Rollo May

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Rollo May (April 21, 1909, Ada, Ohio - October 22, 1994, Tiburon, California) was the best known American existential psychologist, authoring the influential book Love and Will in 1969.

Although he is often associated with humanistic psychology, he differs from other humanistic psychologists such as Maslow or Rogers in showing a sharper awareness of the tragic dimensions of human existence. May was a close friend of the U.S. German-born theologian Paul Tillich. His works include Love and Will and The Courage to Create, the latter title honoring Tillich's The Courage to Be.

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[edit] Biography

May experienced a difficult childhood, with his parents divorcing and his sister suffering a mental breakdown. His educational odyssey took him to Michigan State College and Oberlin College for a bachelor's degree, teaching for a time in Greece, to Union Theological Seminary for a BD in 1938, and finally to Columbia University for a PhD in clinical psychology in 1949.

He spent the closing years of his life in Tiburon on the San Francisco Bay, where he died in October of 1994.

[edit] Accomplishments

May was influenced by American humanism, and interested in reconciling existential psychology with other approaches, especially Freud’s.

May uses some traditional existential terms in a slightly different fashion than others, and he invents new words for traditional existentialist concepts. Destiny, for example, could be "thrownness" combined with "fallenness"— the part of our lives that is determined for us, for the purpose of creating our lives. He also used the word "courage" to signify authenticity in facing one’s anxiety and rising above it.

He saw certain "stages" of development:

  • Innocence – the pre-egoic, pre-self-conscious stage of the infant. The innocent is only doing what he or she must do. However, an innocent does have a degree of will in the sense of a drive to fulfill needs.
  • Rebellion – the rebellious person wants freedom, but has yet no full understanding of the responsibility that goes with it.
  • Decision- The person is in a transition stage in their life where they need to break away from their parents and settle into the ordinary stage. In this stage they they must decided what path their life will take along with fulfilling rebellious needs from the rebellious stage.
  • Ordinary – the normal adult ego learned responsibility, but finds it too demanding, and so seeks refuge in conformity and traditional values.
  • Creative – the authentic adult, the existential stage, beyond ego and self-actualizing. This is the person who, accepting destiny, faces anxiety with courage.[citation needed]

These are not stages in the traditional sense. A child may certainly be innocent, ordinary or creative at times; an adult may be rebellious. The only attachment to certain ages is in terms of salience: rebelliousness stands out in the two year old and the teenager.

May perceived the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as commercialization of sex and pornography have influenced society and planted the idea in the minds of adults that love and sex are no longer directly associated. According to May, emotion has become separated from reason, making it socially acceptable to seek sexual relationships and avoid the natural drive to relate to another person and create new life. May believed the awakening of sexual freedoms can lead modern society to dodge awakenings at higher levels. May suggests that the only way to turn around the cynical ideas that characterize our generation is to rediscover the importance of caring for another, which May describes as the opposite of apathy.

His first book, The Meaning of Anxiety, was based on his doctoral dissertation, which in turn was based on his reading of the 19th century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. His definition of anxiety is "the apprehension cued off by a threat to some value which the individual holds essential to his existence as a self" (1967, p. 72.) He also quotes Kierkegaard: "Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom". In 1956, he edited the book Existence with Ernest Angel and Henri Ellenberger. Existence helped introduce existential psychology to the US.

[edit] Quotes by Rollo May

"Hate is not the opposite of love. Apathy is."

"If we admit our depression openly and freely, those around us get from it an experience of freedom rather than the depression itself."

"Care is a state in which something does matter; it is the source of human tenderness."

"Creativity is not merely the innocent spontaneity of our youth and childhood; it must also be married to the passion of the adult human being, which is a passion to live beyond one's death."

"Depression is the inability to construct a future."

"Freedom is man's capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves."

"If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself."

"It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way."

"It requires greater courage to preserve inner freedom, to move on in one's inward journey into new realms, than to stand defiantly for outer freedom. It is often easier to play the martyr, as it is to be rash in battle."

"Joy, rather than happiness, is the goal of life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings. It is based on the experience of one's identity as a being of worth and dignity."

"Life comes from physical survival; but the good life comes from what we care about."

"The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it's not without doubt but in spite of doubt."

"What if imagination and art are not frosting at all, but the fountainhead of human experience."

Taken from www.brainyquote.com.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] External links

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