


Elle est par ailleurs appliquée à partir d'un manuel d'intervention. Several areas support this assumption, and I have space here to briefly discuss conceptual, neurological, and empirical findings illustrating the fluidity and dynamic nature of time. In response, one young woman responded, and here I paraphrase, "Whenever I reminisce, it gets all caught up in thinking about the future." At the time, focused as I was on a precise definition of reminiscence, I remember being somewhat annoyed that a participant had dared to conflate reminiscence with thinking about the future -clearly (at least to my rigid way of thinking) these were two distinct temporal areas and the latter had nothing to do with the former! Recently, I have come to suspect that this issue of temporal distinctiveness is artificial, and that there is merit in exploring how our perception of our past and future are intertwined. More than 20 years ago, as part of the development of the Reminiscence Functions Scale (RFS: Webster, 1993) I asked participants in a pilot project to list reasons for their reminiscing. The consequences and challenges for both reminiscence research and clinical practise are briefly addressed and future explorations are suggested. This paper describes, and briefly discusses, how reminiscing and imagining our future share many properties in common, including the length of their temporal extension, how they are cognitively constructed, and their shared underlying neuro-anatomical pathways. Conversely, imagining our future can frequently stimulate reminiscence. Although reminiscence, by definition, involves recalling episodic memories from one's personal past, this process often triggers thoughts of the future.
