The Life Crisis in a Existential Perspective
Can Trauma and Crisis be Seen as an Aid in Personal Development?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.65828/sykd2a55Abstract
Do ordinary people see a crisis as something negative or as something potentially positive? In traditional psychiatric and cognitive-psychological practice, the effects of a trauma are diagnosed as "PTSD", and the condition is generally seen as a negative phenomenon that needs to be repaired. In the existential-humanistic traditions, however, a crisis is also seen as a turning point, an opening and an opportunity for new development. Otto Bollnow, Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmy van Deurzen, Ernesto Spinelli and Medard Boss have all made important theoretical contributions to this conception of crisis. These contributions will be considered in this paper. In addition, the theoretical aspects will be illustrated by empirical examples of crises as life-opening phenomena, taken from the writer's interview studies of cancer patients and other groups.
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