For Freud, time concerns only consciousness and we can access it only through the actions of consciousness. The unconscious is timeless, zeit-loss, devoid of time, operating while ignoring time, as it is dominated by the pleasure principle which does not take reality into account.

The desires that reside in the unconscious are unalterable, immovable, they do not know the decay of time, nor are they affected by the daily flow of events. However, this does not mean that the unconscious is "out of time," which is impossible, because time constitutes one of the modalities of our relationship with the world.

It rather means that within the realm of the unconscious dwells a special temporality, and that is the cyclical temporality of repetition. The analytical session where this cyclical temporality of the instinctual sexual is updated is not only the time of repetition but also the time of elaboration, remembrance, and historicization.

The texts in this volume approach the subject of the timelessness of the unconscious and the psychic inscription of time through various theoretical perspectives and link it to clinical psychoanalytic practice.