Time, Time Stance, and Existence*

BERNARD S. AARONSON"':·

Summary. Time is analyzed as being those processes by which a system notes the processes
which comprise its own existence. The directionality of time is given by the concepts, past,
present, and future. To understand the meaning of these concepts, a set of experiments was
carried out with four male subjects in which areas of time were expanded or ablated by
means of post-hypnotic suggestions. These operations were carried out singly or in combination.
The data suggest that the present is primarily associated with stimulus input, the past with
the criteria for defining that input as well as the development of response inhibitions and the
future with the directionality of that input. Marked personality changes which range from
the occurence of catatonic-like states to obsessive types of reaction and manic-like reactions
are associated with different combinations of time alterations. Some of the changes are in
accord with the serialist position on time of J. W. Dunne. The concept of death is very
important both with regard to one's view of time and how one lives. While it is important to
live in the present, the present has no meaning without at least a past or a future. Implications
of these findings for psychopathology in general and schizophrenia in particular are considered.

The world is filled with propaganda alleging the existence of time. From
childhood on, our lives are filled with instruments for measuring time, and
these become, for most of us, even more important as we grow older. It is a
significant milestone in our growth when we can finally "tell time". We are
constantly urged to be on time, to take enough time, and not to squander it or
lose it. In school, we learn sets of equations in calculus in which time is a variable.
We also learn its importance in those major scientific theories whose results
have not only benefited us materially, but have cast the world into an in-
creasingly comprehensible cognitive space.
Those of us who are concerned with religious matters learn that time is at
least an attribute of deity. Jehovah is "the Rock of Ages." In the Bhagavad
Gita, Krishna reveals himself in his ultimate divine form with the words,
"I am Time." We know that many wise and famous men spent their lives
dealing with the question of time, and the fact that their writings on the

'f This research has been supported in part by grants from The Parapsychology Foundation,

The Ittleson Family Fund, The Erickson Educational Foundation, and U.S. Public Health
Service Grant No. 1-501-05262-01.
'f~· Bernard S. Aaronson, Ph. D., Bureau of Research in Neurology ;lnd Psychiatry, Box 1000
Princeton, New Jersey 08540, U.S.A.

J. T. Fraser et al. (eds.), The Study of Time

© Springer-Verlag, Berlin · Heidelberg 1972
294 B. S. Aaronson:

subject are at least often difficult to comprehend makes time seem even more
real and important. Books are written on it and learned societies debate it.
Surely something that doesn't exist would not arouse so much concern or
activity, or become so important in our lives. Or would it?
The fundamental operation for the perception of time is discrimination.
In order for any succession of events to be enumerated, in order for any
"before" or "after" relationship to obtain, there must be some way of differ-
entiating events. Long confinement in a monotonous environment which
provides few such cues, as shown by the experience of Michel Siffre when
confined in a cave alone for 63 days (Siffre, 1965), leads to underestimation of
how much time has passed. It has been argued (Cohen, 1967) that he may
have moved into a state approximating hibernation, but this is only to shift
the onus for his perception of 63 days as having been an interval of 36 days
from the set of events external to him to those internal. It is of interest to note
in this regard that when metabolism is speeded up, as in fever (Hoagland, 1933;
Bell, 1965) or under great stress (Grebe, 1962), so that more events occur per
unit of external time, personal time is experienced as speeded up, environmental
time is overestimated.
Those external markers which we create to measure time are similarly devices
which produce discriminable events, whether these be the amount of sand in a
glass, the movement of a hand around a dial face, or the peak-trough
characteristics of a particular wave pattern. Mere succession, however, is in-
sufficient to produce the sense of time. Not only must there be some capacity
to delimit events, there must also be some capacity to recognize similarities
between events. A counter may be set to be activated by the peak of a wave-
form, a conventional clock marks off points separated by equal intervals on the
circumference of a circle, an hour-glass is turned over whenever the upper
chamber is empty. Organisms similarly delimit events, even though, as Barker
and Wright (1951) found when trying to count the acts of a young boy in the
course of a day, the events may overlap when approached with any limited
set of criteria. I have been informed by a number of individuals who have
experimented with marijuana that among the most frequently occurring changes
in time perception under the influence of this drug is the experience of time as
discontinuous, as divided into segments, as a function of changes in concomitant
events.
The ability to perceive differences between successive events implies also
the ability to perceive non-differences, or similarities. When dealing with dis-
criminations among successive events, both imply the existence of memory and
some mechanism for calling up and comparing the present stimulus with those
that preceded it. If there were no way of telling that a similar stimulus had
recurred, there would be no basis for judging duration. In light shows, in which
all of the senses are being bombarded by random bursts of stimulation without
Time, Time Stance, and Existence 295

any noticiable recurrence of previous stimulus situations, the sense of time is

apt to be rapidly disorganized.
While similarity is necessary to an appreciation of time, it is not sufficient.
If two sets of similar events are separated by unequal intervals, the longer
interval can be discriminated from the shorter. Moreover, studies with the tau
and kappa effects (Cohen, 1967) show an interdependence between time and
distance such that the longer it takes to traverse a given space, the greater the
distance will be adjudged, and the faster a given space is traversed, the more
its length is underestimated. These data can be explained if it is assumed that
the amount of stimulation which the organism receives is greater as a result
of paying attention for a longer interval and so receiving more stimulation.
An analogous situation occurs whenever we take a trip for the first time to a
place where we have never been, down unfamiliar r9ads. As we continue to
go to that place, and the roads become more familiar, we need to pay less
attention to the route and the experienced time for the trip seems to be less.
For time to be judged properly, some constant source and pattern of stimuli
is required which is relatively invariant. Such a source is provided by the
stimuli which we call the physiological and metabolic rhythms of the body
as they change in interaction with the inner and outer environments of the body.
These are sufficiently repetitive, similar, and occur with sufficient frequency
to provide a basis for all other time judgments. In this connection, Efron (1964)
has shown a relationship between length of evoked potentials and the reports
of subjects on the duration of a light flash, and Thor and Hoats (1968) have
shown a circadian periodicity in the rate with which a rat will press a bar for
light when all other external cues to the passage of time have been controlled.
When these stimuli increase in frequency, a situation occurs analogous to that
which is created in other sensory domains when judgments of increased intensity
are reported, and the subject reports an experience of fast time. When they
decrease in frequency, a situation analogous to a decrease in intensity takes
place, and a situation of slowed time is reported.
When perceptions take place in terms of other sensory modalities, the pattern
of stimulation is simultaneous. Recognition may involve referral to memory,
but memory is not crucial to perception as is the case with respect to duration.
Perception in terms of any other sensory modality is limited to patterns in that
modality, even though the patterns themselves may be wondrously variegated.
When I look at a scene from my window, I see shape, color, texture, motion,
but I do not normally see sound, hear color, or smell touch, unless I am
fortunate enough to have some synesthesia. Duration and the passage of time
can be estimated in terms of any sensory modality, and it is as meaningful to
ask, "How soon after you see the lightning, do you hear the thunder?" as it is
to ask someone to estimate the interval between two bolts of lightning or the
duration of a peal of thunder.
296 B. S. Aaronson:

From the standpoint of any device for measuring time, what is being
measured are those events comprising its own existence Priestley (1964, pp.42-43)
cites Hood as stating that the quartz clocks at the Greenwich observatory
keep better time than the earth itself. Are they measuring the earth's time in
any other sense than by social convention, or are they recording the events of
their own existence? When we ourselves make judgments of time or of duration,
what are we doing other than marking the correlation between the passage of
external events and the passage of our own existence? Merleau-Ponty (1962, p. 414)
says that "consciousness unfolds or constitutes time." Gooddy (1966) notes that
we each have our individual personal time, although because of the similarity in
our structures, the scope of variation is comparatively small as compared to
the range of living creatures.
Time is a useful social variable which not only regulates the flow of events
in society, but is also useful in developing explanatory constructs for the way
things function in the universe. When we consider ourselves as clocks, however,
we are merely ticking off our own existences. We abstract the concept of time
from that existence and reify it so that we seem to be passing our lives in it,
without being able to say what it is we are passing our lives in. The concept of
time makes sense only when considered as the measure of changes taking place in
a larger system of which the system to which we are paying attention is a
component. But even though organisms may not exist in time, they have a past,
a present, and a future, and a variable rate at which their own existence passes.
It may well be that we structure the world in terms of our own body image.
We are three-dimensional organisms characterized by a front-back, right-left,
and top-bottom, and we structure space in terms of height, width, and depth.
How might we structure space if we had four dimensions, or if we were
spherical? In a study carried out in my laboratory (Aaronson and Mundschenk,
1968) on the spatial stereotypes of time, we found that in a sample of 226
college students, 67.7% chose depth as their first choice for being most like time.
Width was the most popular second choice. When either first or second choices
is considered, depth is the choice of 84'% of the sample. The students over-
whelmingly placed the past to the bottom, left, and back and the future to the
top, right, and front, with the present running through them. These attitudes
were so deeply ingrained that most of them could not say why they made
their choices. A small but significant trend was observed for left-handed people
to place future on the left and past on the right, although because of the small
number of left-handers in the sample, this experiment should be repeated.
We tend to structure events in terms of the ways in which we experience
them. In a previous experiment (Aaronson, 1968 b), I hypnotized some subjects
and altered the scale of the environment so that when they were awakened,
they found themselves in a miniature world like that of Lilliput in Gulliver's
Travels, or in a giant world like that of Brobdignag. Most subjects eventually
solved their dilemma by growing or shrinking to the scale of the world in
Time, Time Stance, and Existence 297

which they found themselves. It was distinctly easier for them to grow than
to shrink. Most of us have had the experience of growing, few of us have had
the experience of shrinking very much, and certainly not during young adult-
hood. In the same way, the experience we have of time determines the way we
conceive of it. Keller (1969) has derived the Western view of time as a
consequence of the subject-object distinction in its phenomenal world view.
Most of us experience our existence unitarily and linearly, and as a result build
a construct of time which is unitary and linear, even though a multidimensional
nonlinear concept might raise a number of interesting questions.
As organisms, our existence involves the reception, processing, and response
to stimuli which come to us from without or within. We call these activities,
the present. We receive some of these stimuli from our memory banks and
constantly refer new stimuli to be stored there and to be compared with what
has been already stored there to ascertain meanings and to help determine
appropriate responses. We call what is stored there, the past. Although we tend
to think of the past as fixed, there is evidence that memories do change (McGaugh,
1966) and that depending on what the present is like, we may select different
sets of comparison experiences from the store. When we are happy, we tend
to refer to happy experiences, when we are unhappy, or angry, we are likely
to choose appropriate experiences to buttress these moods. On the basis of the
present and the past, we set up goals, deadlines and expectations about positive
and negative events which may take place, and may even program sets of possible
responses for these eventualities. We call these likelihoods, the future. The
future is set up on the basis of what is going on in the present and what has
gone on in the past, but once a concept of future has been set up, it may mold
the present and even influence the kinds of memories chosen from the past.
In its turn, the future can be changed by events in the present or even memories
from the past. All three areas are in constant dynamic interaction, for "time is
the one single movement appropriate to itself in all its parts" (Merleau-Ponty,
1962, p. 419).
The influence of the past and present on one another is easily shown in a
pilot study carried out in my laboratory. We routinely collect the three earliest
memories of all of our subjects. In this study, the subject was hypnotized and
regressed in time to that of an early memory in which he was rejected. The
subject was then led to relive the memory, but the end was changed so that he
was accepted. He was then brought back to the present, and awakened.
Originally diffident, insecure, and determined to please, he now became
aggressive and self-confident. He had an acute sense of his own worth and his
own rights. His performance on a battery of tests which he took before and
after the reliving of the early memory was totally different. When asked to
write down his three earliest memories, he produced three different memories
than his initial set. The original set had expressed themes of loss and ambi-
valence. The new set expressed themes of positive self-regard and positive
298 B. S. Aaronson:

object relationships, and a sense that people went out of their way to express
positive feelings toward him. He resisted mightily when the time came to
mange his memory back to its original form.
The influence of the future on the past is shown in any writing of a
biography, for biography is not a mronicle of incidents. Dewey (1938). has
pointed out that when the biography of a great man is written, the biographer
seeks to derive, in the interplay of successive incidents how his greatness emerged.
It is important to know that Lincoln was born in a long cabin only because he
was a great Civil War president. In fact, we use the future to influence the past
whenever we review our past experience for justification for future action or
whenever, indeed, we appeal to precedent and call up those memories that make
what we want to do, right.
Von Smelling (1964) has attempted to apply to space perception and time
awareness the kind of joining that Einstein's special theory of relativity has
performed for space and time in physics. He concludes that a double cone
irradiates out from the present to the "active future and the passive past."
Without agreeing with his concept of the past as "passive," it follows from his
model that living takes place in the present, and that as one moves away from
the present to the far reach~s of the past and the future, influences and events
become more vague and amorphous. Whatever the influences may be, however,
different individuals and even different cultures stress different members of this
past-present-future trio differently in the way in whim they handle their
existence. In a study of the way in which different groups orient themselves in
time, for instance, Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck (1961) found that Spanish-Amer-
icans preferred to live in the present more than in the future, and in the future
more than in the past. Anglo-Americans preferred the present and future about
equally, and did not like the past. Zuni Indians preferred the present and past
about equally over the future, while Navajo Indians liked the present alone.
The consequences for behavior are not set forth, although the achievement
orientation of the Anglos and the conservatism of the Zuni instantly suggest
themselves. The question of how a focus on any of these three areas might affect
behavior remains unanswered.

Method
In order to ascertain the behavioral consequences of different time stances, four
male college students, ranging in age from 21 to 24, were hypnotized and given
post-hypnotic suggestions expanding or eliminating the past, present, and future,
alone or in combination. Three were trained hypnotic subjects, and one was a
simulator, mosen for this task after extensive attempts to hypnotize him had
failed to produce anything deeper than a light trance. The special task of the
simulator was to act out the suggestions given as if he had been hypnotized.
Only the experimenter knew that he was a simulator and not" a true hypnotic
Time, Time Stance, and Existence 299

subject. As will be seen, the role-playing itself put him into some sort of altered
state of consciousness.
The data obtained with three of these subjects have been reported elsewhere
(Aaronson, 1965, 1966 a, 1967, 1968 a), the fourth subject is new. Because of
the catastrophic nature of the responses of one of the subjects, he was not used
in all of these conditions.
The conditions included (1) no past, (2) no present, (3) no future, (4) no
past and present, (5) no past and future, (6) no present and future, and (7)
control. The contrasting set of conditions included (1) expanded past, (2)
expanded present, (3) expanded future, (4) expanded past and present, (5)
expanded past and future, (6) expanded present and future, and (7) control.
The general hypnotic instruction for the ablation condition was, "Do you know
how we divide time into the three categories of past, present, and future?
(Hypnotist waits for subject to respond affirmatively.) When I -wake you, the
(name or names of category) will be gone. There will be no (name or names of
category)." The general hypnotic instruction for the expansion conditions was,
"Do you know how we divide time into the three categories of past, present,
and future? (Hypnotist waits for subject to respond affirmatively.) When I
wake you, the (name or names of category) will be expanded. The (name or
names of category) will be expanded." In the control conditions the subjects
were hypnotized, but no post-hypnotic suggestions of perceptual change were
made. In presenting the conditions to the subjects, both ablation and expansion
series were intermixed. No subject received any of the conditions in the same
order.
Subjects were first given a battery of perceptual tests and completed a Q-sort
of emotion adjectives based on Plutchik's theory of emotions (1962). They were
then hypnotized and the post-hypnotic instructions were imposed. They were
interviewed by the experimenter and then allowed two hours of free time,
except for two subjects who were painters and were asked to paint a standard
scene P/2 hours afterward. The scene was the view from one of the windows
of the experimental room. The subjects were then taken for a ride over a standard
course and, on their return, asked to write an account of how their day had been.
They were then interviewed by an outside observer, a psychologist or psychiatrist
who was ignorant of the condition imposed. The subjects then took the Minne-
sota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). One subject also completed
figure drawings. The perceptual battery and Q-sort were readministered, the
subject was interviewed by the hypnotist, and the suggestion was removed. The
subject was interviewed again, and in the event that any negative state remained
from his experiences was worked with until he felt in good shape. Three of the
subjects, including the simulator, kept a diary of the events of the day and their
responses to them. The simulator's diary stated what he had tried to do with
the conditions and what had really happened to him.
300 B. S. Aaronson:

Results
The conditions are presented here in purely arbitrary order for purposes of
exposition. No subject was exposed to the conditions in the same order as any
other. The results for each of the conditions are as follows:
No Past. The first subject became confused and disoriented. He maintained
the memory of important persons, such as his wife, but could recall little of the
specific events of his past. He seemed disinterested, bored, irritable, and given
to mild verbal acting out. He seemed to lose inhibition and differentiation of
meaning.
The second subject also lost the memory of many of the specific events of the
past, while retaining the memory of important people, such as his wife. He
became confused, unable to handle even simple questions, and spent as much
time as possible asleep.

Fig. 1. Retrospective painting of experimental room as seen by third subject during the
no past condition

The third subject lost all language and understanding. When I came near
him, he seized me, buried his head, and mouthed like a small infant. He later said
that he did not know who I was, but that he felt warmth emanating from me.
He had no consciousness of self and all that he experienced was raw sensation.
Time, Time Stance, and Existence 301

He said he especially enjoyed smell, warmth, and touch. He liked the sound of
my voice, but was frightened by the outside observer. The only color seemed
to be golden-brown, except that at one time one of my eyes seemed to be green
and yellow, with flecks of red, blue, and brown. (The experimental room is
painted spice brown and my eyes are hazel.) He also said that everything looked
strange in a way that he could not describe. He was asked to try to paint
what he had seen, and produced a painting that suggested that he had been
seeing contour lines (Fig. 1). He was questioned about this, and apparently did
not know that studies on the development of visual perception in individuals
previously congenitally blind (Senden, 1932) showed that it starts with contour
lines from which more complex forms are subsequently differentiated.
The simulator felt that he could respond to this instruction by blocking past
memories or by liberating himself from his past. He chose the latter, and
responded with a feeling of rebirth. He responded to things as they were, not as
previous experience had made them. He became oriented to action and in-
volvement with others.
Expanded Past. The first subject became happy, but was experienced by all
as more difficult to relate to. The accomodation that makes social intercourse
possible was considerably lessened. As long as one wished to deal with what
he happened to be interested in, everything went all right. If one attempted to
deflect the conversation in any other direction, he ceased relating and went about
his own affairs.
The second subject responded happily and spent the day reminiscing about
his past. It was possible to turn the conversation to other things, but he quickly
turned it back to his main area of preoccupation. As is true of most of us, his past
was not entirely positive and he tried to avoid the sad memories by increasing
his level of activity when these occurred.
The third subject reported feeling more relaxed and comfortable. He was
mildly preoccupied with his past. His movements seemed slowed and he seemed
rather introverted and taciturn. He did not seem to want to relate with just
anybody, but with somebody who was interested in what he was interested in.
The simulator spent the day examining the way he now was as opposed to
the way he used to be in the past as a result of bad conditionings imposed by
neurotic authority figures. He, too, related well if one fell in with what he was
interested in, but poorly if one wished to relate in terms of any other topics
than those in which he was interested.
No Present. The first subject immediately became immobile and responded
neither to his name nor any other stimulation. At the beginning, his eyes
showed a slight tendency to flutter when his name was called, but this passed.
An original mild waxy flexibility quickly became a catatonic-like rigidity.
When I opened his eyelids manually, they remained in the position in which they
were set. When he was stood up, he seemed a dead weight. He was balanced on
302 B. S. Aaronson:

his feet only with difficulty and began to fall over as soon as a breeze entered
the room. When awakened, he described his experience as "a state of unbeing,
like death." He had been aware of what was going on in the same way that a
tape recorder might. He said that he had not even been frightened by the
experience until he was brought out of it.
The second subject felt lonely and still, but not in a terribly bad mood when
he could get himself to wake up enough. He spent most of the day asleep. He
reported without emotion a constant vision of graveyards. In the post-session
interview, he stated that he had allowed his sense of the present to lessen rather
than let it go, because of a presentiment that something very bad would happen
if the present disappeared.
The third subject didn't want to talk, but did so when pressured. He reported
that he felt caught in a vise and that he had no relationship with objects around
him or with people, who had become objects. He lost the sense of depth, and
everything looked flattened and two-dimensional. Colors were pallid and
uninteresting. His sense of his body boundaries was considerably weakened, and
at one time he asked to have the door to the experimental room closed because
he felt he was leaking away. He seemed withdrawn, depressed, childish, and
hostile. He was extremely uncooperative, but on the drive in the car tried to rest
his head on my shoulder, an uncharacteristic gesture for him. He tried to sleep
but found that he could not do so, because of the repetitive thoughts that were
going through his head.
The simulator reacted with good-natured aggressiveness. He felt that in the
clash of hostility the masks and falseness that obscure being would be torn away.
He felt that one must take violent action to affirm life in a world that denied it.
Expanded Present. The first subject became fascinated by lines and textures.
He experienced a mood of great luminosity which he described as "mystical."
He seemed very happy. He noted diminished concern about some problems that
he was having outside of the laboratory.
The second subject became happy and relaxed. He felt much mvolved with
the clarity of objects and sounds around him. On the car ride, he made me stop
when we sighted a herd of cows in a field, and we spent a long time watching
the cows chewing.
The third subject developed a sense of enhanced depth and a sense of seeing
things unusually clearly and distinctly. He reported that he could hear colors
and be aware of the shape of smells. He was in a rather exuberant mood and a
bit disgruntled with the other people in toe laboratory who were working and
not enjoying what he felt was the most beautiful day of the Fall. He reported
that time had slowed down and that he had a great deal of time to do whatever
he had to do.
The simulator immersed himself totally in the experiences of the moment.
Eventually the situation became more that he could bear, but he found himself
Time, Time Stance, and Existence 303

unable to withdraw from it. At the end of the day he was still happy and
active, but very tired.
No Future. The first subject entered a euphoric, semi-mystical state.
Everything seemed to be occurring in a boundless, immanent present. He seemed
totally free of anxiety and spent his day savoring the experiences of the present.
He seemed interested in colors and textures, and involved himself in eam inter-
action to its fullest. He seemed unusually easy to relate to.
The second subject became alert and interested in all that was going on. He
found himself less anxious, as well as less motivated. He took things as they
came and enjoyed himself.
The third subject felt that he had lost a whole portion of his identity whim
was based on what he was going to do and become in the future. He became
tired, discouraged, depressed, and began to develop physical complaints and
some minor distortions of body image. He felt that the physical world around
him was far more real and solid than usual, but he and it had stopped growing.
He also felt more in toum with his past. All of his ambitions had come to an
end, and he found it extremely difficult to exist in a world where he had no
ambitions.
The simulator became depressed at first, but this gave way to a mood of
stoicism. He became rather philosophical and reported that he felt no anxiety,
but also no anticipation of pleasures to come. He showed a loss of drive and
seemed content just to sit.
Expanded Future. The first subject became happy, as he felt that for once
there was ample time to meet all the environmental demands upon him. Dead-
lines became unimportant and he reported that, in particular, death became
merely the end of life rather than an event to be feared. The realization of this
elevated his mood even more.
The second subject looked forward to his life with happiness and anticipation.
He felt that he could concentrate better and that he was more full and rich as
a person.
The third subject was happy to begin with, and became happier. He described
the experience as a bit like the opening of a good LSD trip. He felt fulfilled,
calm, and with a sense that he had all the time he needed without pressure. He
became more extroverted and saw everyone and everything around him literally
bathed in a rosy light.
The simulator became expansive and introspective. He felt self-confident
and able to meet any vicissitudes that might befall him. His life to this point
did not seem to be the measure of what his life would be like. He felt there
was ample time to take all experiences in stride.
No Past, No Present. Because of his response to the no present condition,
this condition was not administered to the first subject.
The second subject became very optimistic and totally involved in future
projects. In the interview following the end of the condition, the subject
304 B. S. Aaronson:

admitted that while he had let the past go to some degree, he had not let the
present get away from him.
The third subject seemed comatose. He seemed relaxed but unresponsive,
although there was a slight resistance to having his eyes opened manually. He
himself described his state as being like a deep, dreamless sleep, with more
complete muscular relaxation than was usual in sleep. Occasionally, he said, he
would become aware of sounds which he experienced as mild pressures on his
body.
The simulator felt that. what was and what had been no longer had any
relevance for him. He became totally involved in future plans and would deal
and talk about nothing else. He fretted and fumed and paced restlessly, waiting
for the time when he could put them into effect.
Expanded Past, Expanded Present. The first subject became concerned with
the origin of things. Whenever he would look at anything, he would see in his
mind's eye how it had looked at various stages in its history while he simul-
taneously thought how it had come about. He thought much about the super-
imposition of the transient on the permanent. He became joyful as he thought
how at each moment he was "riding on the crest of history."
The second subject spent the day reminiscing nostalgically about his early
life. This carried him forward into a concern with self-analysis and the gaining
of understanding into himself.
The third subject was at first impressed by the beauty of things and by his
sensory images. Gradually he seemed to become more withdrawn and lethargic.
Finally, he just lay around compulsively craving companionship to lighten a
dreary time.
The simulator became depressed to the point of seeming suicidal to the outside
observer. He seemed withdrawn, self-pitying, and hypochondriacal. He felt the
present was an extension of a past that he hated, totally determined by that
past, and that he was trapped in it with no escape.
No Past, No Future. The first subject became rigid, as he had been during the
no present condition. Subsequently he developed some mild waxy flexibility.
His eyes never fluttered when his name was called. Apart from these two minor
differences, his responses were identical with those obtained under the no present
condition, down to his subjective report, and the unanimous description of
outside observers that this was a state like catatonia. After the condition had
been terminated and the situation worked through, he was asked to paint a
picture showing what the state had been like. He produced a gloomy, mec:hanistic
abstraction (Fig. 2) in anSwer to his own question, "How do you paint a picture
of nothingness?"
The second subject again retained part of the time categories that had been
presumably obliterated by the post-hypnotic instructions. He became bored,
disinterested, seemed to lose memory and developed an almost fanatical
Time, Time Stance, and Existence 305

Fig. 2. Retrospective painting of state brought about by no past-no future condition in

first subject .

dedication to sleeping. There seemed to be as little inner life going on as there

was any outer manifestation of life. He had no motivation for anything, although
he seemed to be able to perk up briefly when his wife came in to see him.
The third subject became confused, paranoid, cold, and hostile. His speech
became stilted, pompous, and circumlocutious. His affect seemed flattened and,
at times, inappropriate. His sentences seemed to ramble and show looseness of
associations. He seemed forgetful and not to know quite what was being asked
of him.
The simulator became unaccountably sleepy, although he reported that he
had slept sufficiently the night before. He napped for a while, but couldn't
shake off the drowsiness. He seemed lethargic, uninterested, and uninvolved
with his environment. He felt that everything tasted flat and he had no wish
for even coffee or cigarettes. He seemed dependent, depressed, and passively
hostile.

Expanded Past, Expanded Future. The first subject began ruminating

extensively on the topic, whither have I been, whither am I drifting. He became
very self-involved and spent the day reviewing his life. He became lost in
reflection and obsessive thinking. At the end of the day, he remarked that he had
been as close to being a philosopher as he could ever be.
The second subject showed little change. He reported that he had some
difficulty concentrating because his thoughts were swallowed up by the past and

20 Study of Time
306 B. S. Aaronson:

future, but the only thing anybody else could see was that he seemed a little
more passive and daydreaming.
The third subject became happy, warm, and relaxed. He felt that he was the
center of a nexus of time. At first he had a sense of objects giving off energies
and interpenetrating, but later on he denied any perceptual change. He showed
some tendency to become hyperideational. At one point in the afternoon, he
became very angry over a chance remark that he had overheard, which was
not typical of him.
The simulator became very abstracted and felt himself swallowed up in an
immensity of time and space, in which he was but an insignificant part. His
ruminations became so profound and personal that it was hard for him to
communicate. He said he felt suspended in a river, surrounded by mist, unable
to see the shores or how it was flowing, and not caring.

No Present, No Future. Because of his response to the no present condition,

this was not run with the first subject.
The second subject retained enough of the present and future to evade the
full implications of this condition. On the other hand, he became trapped in an
incident that had occurred when he was about seven, and wept bitterly and
inconsolably about it for several hours. In manner and even physical appearance,
he seemed like a young child at this time.
The third subject also resisted the suggestion and became rather childlike
and reacted to everything like an early adolescent. His own feeling was that
he had been behaving very much the way he used to when he was fourteen.
The simulator became sleepy and unhappy, for he felt hopelessly trapped
in the past. All of his neurotic characteristics and defenses appeared in full
strength and increased all day long.

Expanded Present, Expanded Future. The first subject described himself as

being in a nappy, mystical state. He felt he had triumphed over death by
incorporating the future into the present. Behaviorally, after a period of his
usual euphoria, he began to show pressure of speech, moved more rapidly and
restlessly, and finally began to pin obscene slogans to the backsides of people
in the laboratory. After he had gone off to relieve himself, he returned from the
lavatory trailing ribbons of toilet paper with which he proceeded to festoon the
doors of the laboratory. Subsequently it turned out that he had drawn a cartoon
of a face on the mirror over the washbowl. When questioned about this behavior
after the session, he reported that he had felt a gradual build up of tension all
day which became considerably increased after the outside observer had led him
to think about how he was feeling in the course of the interview.
The second subject had a happy, contemplative day, full of plans for the
future. He described his experience as being similar to "a pot high." He was
Time, Time Stance, and Existence 307

very much aware of sensory stimulation and enjoyed it through all the modal-
ities to its fullest.
The third subject also experienced the day as like a psychedelic "high,"
although he also showed some pressure of speech. All sounds and colors were
enhanced. He began to have experiences of synesthesia, in which every sound
was seen in color, and every touch as shapes of light. He showed much stimulus
hunger, and went from place to place in and around the laboratory to obtain
new experiences.
The simulator displayed a mood of great optimism. He felt he could think
unusually clearly and well and wanted to concern himself only with significant
things and ideas. He reported a great deal of energy and his manner seemed
rather grandiose. He tended to be rather aggressive in interpersonal contacts
because of impatience with the trivia of such relationships.

Controls. No abnormality or alteration of behavior was shown by any

subject on any control condition, except that the first subject became un-
accountably vapid and withdrawn during his first control session. Neither of
us could account for this behavior, except that it was there. It was not repeated
by any other subject, nor by him during the subsequent control session.

Discussion

The data show the strong identification of the present with being alive. For all
four subjects, the rio present condition raised the issue of life and death.
For two of the hypnotic subjects, major disorders of behavior appeared, the
third withdrew into sleep. Expanding the present produced positive states in
all four subjects, characterized by greater attention to stimuli. The often
repeated injunction to "live,. in the p~esent" becomes, in terms of these data,
simply an admonition to be alive. The fact that all subjects paid more attention
to ongoing stimulation un del! the expanded ,present instructions underscores
the fact that as organisms we are primarily;,stimulus processors and that the
sense of being alive is very much related tO'the kinds of stimulation that we
re~eive. It should be noted that all the subjects sought ,()ut positive stimulation.
Whether "aliveness" would alsO' be involv.ed in an aHectively negative present
is a moot point.
The smizophreniclike behavior and the withdrawal shown by the hypnotic
subjects raises the question of whether schizophrenia may not be a psychic
analogue to dying. It will be recalled that in the study on the spatial stereo-
types of time, cited earlier (Aaronson and Mundschenk, op. cit.), the present
was almost universally seen as running through the subjects. Fuse (1966) has
postulated a breakdown in the connections between past, present, and future

20*
308 B. S. Aaronson:

in catatonia, similar to what has been observed here, and a loss of time ex-
perience as related to the present in hebephrenia. Melges and Fougerousse (1966)
also have observed fragmentation of temporal perspective in schizophrenic and
severely delusional patients, with a greater focus on the present to the relative
exclusion of past and future frames of reference on a personality questionnaire.
Yaker and Franzblau (in press) in a study of verb tense usage by schizophrenics
and normals, conclude that schizophrenics avoid using the present tense. The
Yaker and Franzblau study is based on current behavior, that by Melges and
Fougerousse on responses to a questionnaire. As the data in this study suggests,
the present requires a past and a future interconnected with it to be meaningful,
just as the past and future require a present in order to manifest themselves.
The past gives to the present meaning and inhibition. When the past was
removed, the hypnotic subjects became confused and regressed in their behavior
to a point, in the case of one, where he was close to babyhood in his responses.
At its extreme, loss of the past involves a loss of sense of self and going back
into the past, a movement back to an earlier self. This is clearly exemplified in
the case of the two subjects who resisted the no present, no future instructions
and found themselves caught at earlier ages in their life spans. The strong
association of past with sense of self is also indicated by the narrowed span of
egocentrically determined interests shown by all the subjects under expanded
past instructions. As a source of definitions and a source of "what is me" and
"what is not me," it follows that as the past lengthens, people should get more
set in their ways. As it is also a source of increasing inhibition, it also follows
that there should, in general, be an increasingly narrowed range of interests
with age. Cumming and Henry (1961) have documented the increased self-
involvement and narrowed interests with aging. The increased inhibition and
rigidity has also been shown to be an important component of the popular
stereotypes of personality change with aging (Aaronson, 1966 b).
Because the past is the record of what has been experienced when past and
present have been expanded together, the past has been seen as controlling.
The orientation tended to be deterministic in those subjects who had happy
childhoods, and fatalistic in those who thought their childhoods were unhappy.
The bringing of the past into the present and seeing it as controlling the
responses ofthe present is an operational definition of the psychoanalytic concept
of transference. When the simulator responded to the no past by casting off the
influence of the past on his present, he was casting off transference and respond-
ed with a sense of rebirth. Freud felt that the fundamental problem of psycho-
analysis was to analyze away the transference which means that its fundamental
problem is not to find some causal factor in the past for present behavior,
but to eliminate the direct influence of that factor in the present. The behavior
of the subjects here suggests that proper functioning is best served when the
past exists in a consultative capacity to the present. When it dominates the
present, the result is apt fu be personality disorder.
Time, Time Stance, and Existence 309

The future is the source of ambitions, goals, and anxiety. Elimination of the
future in these experiments was positive, insofar as it eliminated anxiety,
negative insofar as it eliminated motivation. The future represents our estimate
of what is likely to happen to us on the basis of what is happening in the
present and what has happened in the past. If there is no future, many present
activities become meaningless because they have been entered into for the
promise of future reward or to avoid future punishment. It has been pointed
out that individuals with a high achievement drive have a strong sense of the
future (McClelland, 1951), but this is only to say that they are well-motivated.
Melges and Bowlby (1969) have attributed sociopathy to the abandonment
of the future and a seeking of goals in the present. Siegman (1961) has also
shown lowered future time perspel=tive among delinquents and correspondingly
less impulse control in those with lower future time perspectives.
In order to produce the kinds of effects in the future that one desires,
present behavior must be geared to produce those effects. Krauss (1967), who
has made a strong case for the future direction of anxiety, has also shown with
his collaborators (Krauss, et aI., 1967) that in normals anxiety produces greater
attention to the present as a coping device, and that among patients moderate
levels of anxiety are associated with greater attention to the present and future,
while higher levels are associated with avoidance of the present and future
(Ruiz and Krauss, 1968). The positive effects from expanding the future in
these studies may derive from the general perception of the future as demanding
rapid adjustment to the demands arising from the future, which was eliminated
by the suggestion. Moreover, in all the conditions in whim attention was
directed to the future, there was also a concomitant increase in stimulus seeking
and response output, as shown by the responses of the subjects in the expanded
present, expanded future conditions especially.
That a present without a past and future is as inconceivable as a past and
future without a present is strongly suggested by the great similarity of
response to these two conditions. Both produce a preoccupation with death,
both produce sdlizophreniform behavior. It will be noted that the studies cited
earlier of changes in time perspective associated with smizophrenia apply
equally as well to the no past, no future condition as they did to the no present.
The implication may be that life, at least as it is lived on a human level, must
carry with it some sense of direction, either from past to present, or present to
future. The loss of a sense of being on the part of one subject and the grappling
with situations involving death by all subjects during the conditions in which
the present alone and the past and future together were eliminated supports
the contentions of J. W. Dunne (1938, 1939) that when time is conceived in
terms of the concepts of past, present, and future, it partakes of the character
of an infinite series. To eliminate a term like the present, or terms like the
future and past simultaneously, so that the remaining terms stand alone, robs
those terms of all meaning.
310 B. S. Aaronson:

The expansion of past and future produced some quality of hyperideation

in all subjects and obsessiveness in two. The concern with past and future
experience without the mediation of the present seems associated with increased
cognition, but decreased motor response which might implement one's pre-
occupations. This represents the classic dilemma of the obsessive, who knows
what he should do, but becomes so lost in means and ends that he does very little.
Cottle (1967) has pointed out that a greater emphasis on past and future is
characteristic of males rather than females. This is interesting in view of the
observation that on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, Scale 7,
or Psychasthenia, the scale that would be most typically elevated in obsessive-
compulsive syndromes, is also one of the scales most typically elevated in males
(Aaronson, 1958). Brown (1966) identifies the direct effect of the past on the
future with the concept of Karma, the Eastern view that what happens to us
now is the result of what past experiences have made of us. One traditional
way of overcoming Karma is simply to stop doing those things that attract
the influences you don't want, which means to act in the present. Melges and
Bowlby (op. cit.) feel that depression arises as a direct effect of the past on
the future in intensely future-oriented people. Here, too, the individual can
remain caught in his conflict unless other behaviors in the present help create
a new orientation.
If time, as was argued earlier, is existence, every mode of orienting to the
positioris of time has its existential consequences. Some of these have been set
forth here. There are obviously others that have not been touched upon. There
are other ways of conceptualizing time than those employed here. For instance,
what if time were conceived as a set instead of a line? In any event, a full
description of the psychological consequences of time requires a complete theory
of behavior. And a complete theory of behavior requires a variable like - - -
time?
The writer would like to thank Drs. A. Moneim EI-Meligi, Frank Haronian, Richard I.
Jontry, Harriet Mann, Humphry Osmond, Stanley R. Platman, Hubert Stolberg, and A.
Arthur Sugerman for their assistance in this study.

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