The concept of linear time in psychology is intrinsically related with issues of causality, change, process, and behavior. Especially psychoanalysis works on a cause and effect model, with emphasis on the first event as the most important. Thus, most psychologists, however opposed to Freud's methods, still view past (or childhood) experiences as crucial for the patient's present emotional problems. Brent D. Slife summarizes:

"Cognitivists attend to past inputs and memory encodings; many humanists refer to long-lost opportunities for growth; and behaviorists consider reinforcement history and immediately preceding stimuli. All consider some form of the past to have primacy over abnormal, and even normal, behaviors in the present. … The primacy of the past is also carried into psychological treatment. The origin of abnormality is always the target of treatment, explicitly or implicitly."

Given these considerations, is it surprising that our wish to go back into the past is inseparable from our desire of self-knowledge, or from our understanding of what happened then in order to comprehend what is happening now? Does time travel contain an element of self-cure? And eventually: would time travel -- if possible -- make psychologists obsolete?

One of the difficulties time travelers may experience could be due to their modified perception of change. Under normal circumstances, we perceive change as a successive integration of stimuli, which allows us to see these stimuli as being relatively simultaneous. (The speech act as a succession of utterances is a good example.) This state of "simultaneity" defines the psychological present, within which we perceive the fundamental characteristics of change: first, the order of the various stimuli, and second, the time periods by which they are separated. The order and the periodicity of change cause, in turn, a sequence of physiological modifications in the human body, and condition our responses to those changes. Specialists talk in this case of a "physiological clock" (une horologe physiologique), which provides human beings with points of orientation in time, and the ability to appreciate duration.

When time travel takes place, however, this whole system of well-rehearsed behaviorist patterns with temporally linear contingency comes out of balance. How are we likely to react to changes outside our physiological conditioning? Will we be able to integrate into our experience another time perspective other than the linear? Will we experience extreme anxiety, or even time travel sickness? Will our reason be sufficient to calm down a body in complete disarray?

While modern physics insists that time is simply a parameter, or a label, psychologists maintain that, in humans' perception, time is moving. As Nahin points out, "physicists call our feeling of moving time psychological time because the equations of physics provide no physical interpretation for moving 'now.' That is not to say that psychological time does not have great fascination and significance in human affairs, but just that the physicist's view is that it has no role in physics." If this is true, it seems that time travel would be safe only for physicists, since they could reduce - at least theoretically - their newly acquired "now-s" to new equations, which will be added to the old ones. In other words, they would escape psychological time by a rational process of re-categorization of what is already known with what is being learned. And they may be even right: as Fraser points out, the question "is there a world [that is to say, a "now"] beyond the boundaries of human reality current at any epoch and place and valid for any person?" is formulated in deceptive language, since it uses spatial (and, I would say, static) metaphors to describe a continuous, never-ending process.

What Bill Watterson renders here jocularly in cartoon form is an important motive of time travel. Escapism, defined by Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary as "a habitual diversion of mind to purely imaginative activity or entertainment as an escape from reality or routine," constitutes also the psychological motivation for time travel. A relevant example will clarify and support this claim.

In Fast Forward, Jenny Pausacker tells the story of the speedy (and, by all appearances, manic) Kieran, a perpetually bored child, doomed to live in a world too slow for himself. Fortunately, things seem to change for the better, as his grandmother mutates a tedious remote control to an exciting ABM ("the Anti-Boredom-Machine"). His favorite function is, as one may guess, fast forward. Due to it, Kieran engages in a peculiar type of time travel: "When you use FAST FORWARD, life is the same, really--it just looks different to you--FAST FORWARD doesn't make time go faster. It only makes time feel faster."

This seemingly useless form of time travel enables Kieran to escape, at least for a while, boredom and daily routine. Soon, however, as "fast forward" gradually develops into a mania, Kieran fails school and loses his friends. The story does have a happy ending, yet this is not what makes it stand out in the genre of time travel. More importantly, the paradoxical notion of escaping from the present by modifying it instead of transcending it by means of a machine (as in the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon) seems to account for the story's originality.

The motive of self-blame is as central to time travel stories as it is to human existence. Occasionally, we would like to undo things, or to be given a second chance. Spiritually, this is possible - Christianity, for instance, is based on the tenet "forgive and forget." Physically, however, such a wish still remains in the realms of fiction. Once a character is caught in a circle of self-blame and failure with a time travel instrument involved, the narrative becomes predictable, yet the suspense increases exponentially.

Such is the case with Nancy Etchemendy's highly praised children's book, The Power of Un. Its protagonist, Gib Finney, receives from his future self, Old Gib, the "Unner," a time travel machine, which can undo one's mistakes. What at first seems to be lively fun becomes soon deadly earnest, as Gib's baby-sister Roxy is hit by a truck, and consequently rendered brain dead. As one may guess, Gib blames himself for the accident of his sister, who was left in his care.

The narrative is driven by Gib's self-blame, further amplified by ethical issues. As Gib travels into the past attempting to figure out which events he should undo to prevent his sister's accident, he is plagued by nagging doubts whether the undoing of his mistake would not have negative repercussions for everyone else:

"Part of me said yes, it would be bad. Possibly worse than bad. Immoral. What if there was some kind of Master Plan, and I messed it all up? Did I have the right to do something that might change the future of everybody else in the world? I'd be doing it entirely to make my own life easier, and I wasn't asking anybody else what they wanted. It didn't feel right."

To be sure, Gib is too hard on himself, and this is, of course, part of the authorial intention. After all, he does not make the choice merely for himself, but also for his heartbroken parents and brain dead sister. Nevertheless, it must be pointed out that, even if the question of blame is resolved in the end by means of his "Unner," Gib has to prove himself courageous and intelligent in order to be redeemed as a credible hero. Gib's "Unner" or time machine enables the narrative shift from children's book to Bildungsroman. Gib's difficulty lies suddenly not in the lack of choices, but in their plenitude. Making the right choice to avert his sister's tragic accident translates for him into a maturity test. It also represents the escape from the counterproductive circle of self-blame. (Guilty or not, Gib is, after all, just a middle-school kid.) And, as in any Bildungsroman, our hero fails repeatedly before succeeding - most importantly, as his friend, Lorraine Frogner, ends up under the truck the second time.

That a happy ending is not possible without a maimed leg on our hero's part, delineates a further station in his learning process: "I thought, as I watched the wheels of the truck spin toward me, that even if it wasn't the best possible ending, it was all right." What our hero has not yet fully achieved by education of mind, he has long ago accomplished by educating his heart: "Better me than my sister or my friends."

The touch of realism in Etchemendy's fantastic story has great pedagogical value: it teaches children that mistakes are, in any case, to be accounted for, even if, kindness, courage, and the ability to make the right decisions may help undo some of their consequences.

The quest for identity is the major topic in Cheyenne Rose. Dressed in the traditional outfit of her people, the Native American girl Rose travels back in time to her ancestors through a magic mirror. Among her folk, she discovers her identity, and finds out what it means to be other when she meets Sarah, a small white girl, who was found by the Indians alone in the prairie.

Rose becomes the little girl's protector and even urges Sun Bear, the chief of the tribe, to bring her back to the fort. On the way to the fort, Rose saves the little girl as the prairie catches fire. When they finally arrive at the fort, Rose is even able to reconcile the Indians with the Whites, which had been forever frozen in a state in mistrust with each other.

Although time travel here is only used as a pretext to tell a story about identity, we see, however, how this story rehearses the same unconscious wish, which, as we hope, time travel will someday make come true, namely an answer to the metaphysical question "who are we, actually?"

(We even managed to interest Curious George in building a Time Machine.)

Similarly, the siblings in Edward Eager's Knight's Castle, Roger and Ann, go on multiple voyages to the past, to the times of Ivanhoe and Robin Hood, whom they are to help against all kinds of dangers, in order that their father, who being very ill has to undergo a risky surgery, may be saved.

By contrast, the life of the three friends in Knights of the Kitchen Table only becomes dangerous after they inadvertently land into the times of King Arthur, and his Knights of the Round Table. There they have to face an angry black knight, and trick a disgusting giant into fighting an angry dragon, which menaces King Arthur's fortress.

That love is more than enough reason to travel back in time needs not be rehearsed here. At least two beautiful sites convey through sound and movie segments not only the romance but also the time travel event in Somewhere in Time. Enjoy!

Superman is indeed one good example of a time machine traveling by will into the past. When his girl friend Lois dies, Superman undoes her deadly accident by traveling with her corpse back into the past and life. Since he does this for love, this example also qualifies for the section above.

Similarly, for Helen Cresswell's characters in Time Out, Wilks Ethel, and Tweeney, time travel is a self-empowering act. For the first time in their lives, the three members of this servant family are granted three days out, which they intend to spend together, far away from the place at which they serve. Unfortunately, their present destination becomes out of reach, as their relative's house, which they intended to visit, burns down. Fortunately, Wilks has been experimenting with witchcraft for a while, allowing them to travel a hundred years through time to their future destination. It also enables their exercise of free will.