THE TIME OF NACHTRAGLICHKEIT

THE TIME OF NACHTRAGLICHKEIT. Of the various forms that the matter of time assumes in psychoanalysis, Nachtraglichkeit represents freud's first insight on the matter. The first part of this paper discusses the concept of Nachtraglichkeit from a theoretical point of view, retracing its role and development in freudian and post-freudian psychoanalytic thinking. With the help of clinical material, the Author shows how Nachtraglichkeit works in the psychoanalytic process. Nachtraglichkeit doesn't mean only a retrospective narration or view of events; this would be reductive, whereas in the work of Nachtraglichkeit, it is important to consider the traumatic element as central. A "dynamic" conception of Nachtraglichkeit introduces a more complex dimension that considers trauma the Oedipus complex. In her discussion, the Author also tries to show that Nachtraglichkeit represents the specific temporal motion of the session and of the analytic process, and the typical attitude of the mind of the analyst at work, which is established retrospectively, differentiating transference movement from simple, reductive repetitions of archaic internalized object relations.