Spiritual crises: Fundamentals for understanding a multifacetted phenomenon

Abstract

In recent decades, a steadily growing range of psychospiritual, consciousness-altering and transformative practices from a wide variety of historical, cultural and social contexts has become increasingly accessible in Western societies. This has been accompanied by an increase in specific, clinically relevant phenomena, which Stanislav and Christina Grof have conceptualized as spiritual emergencies. Subsequently, such phenomena have been described using other terms and conceptualizations, such as “crises of consciousness development”, “transpersonal pathologies”, “transformative crises”, “spiritual problems” or “emergent crises”. A key postulate of the associated perspectives is that, although crisis situations of this kind may entail stress and risk, they nevertheless have an inherent positive, transformative potential. This is also linked to the concern to prevent premature pathologization of such states. Last but not least, against the background of extended developmental psychological models, such states are understood as critical phase transitions towards post-conventional or transpersonal stages of self and consciousness development. This article provides an overview of the historical development and fundamental aspects of the subject of spiritual crisis. The focus is on the clinical-psychotherapeutic implications of such processes.