Abstract Self-related future thinking is the psychological process that people think about their personal future. This ability is one of most remarkable evolutionary achievements. Based on the traditional classification of episodic memory and semantic memory, some researchers classified self-related memory into two categories: episodic memory and personal semantic memory. Taking this previous typology as reference, with considering the characteristics of its content as well(such as the level of detail/abstraction, the vulnerability to interference resulting in transformation of information), self-rated future thinking can be divided into two basic types: the episodic future thinking (EFT) and the personal semantic future thinking. EFT is the psychological process which projects someone into thinking and experiencing future episodic event in advance. Personal semantic future thinking concerns knowledge of one’s future, resembling a ‘skeleton future’ that includes two types: the future self representation and the gist representation of self-related future events. The major difference between the two basic types is that, the episodic future thinking entails imagining a unique event within specific spatial-temporal context, imbued with a sense of the self mentally traveling through time to pre-experience the event, while personal semantic future thinking is devoid of any subjective sense of imagination and detached from its context of acquisition but still highly personal. Some researchers have addressed three of the key ‘players’ in self-related future thinking: memory, self, and subjective time, and it was also supported by empirical researches. From a general perspective, as its two basic types, both of episodic future thinking and personal semantic future thinking need the functions of three key psychological components. From a specific perspective, as episodic future thinking and personal semantic future thinking differ from one another in terms of their own characteristics, and each of these three key psychological components contains different subtypes (such as the memory system can be divided into episodic memory and semantic memory, the self includes semantic self-knowledge and episodic self-knowledge, and the subjective time contains lived time and known time), and those subtypes are also relatively independent in function, so the two basic types may depend on the three key psychological components variously: episodic future thinking may depend on episodic memory and semantic memory, episodic and semantic self-knowledge and lived time, while personal semantic future thinking may rest upon semantic memory, semantic self-knowledge and known time. This conclusion is derived from existing empirical studies. Although the subtypes of memory, self and subjective time in two types of self-related future thinking may be different, the function of the three key psychological components in two basic types may be same: memory serves as raw materials for self-related future thinking, self may play a role as a guide, and subjective time is a prerequisite. In future researches, with the help of researches of thinking about abstract future public issues, the functions of self and memory in personal semantic future thinking will be more certain, and the process of how different components and its subtypes contribute to self-related future thinking will be more clarified by figuring out how different components interact with each other.