An Examination of Psychological Time

Abstract

This paper considers the question of time as it is employed by the human mind in two basic ways. The first is as a chronological notion, time by the watch, which is perhaps how it is understood most fundamentally. Here we see time as the measurement of movement between two points or places: 'It will take an hour to fly from London to Paris.' The movement is real and measurable. The second concerns its use in a psychological sense, a use many of us will be unfamiliar with. This relates to a view of self that seeks to move toward some imagined goal, usually seen for the better. 'I'll be Prime Minister, someday,' 'I'll become a millionaire,' 'I'll become a better person,' but it concerns anything the human mind entertains in the form of an image, from anxiety and regret on the one hand to desire and hope on the other. Such movement by the human mind in pursuit of an imagined goal, is psychological time in operation and it appears in a variety of forms. The paper seeks to outline just what those forms are and tries to show that a mind free from psychological time is a mind free from conflict and travail in everyday life.