending the issue of the Cahiers du Groupe Fran9oise Minkowska which contains the bibliography of his works prepared

by Miss M. Rebierre, which is included in this book. I would also
like to thank Professor Herbert Spiegelberg of Washington University for his encouragement and for many favors, and Professor
James Edie for many helpful suggestions and corrections.
Thanks are due to Richard Duffee and to W. F. Macdonald
for helping with the early stages of the manuscript. I am very
grateful and appreciative of the talents and efforts of Virginia
Seidman, editor. And finally, for patience, help, and forbearance
I owe much to Truman Metzel.

NANCY METZEL

Evanston, Illinois
June, 1970

[xi]