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Clinical approaches to ageing are particularly concerned with the question of boredom. An abyss opening out onto anxiety, a protective fog against too much inner agitation that the ego struggles to deal with, and the source of an ultimate self-encounter, boredom is not akin to the emptiness of thought, the stupor and inertia of the body which we often associate with it. Time that passes, and time that does not pass, death, the infantile, pleasure and transgression can prove to be bustling actors under the apparent state of being bogged down and imprisoned, and partake in unexpected potentialities for change, attesting to the effectiveness of psychic causality.