Abstract
I recall a remark Anna Freud once gave around the age of 85. She said there are two ages that are most challenging for the human and require the most strength: the times of early childhood and the times of old age (Sandler, with A. Freud, 1985). Within these bookends of life, Anna Freud exchanged the ideality of strength as might for that of care for vulnerability. Strength becomes the capacity for tolerating, as in living with bodily fragility, care, and dependency. Here, perception of time, or our feelings in time, are other to the function of time. It is, after all, no small act of courage to link together early and late time.
Author Biography
Deborah P. Britzman
Deborah P. Britzman is Distinguished Research Professor at York University in Toronto, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, holder of the York University Research Chair in Pedagogy and Psychosocial transformation and a working psychoanalyst. Author of 9 books and over 100 articles, Britzman’s scholarly area of expertise is in psychoanalysis with education and the Freudian and Kleinian histories of psychoanalysis both applied and clinical. Recent books include: Freud and Education with Routledge, Melanie Klein: Early Analysis, Play and the Question of Freedom with Springer Press; and A Psychoanalysis in the Classroom: On the human condition in education, with SUNY Press; and with Myers Educational Press, Anticipating Education: Concepts for imagining Pedagogy with Psychoanalysis (2021).
Recommended Citation
Britzman, D.
(2021).
The Times of Our Lives.
Occasional Paper Series,
(45).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.58295/2375-3668.1428
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