Spiritual Сrisis as a Subject of Psychological Research

In the field of psychological knowledge, disputes about the possibility of studying spiritual phenomena within the framework of scientific discourse have remained a minefield of the academic environment for many decades. One of such phenomena is the concept of spiritual crisis, which, despite the growing interest in it from the side of transpersonal approaches, remains a representative of the marginal zone of personality psychology due to the difficulties associated with the operationalization of this construct. In this work, we aim to analyze the psychological structure of experiencing a spiritual crisis and its relationship with personal and spiritual indicators. Based on the theoretical and methodological ideas of L.S. Vygotsky and F.E. Vasilyuk, a typology of transient life worlds (spiritual crises) was proposed, the components of which are highlighted based on the criteria for the presence of spiritual experience and a culturally determined system of its description (mythologeme). The proposed typology includes mythological, religious, symbolic and metaphorical spiritual crises. The developed typology was confirmed and supplemented with empirically grounded markers based on data from 31 in-depth interviews. In addition, a quantitative study was conducted, which found that respondents in current spiritual crisis perform significantly lower results on indicators related to subjective well-being and higher levels of psychological distress compared to those who do not experience spiritual crisis at the moment. The results obtained can be used in psychological counseling for persons in a spiritual crisis.