Chapter 12: Temporality: Expectation and Futurity in Physiotherapy Patients

In this chapter, we understand temporality as a personal experience of the time lived. The notion of temporality is rooted in the phenomenological analysis of the human experience with and in time, beginning with Husserl, followed by a number of developments, particularly the work of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty (see also Baerveldt, Coelho, Ellis & Stam, Simão, this volume).

For the purpose of the analysis proposed in this chapter, it is important to note the fact that temporality is inherent in the subjective processes for building personal I-world relations. It is within temporality, as one of the dimensions of human subjectivity, that people build and manifest themselves intra- and intersubjectively, creating their momentary organizations of I-world relations. Contribute to this process the manifold meanings that we (re)elaborated with respect to that which has occurred before now, directly and indirectly affecting us in the present, leading us to a certain future. In this sense, the past never ceases to be, thereby leading to a conception in which time is not a cause-based sequence of “before” and “after,” given that this would require the objectification of the passing of time as externally independent of the subject that experiences it (Simão, 2011, this volume).