ABSTRACT
“My boss is always in a crisis mode with his finger poised just above the panic button,” says an employee. A university president, describing the institution’s fiscal condition, asserts that “we are not quite at crisis, but we are severely challenged.” Americans are told we have a “crisis of will” in dealing with our social, economic, political, and ecological problems. What is meant by the term crisis? What images and emotions are induced by this word? The term crisis seems to induce feelings of fear associated with an equivocal situation. But what is crisis that it is associated with equivocality, and what is equivocality that it is associated with crisis? These questions are explored in this chapter.
