Linear time — the apprehension of duration as a unidirectional, sequential progression from past through present to future — functions in the depth-psychology corpus less as a settled ontological given than as a contested cognitive and cultural construction whose limits the psychological tradition is at pains to expose. McGilchrist furnishes the most systematic critique, locating linear, serialised time within the left hemisphere’s tendency to spatialise and segment what is properly a living flow; his engagement with McTaggart’s A- and B-series demonstrates how the philosophical reification of time’s linearity produces paradox and ultimately self-refutation. Von Franz complements this by situating linear time within a genealogy of Judaeo-Christian cosmology — the hapax of Christ’s incarnation, the eschatological orientation toward a unique future — and contrasting it with cyclical and synchronistic models in which the qualitative field of a moment matters more than its position in a sequence. Hillman’s archetype-driven revisioning of biography attacks the dominance of chronological narrative over soul, while Lewis’s neuroscientific account of addiction shows that the ‘linear sense of time’ — the ability to discount present desire in favour of future well-being — depends on intact prefrontal function, linking temporal linearity concretely to self-regulation. Abram’s ethnological perspective adds that indigenous cultures inhabit cyclical, ritually renewed temporality rather than the singular vector presumed by Western historicism. Together these voices establish linear time as a specifically hemispheric, cultural, and neurological achievement whose disruption or transcendence is therapeutically, spiritually, and philosophically significant.
the challenge faced by addicts in overcoming now appeal, based on their inability to maintain a linear sense of time. Future well-being can only be pursu
Lewis identifies the breakdown of linear temporal sense — the capacity to project desire forward along a causal chain — as the neurological core of addiction’s hold on the subject.
, The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction Is Not a Disease, 2015thesis
Christ died but once for our sins, once and for all (hapax, semel). Thus the development of history is governed and oriented by a unique fact which can never be repeated.
Von Franz traces the Judaeo-Christian theological source of Western linear time — the unrepeatable, directional event — contrasting it with cyclical and synchronistic alternatives.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014thesis
the left hemisphere, in whose realm many philosophers seem to do most – or all – of their work, has represented time from a standpoint outside the flow and convinced itself that time does not exist.
McGilchrist argues that the philosophical reduction of time to a linear B-series of fixed temporal relations is a left-hemisphere artefact that spatialises duration and paradoxically abolishes time altogether.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
the left hemisphere, in whose realm many philosophers seem to do most – or all – of their work, has represented time from a standpoint outside the flow and convinced itself that time does not exist.
A duplicate passage reinforcing McGilchrist’s thesis that serial, outside-the-flow representations of time are a function of left-hemispheric abstraction.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
Ever since Herodotus and Thucydides invented history and the Bible told who begat whom, all Western things are chronicled by time… The Western mind has trouble stopping its clock.
Hillman identifies linear, clock-measured time as a culturally specific Western episteme that shapes — and distorts — biographical and psychological self-understanding.
, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, 1996thesis
In spite of a repetitive manifestation of the typoi, they follow a linear course of evolution in that they make the Godhead and His purpose increasingly manifest.
Von Franz acknowledges a qualified linear strand within providential theology — the progressive revelation of the divine — while situating it within broader cyclical and archetypal patterns.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014supporting
indigenous peoples inhabit a cyclical time periodically regenerated through the ritual repetition of mythic events… every effective activity… is the recurrence of an archetypal event enacted by ancestral or totemic powers in the mythic times.
Abram, via Eliade, contrasts indigenous cyclical temporality with the linear, once-only biblical model, framing the latter as a culturally particular rather than universal apprehension of time.
, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, 1996supporting
It is certainly not for rational reasons, but on account of the archetypal intuition of a cyclical time (as distinct from the flux aspect) that our invention of clocks made them circular.
Von Franz grounds the design of timekeeping instruments in the archetypal preference for cyclical over linear time, suggesting the psyche’s own deeper orientation.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014supporting
we view the week a slice at a time; and we view it retrospectively, not prospectively as it is lived… serial analysis and retrospection.
McGilchrist shows how the serial, slice-by-slice apprehension of temporal sequence — paradigmatic of linear time — is an analytical retrospective construction rather than the lived experience of temporal flow.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
we view the week a slice at a time; and we view it retrospectively, not prospectively as it is lived… serial analysis and retrospection.
Duplicate of the above passage reinforcing the distinction between lived temporal flow and its linear, retrospective analytical representation.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
The linear, one-at-a-time character of speech and thought is particularly noticeable in all languages using alphabets… Life itself does not proceed in this cumbersome, linear fashion.
Watts identifies alphabetic-linguistic thought as the medium through which linear, sequential temporality is imposed upon experience, contrasting it with the simultaneous wholeness of life itself.
, The Way of Zen, 1957supporting
time is a way of precipitating out into infinitely various actuality the undifferentiated oneness from which the universe began… ‘Eternity is in love with the productions of time’.
McGilchrist reframes time not as linear sequence but as the ongoing differentiation of an original wholeness, dissolving the reductive identification of time with mere linear progression.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
time is a way of precipitating out into infinitely various actuality the undifferentiated oneness from which the universe began… ‘Eternity is in love with the productions of time’.
Duplicate passage in which McGilchrist invokes Blake and Shelley to articulate a philosophy of time as generative flow rather than linear sequence.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
what has been is never undone… the entire business of life… is one of constant flow, in which what we call ‘things’ appear and disappear; and yet it is one of constant creation and novelty.
McGilchrist affirms the irreversibility that defines linear time’s arrow while recontextualising it within a philosophy of continuous creative flow rather than mechanical sequence.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
the unmaking of time — like the Buddhist endeavor to escape from the grip of the monster-god Mahakala, ruler of the revolving wheel of duration — is a true Gnostic concern… freeing man from the agony of time, or as Mircea Eliade called it, the terror of history.
Hoeller situates Gnostic soteriology as a liberation from temporal entrapment — whether linear historical fate or cyclical necessity — linking depth-psychological and religious critiques of clock-bound existence.
, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1982aside
statistical analysis showed a significant linear trend for all three time durations… the increasing cardiac period began after the initial 3 seconds in all three graphs.
Craig reports a strictly methodological use of ‘linear trend’ in neurobiological time-perception experiments, tangentially relevant as empirical substrate for the felt sense of duration.
, How Do You Feel? An Interoceptive Moment with Your Neurobiological Self, 2014aside