The following is a quote from “Towards a Psychology of Being” Abraham Maslow, 1962
15. I close with the stimulus that has most powerfully affected me in the existentialist literature, namely, the problem of future time in psychology. Not that this, like all the other problems or pushes I have mentioned up to this point, was totally unfamiliar to me nor, I imagine, to any serious student of the theory of personality. The writings of Charlotte Buhler, Gordon Allport, and Kurt Goldstein should also have sensitized us to the necessity of grappling with and systematizing the dynamic role of the future in the presently existing personality, e.g., growth and becoming and possibility necessarily point toward the future;
so do the concepts of potentiality and hoping, and of wishing and imagining; reduction to the concrete is a loss of future; threat and apprehension point to the future (no future = no neurosis);
self-actualization is meaningless without reference to a currently active future; life can be a gestalt in time, etc., etc. And yet the basic and central importance of this problem for the existentialists has something to teach us, e.g., Erwin Strauss’ paper in the May volume (110). I think it fair to say that no theory of psychology will ever be complete which does not centrally incorporate the concept that man has his future within him, dynamically active at this present moment.
In this sense the future can be treated as a-historical in Kurt Lewin’s sense.
a·his·tor·i·cal/āhiˈstôːrikl/Learn to pronounce adjective lacking historical perspective or context. “ahistorical nostalgia that misunderstands cultural history”
Oxford Languages
Also we must realize that only the future is in principle unknown and unknowable, which means that all habits, defenses and coping mechanisms are doubtful and ambiguous since they are based on past experience. Only the flexibly creative person can really manage future, only the one who can face novelty with confidence and without fear. I am convinced that much of what we now call psychology is the study of the tricks we use to avoid the anxiety of absolute novelty by making believe the future will be like the past.
Running Down Vimy 