The Psychology of Global Crisis Through the Lens of Liminal Experience: Stuck in the Middle with SARS-CoV-2

Abstract

The concept of liminality refers to more or less devised or spontaneous transitions through which new becomings are enacted. Liminality is the experience of order transformed or structure suspended to yield anti-structure. Koselleck has traced a long heritage associated with the word ‘crisis’ and its close relative ‘critique.’ Both words derive from ancient Greek krino, meaning ‘separate,’ ‘decide,’ ‘quarrel’. With respect to crises on a global scale, Koselleck shows how already for Leibniz in the 17th century, the emerging Russian empire spelled crisis for Europe. But the word ‘crisis’ was first used in distinctively modern sense of a prognosis of the global political future by Rousseau in 1762. The history of psychology can be conceived as a series of crises with respect to its fundamental concept: experience. Social change of the kind required of humanity will mean profound changes, not just at level of practices, but also at the level of people’s mentality or ‘worldview,’ including perceptions, ideas, and desires.