The Crisis Model: A Socially Useful Psychologism

The model of “crisis” is a culturally shared and widespread idea of human reactions to misfortunes such as accidents, diagnosis of disease, divorces, becoming a parent of a disabled child, and so on. The crisis model conveys the idea of coming to terms with unwanted experiences while advancing through various phases, for example, of denial, processing, and acceptance. The language of crises is integrated into Western emotional culture, particularly in the language used by caring professionals (e.g., social workers, psychologists, counselors, and health staff). Crisis talk is also frequent in the media, popular science books, and in everyday conversations when individual experiences are reported, debated, or discussed. Investigating the specific local culture of the Swedish world of the Deaf, to which families whose children have been diagnosed deaf belong, we aimed to extend the current understanding of crisis. How do parents and professionals make use of the crisis model when speaking about their own experiences, as well as the experiences of others? We observed that the crisis model served as a prop in such talk; it was used to compare, defend, criticize, and explain the behavior of others, but also to account for one’s own emotions and behavior. In the process, locally relevant identities and categorizations of others were constructed. The crisis model was originally a way of “diagnosing” parents’ emotional experiences when they learned about their children being deaf, but it has proven useful for other purposes in a context with abundant ideological differences.