SPIRITUAL EMERGENCY AND SPIRITUAL EMERGENCE:
	Differentiation and Interplay, by Dr. Bonnie A. Kane (UMI Dissertation Publishing, 2005).

The terms spiritual emergency and spiritual emergence are often sharply contrasted in the psychological literature that employs them. Both define interactions of an individual’s psyche with the divine or transcendent or “higher” self. Spiritual emergency is usually cast as sudden, unintended, unmanageable, and externally stimulated, while spiritual emergence is depicted as gradual, intended, manageable, and internally motivated. This study attempted to discover if there is instead a symbiotic relationship between these two modes of spiritual experience as far as they impact the psyche, if there is an interplay between them, and in what ways it makes sense to differentiate between them.

Six participants were interviewed using the case-study method, exploring seven aspects of spiritual emergency and spiritual emergence: degree of trauma sustained; trigger for the spiritual emergency or spiritual emergence; prior religious or spiritual background; the actual experience of emergency or emergence; type and extent of therapy obtained before, during, and after the experience; integration of the experience into the current life of the participant; and the interaction, if any, between the features of spiritual emergency and spiritual emergence.

Existing literature implies that certain assumptions–such as affective discomfort, difficulty undergoing the process, speed of onset, preparedness for the experience, intensity or dramatic quality of the experience, or susceptibility to psychological crises outside of a spiritual component–separate spiritual emergency from spiritual emergence. The interviews in this research did not find this to be the case. In contrast, this study presents the tentative conclusion that the only feature separating spiritual emergency from spiritual emergence is the presence of a crisis. The results of this study suggest that in clinical treatment there needs to be greater awareness of the prevalence of individuals undergoing self-reported spiritual emergencies or spiritual emergences, a further definition of the contours of these experiences, and an enhanced understanding of ways in which these experiences can be integrated into clients’ everyday lives.