An existential crisis is a stage of development at which an individual questions the very foundations of his or her life: whether his or her life has any meaning, purpose or value.[1] This issue of the meaning and purpose of existence is the topic of the philosophical school of existentialism.
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An existential crisis may result from:
An existential crisis is often provoked by a significant event in the person's life — marriage, separation, major loss, the death of a loved one, a life-threatening experience, a new love partner, psychoactive drug use, adult children leaving home, reaching a personally-significant age (turning 20, turning 30, turning 40, etc.), etc. Usually, it provokes the sufferer's introspection about personal mortality, thus revealing the psychological repression of said awareness.
An existential crisis may resemble anomie (a personal condition resulting from a lack of norms) or a midlife crisis. Sometimes, an existential crisis stems from a person's new perception of life and existence.
When a person faces the paradox of believing his or her life is important whilst thinking that human existence is meaningless and without purpose, cognitive dissonance occurs, overcoming many innate psychological and cultural defense mechanisms.
Analogously, existentialism posits that a person can and does define the meaning and purpose of their life, and therefore must choose to resolve the crisis of existence.
There is no one given therapeutic method in modern psychology known to coerce a person out of existential despair; the issue is seldom, if at all, addressed from a medical standpoint.
Peter Wessel Zapffe, a Norwegian philosopher, provided, in his work The Last Messiah, a fourfold route that he believed all self-conscious beings use in order to cope with the inherent indifference and absurdity of existence, comprising Anchoring, Isolation, Distraction, and Sublimation:
Intense vipassana meditation will usually bring about a set of experiences, referred to as the dark night of the soul by western spiritual traditions, that resemble the typical symptoms of an existential crisis.[2][3] During the "dark night", meditators become severely discouraged in regard to practice and life in general, although continuing meditation is the only known form of overcoming this difficult stage.[2]
Prince Hamlet experiences an existential crisis as a result of the death of his father. This is shown especially by Shakespeare in the famous soliloquy which starts, "To be, or not to be: that is the question...".[4]