Crisis Theory

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Crisis Theory

• By
• Ivor Browne

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Crisis Definitions

• A Crisis may be viewed as the transitional period
  presenting an individual with, on the one hand,
  an opportunity for personality growth or
  maturation and, on the other, a risk of adverse
  affect with increased vulnerability to subsequent
  stress.

• W Thomas(1909) described Crisis as a threat, a
  challenge, a strain on the intention, a call to
  new action. Yet it need not always be acute or
  extreme. Of course a crisis may be so serious as
  to kill the organism or destroy the group, or it
  may result in failure or deterioration. But
  Crisis is not to be regarded as habitually
  violent. It is simply a disturbance of habit and
  may be no more than an incident, a stimulation, a
  suggestion.

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Crisis Definitions

• Erikson(1965) Viewed personality development as
  a succession of differentiated phases, each
  qualitatively different from its predecessor.
  Between one phase and the next are periods
  characterised by cognitive and affective upset.

• Gerald Caplan Refers to Crisis as an upset in
  the steady state A crisis is provoked when an
  individual, faced with an obstacle to important
  life goals, finds that it is for the time being
  insurmountable through the utilisation of
  customary methods of problem solving

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Accidental Crises

• Traumatic events which might or might not happen
  at a given time. These could either be major
  catastrophes such as earthquakes, floods, etc.,
  which could affect a whole section of society.
  Or individual crises like a child losing its
  mother at an early age, even the loss of a job or
  a broken relationship, or any other sudden tragic
  event.

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Developmental Crises

• Erikson calls these developmental crises as
  distinct from accidental crises associated with
  various life hazards
• Events such as birth, which is a crisis both for
  the mother and the infant, the onset of puberty
  and adolescence, marriage, the menopause, and so
  on as we progress through the biological stages
  of life. These differ from accidental crisis
  in that they necessarily occur at a given point
  in development and everyone has to pass through
  them.

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Socio-cultural Crises

• These are situations like facing the first day at
  school, the Leaving Certificate, or marriage.
• Such situations are not part of our biological
  development, yet, we have structured our society
  so that, unless these hurdles are overcome, our
  future is severely curtailed.
• Thus we have institutionalised certain forms of
  crisis that, unless successfully dealt with, can
  have very deleterious effects.
• .

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A Turning Point

• . A major crisis can often represent a turning
  point in a persons life. It is a hurdle, that
  has to be surmounted if the person is to continue
  on satisfactorily through life. If a crisis can
  be handled successfully then the person will be
  more mature as a result. But if it cannot be
  overcome then some maladaptive pathway is likely
  to develop and this often signals the onset of
  what later becomes a formal mental illness.

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Two Main forms of Crisis which require a
different Response

• - The type of crisis involved in facing an
  examination, tackling a new job, or the struggle
  in late adolescence to leave ones family of
  origin and become independent.
• - This kind of crisis demands action,, having
  the courage to face the situation and overcome
  it.

• - The other form is one which involves hurt or
  loss, such as the death of someone close to us,
  or to suffer rape or sexual abuse.
• - In these situations the response required,
  is to feel the pain and work through emotion
  which is appropriate to the situation and in this
  way resolve it

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Awareness of the significance of Life Crises

• Until I went to the States in 1960 and was
  exposed to these ideas, there was no awareness in
  Ireland or Britain of the significance of life
  crises. People were simply diagnosed as
  suffering from endogenous depression or
  schizophrenia Etc., with no sense of how these
  related to the crises that they had encountered,
  or how these had developed over time.

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Significance of Life Crises (cont.)

• - Now some 40 years later crisis intervention
  is generally accepted. But its relation to
  development of mental illness later is still not
  well understood.
• - Now, in major catastrophes like an air
  disaster or a terrorist bomb, there is often an
  exaggerated response. Droves of crisis
  counsellors descend on the scene when most people
  are in a state of shock and not in any sense
  ready to deal with the emotional effects of the
  trauma.

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Intervention when the Time is Right

• Later, when the time is right, and they feel safe
  enough to be able to emotionally react, crisis
  intervention can begin and they can be helped to
  integrate the pain and anguish surrounding what
  happened.
• Even so psychiatric diagnosis is still treated as
  something unrelated to environmental adaptation,
  or to the developmental history of the person,
  and past crises and traumas are ignored. It is
  as if these so-called illnesses existed outside
  of time, as some kind of rarefied independent
  entities

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Determinism

• The traditional view was that if all the
  influences, genetic and developmental that went
  to form the person entering adolescence, could be
  known, then one could say with certainty how he
  would react. However, because it is never
  possible to know all of these influences fully we
  could not make such deterministic predictions.

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Indeterminism

• Over the past 50 years research by Prigogine and
  others has demonstrated unequivocally that even
  if we knew all of the inputs and influences
  playing on an adolescent, we would still not be
  able to say with certainty how the situation
  would evolve.
• There is a fundamental indeterminacy in any
  complex system because the essential causeof
  how a living system will behave, lies within that
  system itself. Although it is undoubtedly
  influenced by its past history, once it reaches a
  crisis point, no one can say with certainty how
  it will behave.

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Indeterminism
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Phases of a Crisis

• Phase 1 Initial rise in tension from the impact
  of the stimulus calls forth habitual problem
  solving responses.
• Phase 2 Lack of success and continuation of
  stimulus is associated with increasing upset and
  ineffectuality.
• Phase 3Further rise in tension acts as a
  powerful internal stimulus and calls out
  emergency problem solving mechanisms - novel
  methods to attack the problem, trial and error,
  and attempts to define the problem in a new way.

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Phases of a crisis (cont.)

• Phase 4 As tension mounts beyond a further
  threshold, its burden increases to breaking
  point.
• To avoid major disorganisation the person employs
  restitutive methods to reduce anxiety and opens
  up maladaptive pathways.
• These can lead eventually to the development of
  various psychiatric syndromes.

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Crisis Theory

• By Ivor Browne

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Crisis Intervention

• 1. Family, friends or neighbours may encourage
  adaptive responses, but in other instances may
  reinforce maladaptive responses e.g. in the
  denial of grief.
• 2. A person may turn for help to front-line
  professionals in the community, i.e. clergy,
  general practitioners, police, public health
  nurses, solicitors, etc.

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Intervention (cont.)

• 3. During a crisis, an individual experiences a
  heightened desire for help, and the signs of
  distress evoke a helping response from those
  around, which seems like a primitive biosocial
  reaction.
• 4. During a crisis a person is more susceptible
  to influence by others. When the forces are
  teetering in the balance, a relatively minor
  intervention may weigh them down to one side or
  the other.

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Crisis Intervention (cont.)

• 5. Direct Psychiatric intervention, but this is
  rare. Psychiatrists could be more effective by
  working through other professionals. This could
  be an effective use of their time, enabling them
  to reach people closer to the original crisis,
  rather than when illnesses have become fully
  defined and are relatively chronic.
  Unfortunately in the present system this seldom
  happens.

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Outcome of a Life Crisis

• Will depend on 1) Whether there were similar
  events previously in a persons life history,
  which remained unresolved. e.g. where one is
  faced with the death of a loved one, was there an
  earlier death which was never healed. This is
  why to work through a life crisis is of such key
  importance because, not only will the current
  situation be resolved, but any past traumatic
  events of a similar nature will also be dealt
  with.

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Crisis outcome (cont.)

• 2) The culture and family background will
  also effect the outcome of a life crisis. If a
  person comes from a background which tends to
  deny expression of emotion, this will affect
  their capacity to feel the pain necessary to
  resolve the situation.
• 3) Family advice can be helpful or
  destructive depending on whether it helps a
  person to fully experience what has happened, or
  enables them to deny the emotional implications
  of the crisis.

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Crisis - Growth or failure

• Not a negative phenomenon, it can be just as
  much an opportunity for personality growth and
  development. The outcome of a crisis therefore
  depends on how it is handled and whether the
  person manages to deal with it effectively.
  Indeed, if we did not have to face the stress of
  life crises, we would not develop at all.