In the depth-psychology corpus, ‘Opening’ operates simultaneously as a structural, temporal, and metaphysical concept, traversing registers from archaic Greek etymology to contemporary clinical practice. The most concentrated treatment appears in the etymological recovery of kairos — the penetrable aperture through which an archer’s shaft must pass at precisely the right moment — a motif developed by Onians and elaborated with mythopoeic force by Hillman, who links the opening in the warp-threads of fate to the puer figure’s capacity for decisive, irreversible breakthrough. Here, Opening is never passive: it is constitutively time-bound, demanding readiness and power simultaneously. Giegerich radicalizes the concept in an entirely different register, arguing that in the soul’s inverted world, the deterrent ‘No!’ is itself the only opening — the entrance that negates ordinary thresholds. Frank, drawing on Levinas, employs ‘half opening’ to describe the ethical aperture that suffering creates between self and Other, a space simultaneously too small and the only passage toward the inter-human. Woodman and Hillman both invoke the opening as visionary passage beyond psychological enclosure, while ACT clinical literature transposes the term into the therapeutic goal of ‘opening up’ as defusion and acceptance. Across these trajectories, the term consistently marks the threshold condition: a narrow, time-sensitive, high-stakes passage constitutive of transformation.
An opening in the web of fate can mean an opening in time, an eternal moment when the pattern is drawn tighter or broken through. The weaver shot the spool or shuttle through the opening in the warp-threads at a critical time, the right moment (kairos)
Hillman synthesizes the archer’s aperture and the weaver’s gap to argue that Opening designates the kairos-moment — a cosmically limited and irreversible passage through the web of fate.
, Senex & Puer, 2015thesis
kairos, as appears from Pindar, Aeschylus, etc., described that at which he aimed. Such a sense of kairos will help to a better understanding of Pindar’s ‘not deviating from the kairos’. We, ourselves, speak of ‘an opening’ in just this sense
Onians establishes the archaic Greek semantic root of ‘opening’ as a penetrable aperture aimed at in combat, the origin of the temporal concept of opportunity (kairos).
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988thesis
the entrance or opening is in itself the goal. There is nothing additional behind or after it. The opening is in itself heaven and hell.
Giegerich argues that in soul-logic the Opening is not a means to a further end but is itself the telos — psychology constituted as the permanent threshold rather than a passage beyond it.
thesis
I value Levinas’s qualification that the opening is only a ‘half opening.’ The quest of finding meaning in suffering can only be undertaken oneself; to prescribe this quest to others is arrogance.
Frank employs Levinas’s ‘half opening’ to articulate the ethical-relational aperture that suffering creates — an opening toward the inter-human that cannot be commanded or fully traversed by another.
, The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics, 1995thesis
‘There are some nicks in time which whosoever finds may promise to himself success.’ ‘Most fit opportunity—her grace comes just in the nick’
Onians demonstrates through English and German parallels that the kairos-opening — a slot, nick, or aperture in time — survives as a cross-linguistic cognitive structure linking spatial gap to temporal opportunity.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting
to those who know they are wounded, to members of the remission society, Kaye’s story is an opening that heals.
Frank extends the ‘opening’ metaphor into narrative ethics, treating the wounded storyteller’s tale as a therapeutic aperture that re-enchants the world for fellow sufferers.
, The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics, 1995supporting
the possible opening, flying away, is characteristic of van Gogh’s larger visionary power which, however unsettling the brushwork or the palette knife, transcends illness.
Woodman reads van Gogh’s terminal painting not as closure but as a visionary opening — a precarious transcendent aperture through which the psyche strains toward metaphysical resolution.
, Conscious Femininity: Interviews With Marion Woodman, 1993supporting
this door to the invisible factors at work in their disorders must be kept open, just in case it is an angel knocking and not merely a malady… a certain blinding of one eye and an opening of the other to elsewhere.
Hillman uses opening as the perceptual-receptive condition for archetypal vision — an eye opened to the invisible, contrasted with the reductive literalism that forecloses it.
, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, 1996supporting
if we do any intervention… that helps the client with being present, opening up, or doing what matters, it’s useful; it helps develop psychological flexibility.
ACT clinical practice operationalizes ‘opening up’ — encompassing defusion and acceptance — as one of the three cardinal axes of psychological flexibility alongside presence and values-directed action.
, ACT Made Simple: An Easy-To-Read Primer on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, 2009supporting
It was a question of building something at the corner of the fence on the sidewalk to close the opening. We had tried cardboard. It wasn’t high enough and no good when it rained.
A dreamer’s serial imagery of closing an opening in a fence illustrates the psyche’s negotiation with vulnerable thresholds, an implicit depth-psychological treatment of protective boundary versus passage.
, A Little Course in Dreams, 1986aside
it’s more about opening your wallet than opening your mind.
Perel’s rhetorical contrast of commercial ‘opening’ against genuine cognitive-erotic openness marks the degradation of the concept in consumer culture.
, Mating in captivity sex, lies and domestic bliss, 2007aside