The Questionnaire Measurement of Spiritual Emergency

Ten questionnaire subscales with a grand total of 84 items were developed to measure 10 different types of spiritual emergency. Also developed was an Experience of Psychotic Symptoms Scale (EPSS). One hundred and nine persons from the general public in Australia were administered an omnibus questionnaire, together with the EPSS, three validity questions relevant to psychosis, and a lie scale. Psychometric properties for the EPSS and the 10 Spiritual Emergency Subscales were calculated. All 10 Subscales correlated significantly positively and highly with the EPSS. The Subscales inter-correlated positively and mostly highly, and a factor analysis showed that there was a single underlying factor that we may call ‘‘spiritual emergency.’’ This factor correlated .76 with experience of psychotic symptoms. There is clearly, as previously suspected, a close link between psychosis and spiritual emergency: it may be suggested that either spiritual emergency is nothing but psychosis, or psychosis is nothing but spiritual emergency.