英：time; 法：temps
拉康派精神分析中最具区分性的特征之一，便是拉康着手研究时间问题的取径。宽泛地讲，拉康的取径是以两个主要的革新为特征的：逻辑时间 (logical time)的概念，以及对于回溯 (retroaction)与预期 (anticipation)的强调
·逻辑时间在他题为“逻辑时间”(1945)的文章中，拉康展示了某些逻辑运算何以会包括对于时间性的一种不可避免的参照，从而在逻辑上削弱了无时间性与永恒性的主张。然而，这里所涉及的此种时间性无法通过参照时钟来规定，而其本身就是某些逻辑链接的产物。逻辑时间与时序时间之间的这一区分，支撑着拉康的整个时间性理论的基础。
逻辑时间并非是客观性的，这一事实并不意味着它仅仅是一种主观感受的问题；相反，正如“逻辑性”这一形容词所表明的，它是可以根据数学而加以严格阐述的一种精密的辩证结构。在1945年的这篇文章里，拉康指出逻辑时间具有一种三重结构，包含三个时刻：(I)看见的瞬间 (the instant of seeing);(2)理解的时间 (thetime for understanding);(3)结论的时刻 (the moment of conclu-dig)。凭借一则诡辩（三个囚徒的难题），拉康说明了这三个时刻的建构何以不是根据那些客观性的精密计时单位，而是根据以等待与仓促、犹豫与急迫之间的张力为基础的一种主体间性的逻辑。因而，逻辑时间是“结构了人类行动的主体间性的时间”(E, 75).
拉康的逻辑时间观念并非只是一种逻辑上的操演，对于精神分析治疗而言，它也同样具有一些实践性的影响。从历史上讲，这些影响中最著名的，即拉康对于可变时长（弹性时间）会谈 (英：sssions of variable duration; 法：seances scandees)的使用，这种做法被国际精神分析协会 (PA)看作开除他会员资格的充分根据。然而，仅仅聚焦于此种特殊的实践，会错失逻辑时间理论的各种其他的有趣的临床维度，譬如拉康的“理解的实践”如何能够阐明弗洛伊德的修通 (working-through)概念 (见：Forrester, 1990: ch. 8)。
拉康的逻辑时间概念也预期了他对索绪尔式语言学的闯入，后者的基础在于语言的历时性（或时间性）面向与共时性（非时间性）面向之间的区分。因此，在1950年代，拉康便开始越来越强调那些共时性抑或无时间性的结构 (STRUCTURES), 而非那些发展性的“阶段”。因而，当拉康使用“时间”这一术语的时候，它通常都不应被理解为一种转瞬即逝的历时性时刻，而是要被理解为一种结构，即一种相对稳定的共时性状态。相似地，当拉康谈论到“俄狄浦斯情结的三个时间”的时候，这里的次序也属于逻辑上的优先，而非时序上的接续。改变不是被看作沿着一个连续体的某种渐进的或平稳的运动，而是被看作从一个离散结构到另一离散结构的某种突然转变。
拉康对于这些共时性或无时间性的结构的强调，可以被看作一种旨在探究弗洛伊德关于无意识中不存在时间这一命题的尝试。然而，在1964年，拉康用他的如下提议修改了此一命题，即无意识是根据一种打开与关闭的时间运动来特征化的（S11,143,204).
·回溯与预期精神分析的其他形式，诸如自我心理学等，皆是建立在一种线性的时间概念的基础之上的（例如，这可见于它们对孩子所自然经历的那些线性次序的发展阶段的强调；见：发展[DEVELOPMENT])。然而，拉康则全然抛弃了这样一种线性的时间观念，因为在精神中，时间同样能够经由回溯与预期而作用于相反的方向。
·回溯/事后 (法：apres-coup)拉康的“事后性”（aprescoup)一词是法国分析家们用来翻译弗洛伊德的Nachtraglichkeit的术语 (《标准版》将其译作“延迟作用”[deferred action])。这些术语指的是那些现在的事件在精神中“后验地”(a posteriori)影响那些过去的事件的方式，因为过去在精神中仅仅是作为一系列记忆的集合而存在的，而这些记忆又都会根据现在的经验而不断地得到重新加工与重新解释。精神分析关心的并非那些过去事件本身的真实次序，而是这些事件在当下存在于记忆中的方式，以及病人报告它们的方式。因而，当拉康指出精神分析治疗的目标是“对主体历史的完全重构”的时候 (S1,12), 他便清楚地说到，他借“历史”一词想要表明的意思完全不是那些过去事件的真实次序，而是“现在对于过去的综合”(S1,36)。“历史并非过去。就它是在现在得以历史化的而言，历史才是过去。”(S1,12)因此，各个前生殖阶段便不应被看作在时序上先于生殖阶段的真实事件，而是要被看作被回溯性地投射到过去的各种形式的要求 (DEMAND)(E, 197)。拉康同样说明了话语是如何经由回溯而结构的，只有当一句话的最后一词被说出来的时候，那些前面的词才会获得充分的意义 (E, 303)(见：标点[PUNCTUATION]).
·预期如果说回溯指的是现在影响过去的方式，那么预期便指的是未来影响现在的方式。如同回溯一样，预期也标记了言语的结构，在一句话中，那些前面的词是在对后续要到来的那些词的预期中得以秩序化的 (E, 303)。在镜子阶段，自我也是基于对一种想象的（而事实上从来不会抵达的）未来整体性的预期而建构的。预期的结构可经由将来完成时（即法语中的先将来时）而在语言学上得到最佳的阐明 (E, 306)。预期同样在逻辑时间的三重结构中扮演着一个重要的角色，“结论的时刻”便是在仓促之中，即在对于未来确定性的预期之中而抵达的 (Ec, 209)。
(temps) One of the most distinctive features of Lacanian psychoanalysis is Lacan'sapproach to questions of time. Broadly speaking, Lacan's approach is characterised bytwo important innovations: the concept of logical time, and the stress on retroaction andanticipation.
Logical time In his paper entitled 'Logical time' (1945), Lacan underminesthepretensions of logic to timelessness and eternity by showing how certain logicalcalculations include an inescapable reference to a temporality. However, the kind oftemporality involved is not specificiable by reference to the clock, but is itself the productof certain logical articulations. This distinction between logical time and chronologicaltime underpins Lacan's whole theory of temporality.
The fact that logical time is not objective does not mean that it is simply a question ofsubjective feeling; on the contrary, as the adjective logical'indicates, it is a precisedialectical structure which may be formulated rigorously in mathematical terms. In the1945 paper, Lacan argues that logical time has a tripartite structure, the three moments ofwhich are: (i) the instant of seeing;(ii) the time for understanding;(iii) the moment ofconcluding. By means of a sophism (the problem of the three prisoners) Lacan showshow these three moments are constructed not in terms of objective chronometric units butin terms of an intersubjective logic based on a tension between waiting and haste, between hesitation and urgency. Logical time is thus the intersubjective time thatstructures human action' (E, 75).
Lacan's notion of logical time is not just an exercise in logic; it also has practicalconsequences for psychoanalytic treatment. The most famous of these consequences, historically speaking, has been Lacan's use of sessions of variable duration (Fr. Seancesscandees), which was regarded by the International Psycho-Analytical Association (IPA) as sufficient grounds for excluding him from membership. However, to focus exclusivelyon this particular practice is to miss various other interesting clinical dimensions of thetheory of logical time, such as the way in which Lacan's concept of 'the time forunderstanding'can throw light on the Freudian concept of working-through. (See Forrester, 1990: ch. 8.)
Lacan's concept of logical time anticipates his incursions into Saussurean linguistics, which is based on the distinction between the diachronic (or temporal) and the synchronic (atemporal) aspects of language. Hence Lacan's increasing stress, beginning in the 1950s, on synchronic or timeless STRUCTURES rather than on developmental 'stages'. Thuswhen Lacan uses the term 'time', it is usually to be understood not as a fleetingdiachronic moment but as a structure, a relatively stable synchronic state. Similarly, whenhe speaks of 'the three times of the Oedipus complex', the ordering is one of logicalpriority rather than of a chronological sequence. Change is not seen as a gradual orsmooth move along a continuum, but as an abrupt shift from one discrete structure toanother.
Lacan's emphasis on synchronic or timeless structures can be seen as an attempt toexplore Freud's statement about the non-existence of time in the unconscious. However, Lacan modifies this with his proposal, in 1964, that the unconscious be characterised interms of a temporal movement of opening and closing (S11,143,204).
Retroaction and anticipation Other forms of psychoanalysis, such as ego-psychology, are based on a linear concept of time (as can be seen, for example, in theirstress on a linear sequence of developmental stages through which the child naturallypasses; see DEVELOPMENT). Lacan, however, completely abandons such a linearnotion of time, since in the psyche time can equally well act in reverse, by retroaction andanticipation.
Retroaction (Fr. Apres coup) Lacan's term apres coup is the term used by Frenchanalysts to translate Freud's Nachtraglichkeit (which the Standard Edition renders'deferred action'). These terms refer to the way that, in the psyche, present events affectpast events a posteriori, since the past exists in the psyche only as a set of memorieswhich are constantly being reworked and reinterpreted in the light of present experience. What concerns psychoanalysis is not the real past sequence of events in themselves, butthe way that these events exist now in memory and the way that the patient reports them. Thus when Lacan argues that the aim of psychoanalytic treatment is 'the completereconstitution of the subject's history' (S1,12), he makes it clear that what he means bythe term history'is not simply a real sequence of past events, but 'the present synthesisof the past' (S1,36).'History is not the past. History is the past in so far as it ishistoricised in the present' (S1,12). Hence the pregenital stages are not to be seen as realevents chronologically prior to the genital stage, but as forms of DEMAND which areprojected retroactively onto the past (E, 197). Lacan also shows how discourse isstructured by retroaction; only when the last word of the sentence is uttered do the initialwords acquire their full meaning (E, 303)(see PUNCTUATION).
.Anticipation If retroaction refers to the way the present affects the past, anticipationrefers to the way the future affects the present. Like retroaction, anticipation marks thestructure of speech; the first words of a sentence are ordered in anticipation of the wordsto come (E, 303). In the mirror stage, the ego is constructed on the basis of theanticipation of an imagined future wholeness (which never, in fact, arrives). The structureof anticipation is best illustrated linguistically by the future-perfect tense (E, 306). Anticipation also plays an important role in the tripartite structure of logical time; themoment of concluding'is arrived at in haste, in anticipation of future certainty (Ec, 209).