Renata Calabresi: the experimental analysis of the present.

Renata Calabresi conducted laboratory research in the 1920s and 1930s on the nature, extensity, and quality of the psychic present, drawing on the Central European tradition of descriptive psychology. Her work, largely unrecognized due to the decline of that paradigm and historical events, demonstrated that perceptual events in subjective time are at least partially independent from those in objective time. Subjective and objective time do not flow in unison, and the continuum of perceptive sequences has different modalities of existence from physical sequences.

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.