ATTITUDE TOWARDS TIME
A person's attitude toward time can be equated with his attitude toward authority figures.If the infant has experienced arbitrary and excessively critical authority figures,a dismissive attitude toward time may result.The neurotic's need to "kill time" is an expression of aggression against the parent (DuBois,1954).Individual patients,or even the therapy group-as-a-whole,who use the so-called "narrative defence",are killing therapeutic time.
We know how difficult it is for some patients to keep to the therapeutic time boundaries,how they loathe them as an expression of the therapist's clinical coldness and indifference.For them,the time boundaries symbolise the mother's rigid and unreasonable refusal to feed on demand.If the therapy progresses well,the same time boundaries will be perceived for what they are meant to be:the invisible walls of a safe space in which the individual or the group can hold together and be held together in order to develop.