A feature of my work as an analyst is the unique relationship to time into which it puts me. I spend large swaths of my day attending to time, being mindful of how much has passed, of how much remains. Clocks are more a part of my visual field than of most.
I’m thinking of someone who punches the clock, who watches the clock at their job, waiting for it to end. That’s not what I do. That’s not who I am. That’s not what I mean. I mean something quite different.
I had a supervisor who told me that we analysts have two obligations. The first, the most important, is not to sleep with our patients. The second, which approaches the first in importance, is being on time. Starting on time, ending on time. Some of us are better at this than others. I have colleagues who routinely start late, who routinely run over. I’m not one of these analysts.
My sessions start on the minute. My sessions end on the minute. Of course, occasionally, a session runs a tiny bit over. But I could count the number of times that a session has run more than two or three minutes longer than it’s scheduled. And with respect to when I start, well, the only sessions for which I’m ever more than 30 seconds late are my first sessions of the day. Or sessions which take place following a lengthy break in which I’ve been more than walking distance from my office and therefore reliant on the vagaries of public transportation or traffic.
And even in those circumstances, it’s very unusual that I’m more than five or ten minutes late. My weeks have a rhythm that parallels the rhythm of my days. I know when a session is half over. I know when my week is half over. I feel the end of a session approaching, just as I feel the end of a Friday approaching.
All of this leaves me, as I said at the outset, exquisitely attuned to the passage of time.
