About the ABYSS LAB

The ABYSS Lab (founded in 2021) is York University's very own graduate lab of existential psychology. Housed within the Positive Psychology Lab, the ABYSS team primarily investigates how the givens of existence shape our daily experience, impact our well-being, and contribute to the process of self-determination. What are the givens of existence? Birth. Death. Freedom. Isolation. Meaning. Suffering.

Our mission statement is to revitalize the existential framework within psychological science.

"Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility."

Søren Kierkegaard

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"This small moment in the history of the universe, this is ours... Let's do everything with it. Everything."

Jean-Paul Sartre

"As soon as man comes to life, he is at once old enough to die."

Martin Heidegger

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"In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer."

Albert Camus

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"Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... For when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

Friedrich Nietzsche

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“The river is everywhere.”

Hermann Hesse

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“Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”

Franz Kafka

“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”

Fyodor Dostoevsky