Within the depth-psychology corpus, ‘possibility’ occupies a privileged and philosophically charged position, functioning neither as mere optionality nor as simple futurity, but as a structural feature of being-in-the-world, a fundamental existential, and a psychological category with genuine ontological weight. The most sustained treatment appears in Heidegger’s *Being and Time*, where possibility is not an abstract modal category but the very mode through which Dasein exists: authentic existence is a matter of owning one’s ownmost possibility—death—while resoluteness holds open the space of factical possibilities without collapsing them into actualities. Hillman and von Franz, working from within the Jungian tradition, extend this into imaginal and archetypal registers: the image that cannot be lived, the wooden egg that cannot hatch, becomes a ‘rigidly held possibility that is in fact no possibility at all.’ McGilchrist brings the concept into neuro-cosmological territory, drawing on Bergson’s distinction between two kinds of potential and insisting that creativity is predicated on uncertainty—the refusal of determinism. Corbin’s ontological reading of actualized possibility in Avicennan terms adds a mystical valence: every possibility is already real by virtue of its sufficient cause. Across these voices runs a shared tension: possibility as genuine openness versus possibility as pseudo-option that forecloses authentic becoming.
in concernfully Being out for something possible, there is a tendency to annihilate the possibility of the possible by making it available to us.
Heidegger argues that practical concern characteristically destroys genuine possibility by converting it into actualized equipment, thus foreclosing the openness that authentic existence requires.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
death must be conceived as one’s ownmost possibility, non-relational, formal inf
Heidegger establishes death as the paradigmatic, non-relational, ownmost possibility that structures authentic Being-towards-death and grounds Dasein’s wholeness.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
resoluteness must be held open and free for the current factical possibility. The certainty of the resolution signifies that one holds oneself free for the possibility of taking it back
Heidegger shows that authentic resoluteness does not fix possibility into rigid certainty but maintains itself in open readiness for the ever-shifting factical situation.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
“Existence” means a potentiality-for-Being… whatever totality is possible for Dasein.
Heidegger identifies existence itself with potentiality-for-Being, making possibility constitutive of Dasein’s mode of being rather than a property it occasionally possesses.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
the handing down of a heritage constitutes itself in resoluteness. The more authentically Dasein resolves… it understands itself unambiguously in terms of its ownmost distinctive possibility
Heidegger links the authentic inheritance of historical heritage to resolute self-understanding through one’s ownmost possibility, binding temporality, thrownness, and possibility together.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
To be human is to live suspended between danger and opportunity… Bergson distinguishes between two ideas of potential.
McGilchrist, via Bergson and Smolin, argues that genuine possibility requires living within temporal uncertainty rather than seeking to eliminate risk through deterministic control.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
Creativity is predicated on uncertainty. Strive for certainty and you kill creativity.
McGilchrist presents the acceptance of irreducible uncertainty as the precondition for creative possibility, framing the suppression of openness as ontologically destructive.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
There is actualized possibility, and every possibility to be actualized necessarily exists from the very fact that its perfect cause, its sufficient reason, is give
Corbin reads Avicennan ontology to abolish mere contingency: every possibility already has real necessity through its sufficient cause, reframing actualization as a metaphysical revelation rather than a chance event.
, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, 1971thesis
It is a rigidly held ‘possibility’ that is in fact no possibility at all!
Harding, through dream analysis, demonstrates that a psychologically fixed ‘possibility’ is a psychological pseudo-option—a wooden egg that forecloses genuine becoming.
, the way of all women, 1970thesis
Hopelessness, for instance, does not tear Dasein away from its possibilities, but is only one of its own modes of Being towards these possibilities.
Heidegger clarifies that even hopelessness remains a way of relating to possibility, not an escape from it, underscoring that Dasein cannot be stripped of its structural relation to its own possibilities.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
on the basis of such understanding, a Dasein can, in existing, develop the different possibilities of sight, of looking around, and of just looking.
Heidegger grounds the various modes of theoretical and circumspective cognition in the existential structure of understanding, which always operates through Dasein’s projection upon possibilities.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
we talked about the possibility that the world also had some okay aspects to it and that it was possible for her to be effective and have some influence.
Greene illustrates therapeutic work as the expansion of a client’s life-statement to include newly conceivable possibilities, demonstrating how psychological change operates through revised imaginings of what is possible.
, The Development of Personality: Seminars in Psychological Astrology, Volume 1, 1987supporting
My aim, however, is not to refute the belief in the logical possibility of zombies, as it were head-on.
Thompson invokes the modality of logical possibility in a phenomenological argument, using the zombie scenario to probe the constitutive relationship between bodily experience and perceptual function.
, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, 2007supporting
To see the Hand of Fate in these untoward events raises their importance and gives pause for reflection. To believe, however, that your market timing and the one-second loss are deciding your life for you—this is fatalism.
Hillman distinguishes genuine openness to fate’s interventions from fatalism, insisting that possibility requires the agent’s continued participation rather than passive surrender.
, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, 1996supporting
It reverses and vindicates the tragic, mandatory choices we had to make in the opposite direction as we started in life.
Maté frames the reclaiming of authenticity as the retrospective vindication of foreclosed possibilities, suggesting that healing reopens developmental paths once made unavailable by adaptive constraint.
, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture, 2022aside