ROLLO MAY

(1909 1994)
Background of Rollo
Resse May
Rollo Reese May was
born April 21, 1909, in
Ada, Ohio. His childhood
was not particularly
pleasant: His parents
didnt get along and
eventually divorced, and
his sister had a
psychotic breakdown.
Background of Rollo Resse May
After a brief stint at Michigan State
(he was asked to leave because of
his involvement with a
radicalstudent magazine), he
attended OberlinCollege in Ohio,
where he received his bachelors
degree.
After graduation, he went to
Greece, where hetaught
Englishat Anatolia College for
three years. During this period, he
Background of Rollo Resse May

When he returned to the US, he

enteredUnion Theological
Seminaryand became friends with
one ofhis teachers, Paul Tillich, the
existentialist theologian, who would
have a profound effect on his
thinking. May received his Bachelor
Degree in 1938.
May suffered from tuberculosis, and
had to spend three years in a
sanatorium. This was probably
theturning pointof his life. While he
Background of Rollo Resse May

Among the literature he read were the

writings of Soren Kierkegaard, the
Danish religious writer who inspired
much of the existential movement, and
provided the inspiration for Mays
theory.
He went on to study psychoanalysis at
White Institute, where he met people
such as Harry Stack Sullivan and Erich
Fromm. And finally, he went to
Columbia University inNew York, where
Background of Rollo Resse May
After receiving his PhD, he
went on to teach at a
variety of top schools. In
1958, he edited, with
Ernest Angel and Henri
Ellenberger, the book
Existence, which
introduced existential
psychology to the US. He
spent the last years of his
Influences and psychological
background
Rollo May is the best known American
existential psychologist. Much of his
thinking can be understood by reading
about existentialism in general, and the
overlap between his ideas and the ideas of
Ludwig Binswanger is great.
Nevertheless, he is a little off of the
mainstream in that he was more
influenced by American humanism than
the Europeans, and more interested in
reconciling existential psychology with
other approaches, especially Freuds.
BASIC CONCEPT OF ROLLO MAY
BASIC CONCEPT OF ROLLO MAY
Influences and psychological
background
May uses some traditional existential terms
slightly differently than others, and invents
new words for some of existentialisms old
ideas. Destiny, for example, is roughly the
same as thrownness combined with
fallenness. It is that part of our lives that is
determined for us, our raw materials, if you
like, for the project of creating our lives.
Another example is the word courage, which
he uses more often than the traditional term
"authenticity" to mean facing ones anxiety
and rising above it.
 Concept of his theory
Rollo May combined psychoanalytic traditions of
psychology and the existentialist movement to
explain his view of psychology.
WHAT IS THE EXISTENTIALIST VIEW?
The Existentialists philosophy
emphasizes "existence" rather than "essence". It
suggests that there is no truth or reality except as we
participate in it. Knowledge is an act of doing.
The Latin word "exsistere", which means "to
standout or "to emerge", and the existential approach
focuses upon the human being as he or she is
emerging and becoming.
 Concept of his theory

Ontology
the study of being, the
essence of people in
general, human nature
Dasein
Being in the world; the
emphasis is on an individual's
existence at a certain time
 Concept of his theory

Modes of existence
1. umwelt
objective aspects of the
internal and external
environment (nature);
what the physical and
biological sciences study
 Concept of his theory

Modes of existence

2. Mitwelt
Social relationships,
interpersonal
relationships
 Concept of his theory

Modes of existence

3. Eigenwelt
self-awareness, the
subjective world of the
self
 OUR PREDICAMENT
Rollo points out that the central
problem that we face is a feeling
of "powerlessness",
a"pervasiveconviction that the
individual cannot do anything
effective in the face of enormous
cultural, social, and economic
problems". Our feelings of
powerlessness are compounded
by anxiety and the loss of
POWERLESSNESS
In the early 1950s, May observed many
patients who came to see him were suffering
from inner feelings of emptiness. May
predicted that these experiences of emptiness
and powerlessness would in time increase
and of course it did.
The 1970s saw considerable talk
about human potentialities, yet, very little
confidence on the part of the individual to
make a difference. This feeling of
powerlessness continued throughout the
1980s and even into the 1990s. ".
Example:
The Vietnam War, unrest in the Middle
East, the threat of nuclear War
With our increase in technology, power
has become impersonal, an autonomous
force acting on its own behalf. No one
person or group feels capable of
exercising significant power.
Our feeling of powerlessness
subsequently leads to "Anxiety".
Anxiety is a major focus of
Rollo May and is the subject
of his work "The Meaning of
Anxiety". He defines it as "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".
anxiety developed strongly after his
time in the sanatorium when he
had tuberculosis. His own feelings
of depersonalization and isolation
as well as watching others deal
with fear and anxiety gave him
important insight into the subject.
He concluded that anxiety is
essential to an individual's growth
and in fact contributes to what it
means to be human. This is a way
that humans enact their freedom to
He is unwavering in the importance of
anxiety, feelings of threat and
powerlessness because it gives humans
the freedom to act courageously as
opposed to conforming to be comfortable
This struggle gives humans the
opportunity to live life to the fullest
(Friedman). One way in which Rollo
proposes to fight anxiety is by displacing
anxiety to fear as he believes that
anxiety seeks to become fear.[7]He
claims that by shifting anxiety to a fear,
one can therefore discover incentives to
either avoid the feared object or find the
STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
REDISCOVERING SELFHOOD
Rediscovering selfhoodinvolves
rediscovering our own feelings and
desires and fighting against those
things that prevent us from feeling
May wanting.
and suggests four stages of consciousness of
self:
1. Innocence --is before consciousness of self is
born, the pre-egoic, pre-self-conscious stage of the
infant. The innocent is premoral, i.e. is neither bad
nor good. Like a wild animal who kills to eat, the
innocent is only doing what he or she must do. But
an innocent does have a degree of will in the sense of
a drive to fulfil their needs!
2. Rebellion -- the childhood and adolescent
stage of developing ones ego or self-
consciousness by means of contrast with adults,
from the no of the two year old to the no way
of the teenager. The rebellious person wants
freedom, but has as yet no full understanding of
the responsibility that goes with it. The teenager
may want to spend their allowance in any way
they choose -- yet they still expect the parent to
provide the money, and will complain about
unfairness if they don't get it!
 Decision:a transitional stage
during which a teenager or young
adult makes decisions about his
or her life, while seeking further
independence from her parents.
3. Ordinary consciousness of self-- the
normal adult ego, conventional and a
little boring, perhaps. They have
learned responsibility, but find it too
demanding, and so seek refuge in
conformity and traditional values.
4. Creative consciousness of self --
the authentic adult, the existential stage,
beyond ego and self-actualizing. This is
the person who, accepting destiny,
faces anxiety with courage!
Not everyone achieves each level of
consciousness. The fourth stage, is
achieved only rarely, and it is
somewhat analogous to Maslows self
actualization stage.
THE GOALS OF INTEGRATION
1. Integrating the daimonic
2. Experiencing our power
3. Rediscovering care
4. Facing intentionality
5. Freedom and Destiny
6. Courage and creativity
7. Developing a new myth
Love and Will
Many of Mays unique ideas can be
found in the book , Love and Will.
In his efforts at reconciling Freud
and the existentialists, he turns his
attention to motivation. His basic
motivational construct is the
daimonic.
Love and Will
The daimonic is the entire system of
motives, different for each individual. It is
composed of a collection of specific motives
called daimons.
The word daimon is from the Greek, and
means little god. It comes to us as demon,
with a very negative connotation. But
originally, a daimon could be bad or good.
Daimons include lower needs, such as food
and sex, as well as higher needs, such as
love.
Basically, he says, a daimon is anything
that can take over the person, a
situation he refers to as daimonic
possession. It is then, when the
balance among daimons is disrupted,
that they should be considered evil --
as the phrase implies! This idea is
similar to Binswanger's idea of themes,
or Horney's idea of coping strategies.
For May, one of the most important daimons
is eros. Eros is love (not sex), and in Greek
mythology was a minor god pictured as a young
man. Later, Eros would be transformed into that
annoying little pest, Cupid. May understood love
as the need we have to become one with another
person, and refers to an ancient Greek story by
Aristophanes: People were originally four-legged,
four-armed, two-headed creatures. When we
became a little too prideful, the gods split us in two,
male and female, and cursed us with the never-
ending desire to recover our missing half! like any
daimon, eros is a good thing until it takes over the
personality, until we become obsessed with it.
Another important concept for May is will:
The ability to organize oneself in order to
achieve ones goals. This makes will roughly
synonymous with ego and reality-testing, but
with its own store of energy, as in ego
psychology. May hints that will, too, is a
daimon that can potentially take over the
person.
Another definition of will is the ability to
make wishes come true. Wishes are playful
imaginings of possibilities, and are
manifestations of our daimons. Many wishes,
of course, come from eros. But they require
will to make them happen!
May has three personality types coming
out of our relative supply,, .of our wishes
for love and the will to realize them. .

1. neo-Puritan, who is all will, but no

love. They have amazing self-discipline,
and can make things happen... but they
have no wishes to act upon. So they
become anal and perfectionistic, but empty
and dried-up.
2. The second type he refers to as infantile.
They are all wishes but no will. Filled with
dreams and desires, they dont have the self-
discipline to make anything of their dreams
and desires, and so become dependent and
conformist. They love, but their love means
little. Perhaps Homer Simpson is the clearest
example!
3. The last type is the "creative" type. May
recommends, wisely, that we should cultivate
a balance of these two aspects of our
personalities. He said Mans task is to unite
love and will.
Love
May's thoughts on love are
documented mainly byLove and
Will, which focuses on love and
sex in human behavior and in
which he specifies five particular
types of love. He believes that
they should not be separate, but
that society has separated love
and sex into two different
ideologies.
Sex: Lust, tension release;
Eros: Procreative love, savoring,
experiential;
Philia: Brotherly love, liking;
Agape: Unselfish love, devotion
to the welfare of others;
Authentic love : Incorporates all
other types of love
May particularly investigated and
criticized the "Sexual Revolution"
in the 1960s, in which many
individuals were exploring their
sexuality. "Free sex" was
replacing the ideology of free
love. May explains that love is
intentionally willed by an
individual, whereas sexual desire
is the complete opposite. Love is
real human instinct reflected
May then shows that to give in to these
impulses does not actually make one
free, but to resist these impulses is the
meaning of being free. May perceived
the Hippie subculture and sexual mores
of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as
commercialization of sex and
pornography, as having influenced
society such that people believed that
love and sex are no longer associated
directly. According to May, emotion has
become separated from reason, making
it acceptable socially to seek sexual
May believed that sexual freedom
can cause modern society to neglect
more important psychological
developments. May suggests that
the only way to remedy the cynical
ideas that characterize our times is
to rediscover the importance of
caring for another, which May
describes as the opposite of apathy.
Myths
Mays last book was The Cry for Myth. He
pointed out that a big problem in the
twentieth century was our loss of values.
All the different values around us lead us to
doubt all values. May says we have to
create our own values, each of us
individually. This, of course, is difficult to
say the least. So we need help, not forced
on us, but offered up for us to use as our
will.
Entermyths, stories that
help us to make sense out
of our lives, guiding
narratives. They resemble
to some extent Jungs
archetypes, but they can be
conscious and unconscious,
collective and personal. A
good example is how many
people live their lives based
Criticism of modern psychotherapy[
May believed that psychotherapists in the late
1900s had fractured away from the Jungian,
Freudian and other influencing psychoanalytic
thought and started creating their own
'gimmicks' causing a crisis within the world of
psychotherapy. These gimmicks were said to
put too much stock into the self where the real
focus needed to be looking at 'man in the
world'. To accomplish this, May pushed for the
use of existential therapy over individually
created techniques for psychotherapy .
Mays theory is not a scientific
theory of personality giving us
a series of hypotheses that
may be tested by an empirical
procedure. Instead he
suggested a philosophical
picture of human nature that is
coherent, relevant,
comprehensive, and
compelling.
The therapeutic process of the
existentialists seeks to understand the
patients mode of being in the world. It's the
context that distinguishes the existential
approach rather than any specific
technique. Much of the psychotherapeutic
devices of both Freud and gestalt
psychotherapists have been used.
May criticized contemporary psychological
research for being impressed with data and
uninterested in theory.