Temporal Psychology and Psychotherapy. The Human Being in Time and Beyond

Temporal psychology is not a «new school» but a point of intersection of numerous traditions:

– philosophical (Plato, Husserl, Heidegger, Ricœur)

– psychological (Freud, Adler, Jung, Rogers, Piaget)

– cultural (Assmann, Arendt, Halbwachs)

– scientific (Einstein, Prigogine, Wiener, Friston)

– transpersonal (Maslow, Grof, Tart)

All these approaches converge in one idea: a person lives within the time they experience, create, and transform.

Temporal psychotherapy becomes not a narrow direction but an attempt to weave these lines into an integrated methodology working with the past, present, future, eternity, and atemporality – at individual, group, and collective levels.

How to Read This Book

This book was conceived as a tool for very different readers – from curious newcomers to practicing psychotherapists and researchers. Over the course of its development, it expanded: to the theoretical part and the individual practice a third part was added – on collective temporal psychotherapy. Below are several guidelines to help you build your own reading path.

If you want a general overview

Read sequentially: Introduction → Part I (theory and worldview) → transitional chapters → Part II (individual temporal psychotherapy) → Part III (collective temporal psychotherapy).

In this way, you will see the unfolding line of the main idea: from understanding the human being in time → to methods of working with personal temporal experience → to work with groups, communities, and culture.

If you are looking for practical techniques

You may go directly to the practical sections.

Part II contains protocols of individual work: chapters with methods, exercises, clinical examples, and appendices with worksheets and diagnostic/self-observation forms.

Part III focuses on collective temporal psychotherapy: group formats, family and organizational work, «collective cases,» session scenarios, and elements of temporal prevention.

The glossary and appendices help you quickly navigate the terminology and choose suitable methods.

If you are a researcher or educator

The main theoretical foundations are presented in Sections 1—4 of Part I: the model of temporal psyche, connections with the philosophy of time, cognitive science, phenomenology, neuroscience, and ASC practice.

Part III complements this with material on collective and cultural temporality – useful for social psychology, community therapy, organizational consulting, and cultural studies.

Short summaries at the end of each section are useful for preparing lectures, courses, and scientific reviews.

If you read for personal development

Alternate theory and practice. Begin with the introductory chapters of Part I to understand the author’s view of time, personality, and destiny.

Then move to the basic individual exercises (Practical Part), and gradually to the ideas of collective temporality.

It is important not only to do the practices but also to keep a diary of observations: record changes in your sense of past, present, future, and relation to eternity.

If you work with groups, families, or organizations

Rely on the theoretical chapters of Part I and the key chapters of individual practice in Part II – this is the «grammar» of temporal psyche.

Then proceed to Part III, where principles and formats of collective temporal psychotherapy are described: group memory, shared images of the future, experiences of atemporality at the level of an organization or community.

For group facilitators, the sections on competence boundaries, ethics, and safety in ASC work and highly charged collective topics are especially important.

How to work with exercises and cases

Before doing an exercise, read carefully its aims, indications, and limitations.

Always begin with the recommended preparatory steps (attunement, breathing, grounding in the present).

For individual techniques, record your sensations, images, thoughts, and temporal changes.

For collective formats, also note group dynamics, emotional climate, and changes in the «time» of the group (as it feels before, during, and after the session). These records are part of the method.

Glossary, appendices, and bibliography

The glossary contains concise definitions of key concepts of temporal psychology and psychotherapy, including terms related to atemporality, eternity, and collective temporality.

The appendices include expanded case examples, questionnaires, diagrams, and worksheets for individual and group work.

The bibliography and «Literature and Commentary» sections offer reading paths and show how the book’s ideas connect with existing scientific and therapeutic traditions.

Reading support and navigation

Pay attention to special markers and highlights in the text that help distinguish levels of material: where theory is given, where practice is described, where an individual clinical case or a collective/cultural example is presented.

Highlighted blocks with key ideas serve as reference points for repetition and planning.

Balancing spiritual and scientific language

The book combines methodological precision with metaphorical, sometimes poetic descriptions of time experience.

If you prefer a strict academic style, focus on chapters with methodology, empirical data, and protocols.

If existential meaning and the spiritual dimension are important, look closely at the chapters on eternity, atemporality, destiny, and collective archaic layers of time.

Reading this book is not a linear march through pages but a movement across several dimensions: from theory to practice, from personal experience of time to collective experience, from chronological everyday time to encounters with eternity and exit from atemporality.

Make pauses, return to important passages, try the techniques in a safe format – and temporal psychology will become not only a system of knowledge but also a living experience that changes your own trajectory in time.

GLOSSARY OF KEY CONCEPTS

This glossary presents the essential terms used throughout the book.

The concepts of temporal psychology and temporal psychotherapy form an integrated system; therefore, clear definitions at the outset help the reader navigate the theoretical framework and clinical applications that follow.

Acme

The peak moment of personal development, when inner strength, meaning, experience and energy converge into a single point of being.

Anthropic Principle

A philosophical idea stating that the fundamental parameters of the Universe are correlated with the existence of an observer. Here it supports the view of the psyche as resonant with external cosmic rhythms.

Autogenic Training (AT)

A method of psychophysiological self-regulation using focused suggestions, concentration and relaxation. Applied to enter special mental states and work with time perception.

Atemporality

A family of states that go beyond linear time. It includes two opposite forms:

– Time-void – loss of temporal continuity and meaning;

– Eternity – fullness, depth and meaningful presence.

Therapeutic work requires discerning between these forms and either integrating the experience or restoring chronological rhythm.

Chronological Time

The external axis of time: clocks, calendars, biological cycles and social schedules that structure life and ensure measurability.

Chronotuning

The process of aligning inner time with external rhythms (natural, social, cosmic). In therapy it means restoring resonance between biological cycles, mental states and lifestyle.

Condensate of Temporal Crystallization (TCC)

The dense, meaning-rich formations that arise as the result of temporal crystallization – emotional and narrative clusters fixed in key moments of experience.

Desynchronosis

A mismatch between internal and external rhythms, producing anxiety, somatic symptoms and disturbance of temporal regulation.

Depersonalization / Derealization

Clinical phenomena involving the loss of temporal anchors and disruption of the continuity of the «temporal self.»

Dialogue with the Future

A set of psychotechnologies (letters to the future, projective scenarios, etc.) enabling interaction with one’s possible future states.

Eidos

A minimal structural unit of experience through which consciousness marks transitions and organizes the sense of time.

Eternity

A positive form of atemporality: a filled, meaningful experience beyond linear time, associated with wholeness, participation and deep peace.

External Rhythms

Cycles outside the individual – circadian, lunar, seasonal, solar and historical rhythms – that shape the temporal context of life.

Extended Time Model

An expanded version of the basic threefold model (chronological time, psychological time, atemporality), unfolding each dimension into a spectrum of states and transitions.

Face of Personality (method)

An authorial method of temporal mask-therapy that organizes subpersonalities into a stable configuration – an integrated «face of personality» supporting experiences beyond linear time.

Future

The temporal domain of possibilities, expectations and anticipations; a psychological and cultural space of hope, goals and collective scenarios.

Main Past

Not the totality of what has been lived, but what remains alive in the psyche, relationships and culture – emotionally charged memories, unfinished meanings and inherited narratives.

Mask-Therapy, Temporal

A therapeutic method using creation and interpretation of masks or self-portraits to harmonize inner subpersonalities («masks of time») and integrate the personality within its temporal dynamics.

Methodology and Empirical Base

The scientific approaches and data underlying temporal psychology: phenomenology, surveys, EMA (ecological momentary assessment), biomarkers, prospective studies and clinical observations.

Ornament

A visual pattern carrying rhythmic and semantic information; it can reflect an individual’s temporal handwriting or a culture’s temporal language.

Ornamental Diagnostics

A working hypothesis that ornamental forms can serve as diagnostic markers of temporal handwriting and structures of cultural temporality.

Ornamental Grammar

The rules of ornamental construction – repetition, pause, symmetry, asymmetry – that form the syntax of visual temporality.

Ornamentality of Temporal Language

The view that ornament functions as a pre-linguistic grammar of time; its rhythms and patterns express temporal meanings.

Past

The temporal domain of memory and inheritance. It shapes identity and provides scripts, traumas and resources for present life.

Precognition

A phenomenon of forefeeling or dreamlike sensing of future events; interpreted with caution as a possible sensitivity to unfolding possibilities.

Prospection

A neurocognitive capacity to generate scenarios of the future based on memory networks, linking past, present and future.

Psychological (Subjective) Time

The felt duration, speed and richness of the moment; the experiential flow shaped by memory, attention and anticipation.

SLE (Subjective Life Expectancy)

The age to which an individual expects to live; an indicator of personal temporal perspective.

Temporal Art-Therapy

A practical branch of temporal psychotherapy using artistic forms (masks, ornaments, movement) to explore temporal layers of personality.

Temporal Code of Ornament

The symbolic correspondence between ornament form and temporal mode (cyclic, asymmetric, frozen, etc.).

Temporal Crystallization

The process by which significant temporal structures condense into intense «knots» of meaning.

Temporal Disturbances

Distortions of temporal experience: fixation on the past, fear of the future, prolonged time-void, acceleration or slowing of subjective time.

Temporal Font

A metaphorical «typeface of time»: typical configurations of rhythms and cycles characteristic of a group, generation or cultural environment.

Temporal Handwriting

An individual’s stable manner of experiencing and structuring time – personal rhythm, temporal orientation and style of temporal processing.

Diagram of the Levels of Temporal Expressiveness: Script, Font, and Language of Time

Temporal Language

The symbolic, verbal, bodily, visual and ritual forms through which a culture expresses and organizes its experience of time.

Temporal Map

A multilayered diagnostic tool («portrait of personality in time») showing how a person constructs past, present and future.

Temporal Ornament

An imaginal system expressing multi-temporal meanings through lines, interweavings and spatial rhythms.

Temporal Psychology

A psychological approach that studies human experience through the lens of time – individual, interpersonal and cultural dimensions of temporality.

Temporal Psychotherapy

A clinical and humanistic paradigm aimed at restoring the temporal health of individuals and communities.

Transpersonal Experience

An experience of going beyond the individual «I» and biographical time, involving expanded states of unity and meaning.

Time-Void

A clinically significant form of atemporality characterized by emptiness, collapse of meaning, and loss of temporal continuity on personal, group or cultural levels.

Zeitgebers

External cues (light, day—night cycles, schedules) that synchronize internal biological rhythms with outer time.

Перевожу весь блок как цельный фрагмент главы, в том же стиле, что и предыдущие части книги.

PART I. Temporal Psychology – Theory and Worldview

Section 1. Foundations and Principles

Chapter 1. The Nature of Time and Psyche in Temporal Handwriting

We paint our life

on the endless canvases of time,

each with our own colours.

From the diary, 2025

Summary

Time in the psyche is not only an external scale, but the inner fabric of experience: duration and rhythm shape the form of sensations, emotions and meanings. This chapter introduces a key operational category – temporal handwriting – as a person’s stable way of living through time. We regard handwriting as the result of interaction among three layers of rhythms (biological, sociocultural and archetypal), show its logical links with Jungian types (introversion/extraversion) and propose a working matrix for classifying handwritings. A separate section is devoted to the idea that temporal handwriting can be reflected in cultural artefacts – especially in ornament – opening perspectives for interdisciplinary diagnostics and research.

Key Concepts

Temporal handwriting – an individual’s stable manner of experiencing and structuring time. It is a personal style of time: how a person feels duration, holds the past, anticipates the future and experiences atemporality. It manifests in speech tempo, actions, emotional cycles and life rhythms.

Durée (длительность) – living inner time (Henri Bergson).

Introversion / Extraversion (temporal interpretation) – orientation toward inner temporal dimensions vs sensitivity to external rhythms and events.

Rhythms of nature and culture – biological (circadian, etc.), social (epochal, traditional), archetypal (collective unconscious).

Rhythm sensitivity – the degree to which a person’s state is determined by external cycles (season, moon, solar activity).

Discreteness / digital handwriting – a fragmented, «portion-based» organisation of time under the influence of the digital environment.

Atemporality – a modality of experience outside the linear «before—now—after».

Ornamental diagnostics (hypothesis) – the idea that ornament and artistic forms can record and reflect the temporal handwriting of an individual or a culture.

Aims of the Chapter

– To argue for temporal handwriting as a fundamental category of temporal psychology.

– To ground its origin in the interaction of biological, sociocultural and archetypal rhythms.

– To propose a working matrix for classifying handwritings, suitable for theoretical development and future empirical research.

– To describe the promising idea of ornamental diagnostics and outline methodological paths for testing it.

– To clearly distinguish theoretical foundations from practical implications – directing practice to subsequent chapters and appendices.

Main Text

1. Time as Not Only a Dimension, but a Form of the Psyche’s Being

Modern philosophy and phenomenology have repeatedly emphasized that the inner duration of experience is not identical to the external chronometer. Bergson called this durée – the inner flow in which past, present and future are linked not by simple succession, but by mutual interpenetration. Husserl showed that the «now» is a synthesis of retention (holding of the past) and protention (intention toward the future), rather than a point of instantaneous fixation. These ideas give us a methodological support: time is a quality, a form, a fabric – not only a sum of segments.

For psychology this thesis has practical meaning: if time is a form of experience, then changing the form (tempo, rhythm, density) changes the very character of experience. Trauma «compresses» time, turning it into a repeating plot; meditation «stretches» time, opening a different kind of presence; anticipating the future «accelerates» motivation and reorganizes behaviour. The question is not only what a person experiences, but what kind of time-handwriting he or she has.

2. Rhythms: Layers that Shape Handwriting

The psyche is inscribed into a multilayered grid of rhythms. Let us distinguish three levels, since their interaction accounts for most of the variability of handwritings.

Biological rhythms. Daily cycles, hormonal fluctuations, seasonal changes – all this sets the physiological possibility for a particular life tempo. Chronotype (lark/owl) is a simple example: the way «owls» move through the morning part of the day differs from «larks», and this is reflected in the whole psychic organisation.

Socio-historical rhythms. Culture supplies calendar rituals, work cycles, rhythms of celebration and mourning. The era of industrial discipline, the era of digital «multi-windowing», the era of artisanal slowness – each historical style embeds the individual in its own tempo.

Archetypal rhythms. Here we speak of those structural and symbolic cycles that Jung and his followers associated with the collective unconscious: the rhythms of birth—death—transformation, cycles of mythological reconstruction, recurrence of certain images and meanings. These rhythms are qualitative; they set «atemporal» tones and sometimes lead the personality toward peak experiences.

Temporal handwriting is formed at the intersection of these three layers: a stable biorhythm can be «rewritten» by culture, but archetypal echoes can restore certain patterns – especially in crisis or in altered states of consciousness.

3. What Is Temporal Handwriting? – Definition and Functions

Temporal handwriting is a complex characteristic of personality that includes:

– stable tempo parameters (speed of switching, duration of stable states);

– the modality of relating to past, present and future (for example, the degree to which the past has been worked-through, capacity to project the future, propensity for experiences of eternity);

– sensitivity to external cycles and readiness to integrate them into everyday life;

– stable behavioural rituals through which time is shaped (rituals of beginning/ending, boundary practices).

The functions of handwriting are as follows: it structures attention (what the «temporal field» of consciousness is directed to), it ranks motivational resources (when and at what tempo a person is able to act), it creates stability – either as resistance to shocks or as vulnerability to loss of rhythm.

Handwriting is not only descriptive but predictive: knowing a person’s handwriting, we can forecast proneness to depression (tendency toward prolonged, «frozen» time), anxiety (accelerated, «skipping» handwriting) or creative episodes (alternation of accelerations and deep atemporal insights).

4. A Matrix of Temporal Handwritings: Methodological Framework

To systematise, we introduce a two-axis model: on the X-axis – Introversion ↔ Extraversion (in Jung’s sense, but interpreted as orientation to inner time vs external rhythms); on the Y-axis – Accelerated ↔ Slowed tempo. Additionally, we take into account three modifiers: rhythm sensitivity (to biological/lunar/seasonal cycles), discreteness/digitality and atemporality.

In practice, a person’s modality is denoted as a combination: (introversion/extraversion) × (accelerated/slowed) ± (rhythm sensitivity / discreteness / atemporality). Below are working types with extended descriptions.

4.1. Introvert – Slowed (Concentrative Handwriting)

Characteristics. Long inner duration of experiences; deep reflection; inclination toward contemplation; high tolerance for monotonous inner work.

Manifestations. Slow speech tempo, rich inner symbolism, elaborate dream plots, tendency toward philosophical interpretation.

Theoretical meaning. Here time is a field of accumulation and synthesis; living through past layers can be productive, but under trauma may lead to stuckness (time-void).

Psychotherapeutic task (in theory). To support movement toward integration (small behavioural steps), prevent rigidity and help build external anchors.

4.2. Introvert – Accelerated (Flash/Insight Handwriting)

Characteristics. Inner jumps of attention and insights; intense experiences of short duration; alternation of highs and lows.

Manifestations. Fast thinking, episodes of productivity followed by exhaustion, sometimes insomnia or disrupted sleep rhythms.

Theoretical meaning. The psyche operates through sudden restructurings; this is a mode of discoveries, but vulnerable to depletion.

Psychotherapeutic task. Structuring and planning recovery, translating insights into stable actions.

4.3. Extravert – Accelerated (Social-Dynamic Handwriting)