The Concept of Time in Rehabilitation and Psychosocial Adaptation to Chronic Illness and Disability

Abstract

Human fascination with the concept of time can be traced to antiquity. Time has been viewed as fundamental to all human experience, and efforts to understand its nature, structure, and relationship to the human experience have generated a burgeoning body of literature, over the past two millennia, among philosophers, astronomers, physicists, and more recently psychologists. Yet, the field of rehabilitation counseling has been rather silent on the role of time and especially its place in understanding psychosocial adaptation to chronic illnesses and disabilities. In the first part of this article, the author seeks to (a) provide a brief review of the current understanding of the nature and structure of time and (b) explore the role that time plays in the context of personality theories and the therapeutic approaches spawned by them. Implications to the study of chronic illnesses and disabilities are discussed throughout the narrative.