- The Author explores the metaphorical dimensions implicit in the idea that there is an adult (i.e. the patient) and a child inside him. She traces two of these dimensions, a spatial one and a temporal one. After remembering that in psychoanalysis many theoretic formulations appeal to spatial metaphors, in the lack of a specific psychoanalytic thinking on the consequences of the use of metaphors of the inside and the outside, she goes over again some of the stages of recent psychoanalytic thought on the temporal dimension of this metaphor and, thus, on the relationship between the child of the past and the patient of the present and on the different ways of conceptualizing this relationship today.Parole chiave: Bambino, adulto, passato, presente, metafora,"dentro e fuori"Key words: Child, adult, past, present, metaphor, "inside and outside"