Timelessness in psyche and in the short fiction of Jorge Luis Borges

This study explores the theme of timelessness in the short fiction of Borges and how his work might contribute to a depth psychological understanding of timelessness in psyche. In an effort to answer this question, following the footsteps of Ricoeur and Gadamer, this study treats the text as autonomous and uses the methods of hermeneutics to study five of Borges' short stories: "The Garden of Forking Paths," "El Aleph," "The Circular Ruins," "The Other," and "August 25, 1983." These short stories not only manifest psyche's sense of timelessness---the co-existence of the past, present, and future---but also the phenomena of synchronicity, the creative impulse, multiplicity of psyche, the autonomy of psychic images, and the all-inclusiveness of the unconscious. Borges' work allows the reader to experience psyche's sense of time and timelessness and other psychic processes that usually reside in the unconscious.;Additionally, this study employs imaginal dialogue by means of active imagination to engage the unconscious contents of the text and psyche. In the interstitial time and space between the core chapters---the interludes---are several imaginal dialogues and the reverie on them. These imaginal dialogues and reveries provide the lived experience that cannot be gained through hermeneutics alone. They bring to life the idea of timelessness, the objective reality of the unconscious, and the autonomy of dream images.;The conclusion is that Borges' text is essential to an understanding of our unconscious processes, which is a crucial element of and a prelude to the transcendent function. In turn, it leads to our individuation, our psychic wholeness. Furthermore, to gain the level of understanding only available through lived experience, it is necessary to go beyond hermeneutics and employ imaginal dialogue by means of active imagination. Hermeneutics and imaginal dialogue together enrich and deepen the study---from a depth psychological and from a literary perspective---and the researcher.