The Crisis of Meaning as a Turning Point in Human Life
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32626/2227-6246.2019-45.405-428Keywords:
crisis of the meaning of life, hardiness, meaning of life, commitment, existential neurosis, crisis of senselessness.Abstract
The article is devoted to the theoretical analysis of the phenomenon of crisis
of the meaning of life, its peculiarities, manifestations and consequences for
life of the personality, as well as hardiness as a possible barrier to the acute
and prolonged human experience of the crisis of the meaning of life (similarly
to coping the stress and transforming it into the possibility of learning lessons
from its passing and personal growth).
It is noted that the crisis of the meaning of life is the most important
event on the life path of the personality, it is experienced particularly acute,
because of the power of in0xFB02uence on a person, his / her further life and the
possible catastrophic consequences, although it occurs less ofetn than other
personal crises.
The views on the crisis of the meaning of life and its speci0xFB01cs of famous
foreign psychologists (F. Ye. Vasiliuk, K. V. Karpinskyi, S. Maddi, V. Frankl,
V. E. Chudnovsky, I. Yalom etc.) were considered. It is noted that what V. Frankl
called the experience of an existential vacuum with its corresponding conse-
quences, I. Yalom – a crisis of meaning or a crisis of senselessness, and S. Mad-
dy – a «small death» or existential neurosis, K.V. Karpinskyi uses the name of
the crisis of the meaning of life, which is understood as a semantic crisis in the
development of personality, which blocks primarily the semantic regulation
and processes of creation of sense of the individual life path and de0xFB01nes its
main manifestations, the reason for which are the problems of searching or
realizing of the meaning of life of personality.
It is revealed that the crisis of the meaning of life is experienced by a
human as a long and / or sharp internal con0xFB02ict between the desirable (vi-
tally necessary, super important for him) and objectively possible event. At
this time, the man, even imagining the way to achieve the desire, can’t always
use it, this makes him/her accept everything as it is, and try to cope with the
situation. It is impossible to separate internal and external causes, in the expe-
riencing the crisis of the meaning of life, since it is always experienced at the
subjective level.
It is concluded that hardiness can be used to overcome the crisis of the
meaning of life of the personality, minimizing its negative consequences and
transforming it into the possibility of personality’s development through
learning of life lessons and 0xFB01nding a new personal sense of life.
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