The Psychopathological Fabric of Time (and Space) and Its Underpinning Pencil-Borne Geometries

Abstract

The paper presents, to our knowledge, a first fairly comprehensive and mathematically well-underpinned classification of the psychopathology of time (and space). After reviewing the most illustrative first-person accounts of "anomalous/peculiar" experiences of time (and, to a lesser degree, also space) we introduce and describe in detail their algebraic geometrical model. The model features six qualitatively different types of the internal structure of time dimension and four types of that of space. As for time, the most pronounced are the ordinary "past-present-future," "present-only" ("eternal/everlasting now") and "no-present" (time "standing still") patterns; the remaining types represent an intriguing superposition of the three. Concerning space, the most elementary are the ordinary, i.e. "here-and-there," mode and the "here-only" one ("omnipresence"); the remaining two cases are again a specific mixture of the former two. We then show what the admissible combinations of temporal and spatial psycho-patterns are and give a rigorous algebraic geometrical classification of them. The paper ends with a brief account of important epistemological/ontological questions stemming from the approach.