Crisis:

Colin DeYoung:

"In many situations, only minor mismatches occur, and the questions of what is happening and what should be done may be answered with relative ease; interpretations can be adjusted and alternative strategies deployed without calling major goals or interpretative structures into question. Occasionally, however, sufficiently dramatic mismatches occur that one must abandon interpretations, strategies, and goals that have been stable enough to be considered characteristic adaptations. ... Such an event can plunge the individual into chaos, which is the equivalent to a sharp increase in psychological entropy and is accompanied by some amount of emotional, motivational, cognitive, and behavioral dysregulation. ... At this juncture, the personality system has, to some degree, disintegrated, in the literal sense of losing integration. Its characteristic adaptations are no longer providing coherent, non-conflicting answers to the questions of what is happening and what should be done."