Future Time Perspective as an Operationalization of Existential Concerns Related to Time

Abstract

Psychologists and other clinical therapists often focus on the psychological processes that result from the fact that human beings will one day die, not death anxiety/afterlife anxiety itself. Nevertheless, existential concerns are death concerns, and any anxiety associated with death should be understood through that lens—as resulting from concerns about death. Understanding how one views the amount of time left to live, and how this perception influences motives, goal cognitions, mood, and well-being, is of great importance from a humanistic–existential perspective. Socioemotional selectivity theory and the concept of future time perspective (FTP) capture these phenomena and have the potential to operationalize perspectives of time constraints within existential psychology. The present work attempts to show how FTP may be used to operationalize the problem of time from an existential perspective, specifically targeting the existential themes of death, meaning, isolation, and freedom. Clinical implications of considering FTP as an existential construct are discussed, as are limitations and future directions.