Renata Calabresi: the experimental analysis of the present.

Summary

Renata Calabresi's research in the 1920s and 1930s explored the nature of psychic presence, revealing that subjective and objective time do not flow together. She demonstrated that perceptual events can occur independently of objective time sequences, indicating that the experience of consciousness has distinct modalities from physical sequences. Despite her significant contributions, her work has been largely overlooked due to historical circumstances and the decline of descriptive psychology.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Between the 1920s and 1930s, Renata Calabresi conducted pioneering laboratory researches on the nature, extensity, and quality of the psychic present. Her analyses stemmed from the Central European tradition initiated by Stern, Brentano, Meinong, and Benussi. Her work has remained largely unrecognized, because of both the decline of the underlying theoretical paradigm, namely descriptive psychology, and the historical events of the time that swept aside the lives of those involved. This article presents her researches on the roots of phenomenal consciousness. She proved that in the subjective time there occur perceptual events that are at least partially independent from those of the time of objective sequences. Subjective and objective time, therefore, do not flow in unison, and the continuum of perceptive sequences has modalities of existence that differ from those of the continuum of physical sequences.