OPENTURE

n.

The tendency to not seek a resolution or ending for an emotionally difficult experience. Also:open-ture. [cf.closure]

To use an old cliché of therapy-speak, we spend too much of our lives seeking "closure"....What we need more of, instead, is what the psychologist Paul Pearsall called "openture". Yes, it's an awkward neologism; but its very awkwardness is a reminder of the spirit that it expresses, which includes embracing imperfection, and easing up on the search for neat solutions.

—Oliver Burkeman, " The Hunt for Happy: http://www.theschooloflife.com/blog/2013/02/the-hunt-for-happy/",The School of Life, March 1, 2013, quoted fromThe Antidote, Faber & Faber, November 13, 2012

If you choose a life of awe, you will surrender the solace of certitude.You will live with more 'open-ture' than closure and, unless you can learn to find a strange, exciting comfort in being presented with and grappling with the tremendous mysteries life offers, you will seldom feel calm or at ease for very long.

—Paul Pearsall,Awe: http://books.google.com/books?id=N5D7zn9Xb10C&pg=PA3&dq=%22open-ture%22&hl=en, Health Communications, September 17, 2007

Still, the writer and director [Joss Whedon] jokingly cautions that Serenity is not the start of a trilogy. "If I never got to shoot anything of Serenity again, I would still feel that I had told my story and I had given the actors what they needed and the fans what they needed and myself what I needed. There is closure here. But having killed Buffy twice, I'm also a great proponent of 'openture."

—Daniel Eagan, "Finding Serenity,"Film Journal International, September 1, 2005

The first citation describesopentureas an "awkward neologism" (what I call anawkword), and that it is. It's also awkward etymologically, sinceclosureis essentially a blend ofcloseand the suffix-ure(used to denote an action or process), so by analogyopenturemust beopent+-ure. Opent? Let the scratching of the heads begin.

post-mortem divorce

psychache

therapy generation

unwedding ceremony

Psychology