Eternal torment and eternal divinity may be two aspects of the same temporal phenomenon. Phenomenological disturbances of sensed time, although not always seeming to be of great importance, usually indicate that something is going wrong. For example, melancholic depersonalization is accompanied by a serious disturbance of temporality, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical a sense of inhibition of “becoming.” Even the most limited ability to separate events into past, present, and future; to estimate duration;

and to place events in sequence appears to be necessary for intellectual processes to be carried out satisfactorily.13 With a decline in worldly activity the sense of time is altered, resulting in protraction, slowing, and an impoverished “now” characterized as boredom. A “loss of vital contact” or a loss of “affect attunement” with the world may result in activity “drying up.”6,8,14 Certain Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical pathological experiences so dramatically alter the temporal microstructure of experience that Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical an individual’s sense of subjective lived time is restructured and disordered. In these circumstances, temporality may, as a result of the overwhelming presence of suffering, involve a past,

present, and future that are no longer moving apart. Normally, past and future withdraw on their own, in accordance with their nature of “not being.” The future is characterized Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical phenomenologically

as openness to change and movement; without such openness, the future appears static and deterministic, and the result may well be hopelessness, despair, and seemingly eternal suffering.14 The habitual ways of human beings in the world imply, from early childhood, synchronization with the dialectic rhythms of life. These include such environmental “timings” as wake-sleep cycles, ultradian and circadian secretions of hormones, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical and other bodily activities. These biological rhythms are influenced by planetary, lunar, and solar temporal and seasonal rhythms; and, in terms of one’s complex interpersonal life, by family living patterns, timetables, work schedules, and social protocols. In the next section we discuss the altered rhythmicity and abnormal temporality aspects of mood disorders from the perspective Org 27569 of clinical psychiatry and biological rhythm research. Clinical studies and biological rhythm research Clinical observations Alterations in time sense may contribute causally to depression, or at least to its continuation. It is noteworthy that some effective treatments for depression involve seeking to trick a patient’s “BIRB 796 mw cognitive timer” or “internal clock.” Observers of melancholia have linked many of its clinical symptoms to abnormal biological rhythms.