Unformulated experience, dissociation, and Nachträglichkeit

The paper is divided into two parts. The first part is an interpersonal/relational psychoanalytic account of some relationships between dissociation, time, and unformulated experience. Trauma, and the dissociation to which trauma leads, freezes time, which makes it impossible to formulate certain kinds of new experience. Instead, potential new meanings remain unformulated. The route of clinical access to frozen time is the interpersonal field: to thaw time and allow new experience, the ways in which the interpersonal field is itself frozen need to be addressed. A clinical illustration of these ideas is offered. The second part of the paper presents and explores a point of confluence between the views in Part 1 and certain aspects of French psychoanalysis, with particular reference to the concept of Nachträglichkeit in the work of Jean Laplanche and Haydée Faimberg.