Consciousness and temporality: a psychopathologist’s view

Dictionaries indicate that the word ‘consciousness’ derives from Latin con-scientia. Syn-eidesis is the Greek word of which conscientia seems to be the cast. Literally, to be conscious means to ‘know together’ - com- (‘together’) + scire (‘to know’). Consciousness, if we allow ourselves to be influenced by this etymology, literally means ‘joint knowledge’, a kind of knowledge which ‘brings together’ bits of knowledge into a unified whole.