Time and transitions: The therapist's experience of time in the psychotherapeutic relation-ship

Gabriele Chiari, Maria Laura Nuzzo

Centro di Psicologia e Psicoterapia Costruttivista, Roma (Italy)

Abstract
The choice of psychological constructivism invites us to take into account the domain of personal experience rather than the domain of an independent reality. Time does not escape such a recon-sideration: as a traditionally polysemic notion, time acquires - in the understanding of Piaget, von Glasersfeld, and Maturana - a clear meaning of personal construction whose properties are related to consciousness and memory.

The psychotherapist's own experience of time varies in the context of the psychotherapeutic rela-tionship, even in ways pertaining to the experience of transitions. We shall try to offer our under-standing of some of such temporal/transitional experiences: the experience of the "dilated" time, of the "flying" time, of the "stopping" time, of the "going back" time.

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