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Organizing the present in anticipation of a better future: Bergson, Whitehead, and the life of a mental health service user

The work of Henri Bergson has been influential on recent conceptualizations of the relationship between past, present, and future, particularly in studies of social remembering that argue that the past is a transformative process on the present. This paper will draw on some of the similarities in the temporal ontologies of Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead, and utilize the latter’s work on theorizing the organization of the present in anticipation of the future. This will be used to analyse a case study of a community mental health service user, for whom the future exists as hopeful potential for a better life. The concepts of actual occasion and nexus are recruited to highlight the organized formation of the service user’s home, which enables the anticipatory perception of future life. The paper concludes by arguing for an approach to the study of mental distress that takes seriously the active role of the future on the present, and how such a process is organized as a relational phenomenon in domestic home environments.