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ROLLO MAY

Existential Psychology
Rollo Reese May
 Born April 21, 1909 in Ada, Ohio.
 First son of the six children born to Earl Tittle May and Matie Boughton
May.
 During his childhood, May found solitude and relief from family strife
by playing on the Shores of the St. Clair River.
 As a youth, he acquired an interest in art and literature.
 He first attended college at Michigan State University, where he
majored in English.
 May then transferred to Oberlin College in Ohio.
 He roamed throughout eastern and southern Europe as an artist,
painting pictures, and studying native art.
 By his second year, May was beginning to become lonely.
 As a consequence, he poured himself into his work as a teacher, but
the harder he worked, the less effective he became.
 May began to listen to his inner voice, the one that spoke to him of
beauty.
"It seems it has taken a collapse of my whole former way of life for this
voice to make itself heard".
 He attended Alfred Adler's 1932 summer seminars at a resort in the
mountains of Vienna.
 After May returned to the US in 1933, he enrolled at Union Theological
Seminary in New York.
 He was ordained as a Congregational minister in 1938 after receiving
a Master of Divinity degree.
 He served as a pastor for 2 years, but finding parish work meaningless,
he quit to pursue his interest in psychology.
 He studied psychoanalysis at the William Alanson White Institute of
Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology while working as a
counselor to male students at City College of New York.
 In 1949, he earned a PhD in clinical psychology from Columbia
University.
 In his early thirties, he contracted tuberculosis, and spent 3 years at
the Saranac Sanitarium in upstate New York.
 The Meaning of Anxiety (1950), Man's Search for Himself (1953), Love
and Will (1969b).
 May was a visiting professor at both Harvard and Princeton - He was
an adjunct professor at New York University,
 Chairman for the Council for the Association of Existential Psychology
and Psychiatry
 President of the New York Psychological Association
 Member of the Board of Trustees of the American Foundation for
Mental Health
 In 1969, May and his first wife, Florence DeFrees, were divorced after
30 years of marriage.
 He later married Ingrid Kepler Scholl, but that marriage too ended in
divorce.
 He was survived by his third wife, Georgia Lee Miller Johnson; son,
Robert; and twin daughters, Allegra and Carolyn.
 May died in Tiburon, California, October 22, 1994.
What is Existentialism?
 Existence takes precedence over essence.
 Existentialism opposes the split between subject and
object.
 People search for some meaning to their lives.
 Existentialists hold that ultimately each of us is responsible
for who we are and what we become.
 Existentialists are basically anti theoretical.
Basic Concepts
 Being-in-the-World
– The basic unity of person and environment is expressed in the
German word Dasein, meaning to exist there.
Alienation manifests itself in three areas:
• separation from nature;
• lack of meaningful of interpersonal relations;
• alienation from one's authentic self.
Thus, people experience three simultaneous modes in their being-in-
the-world:
• Umwelt, or the environment around us;
• Mitwelt, or our relations with other people;
• Eigenwelt, or our relationship with our self.
 Nonbeing

• Being-in-the-world necessitates an awareness of self


as a living, emerging being. This awareness, in turn, leads to
the dread of not being; that is nonbeing or nothingness.
• The dread of nonbeing can take the form of isolation
and alienation.
CASE OF PHILIP
*STORY TIME*
Anxiety
 "the subjective state of the individual's becoming aware that his/her
existence can be destroyed, that he can become 'nothing'“
 A threat to some important value.
 The acquisition of freedom inevitably leads to anxiety

 Normal Anxiety
– "which is proportionate to the threat, does not involve repression,
and can be confronted constructively on the conscious level".
 Neurotic Anxiety
– "a reaction which is disproportionate to the threat, involves
repression and other forms of intrapsychic conflict, and is managed by
various kinds of blocking-off of activity and awareness".
Guilt
 both anxiety and guilt are onthological.
 they refer to the nature of being and not to feelings
arising from specific situations or transgressions.
3 Forms of Onthological Guilt

 Form of guilt that corresponds to Umwelt


• Onthological guilt need not stem from one's own actions
or failures to act; it can arise from a lack of awareness of
one's being-in-the-world.
• May also referred to it as separation guilt
 Form of guilt that corresponds to Mitwelt
• stems from our inability to perceive accurately the world of
others.
 Form of guilt that corresponds to Eigenwelt
• associated with our denial of our own potentialities or with
our failure to fulfill them.
• this guilt is grounded in our relationship with self.
• reminiscent of Maslow's concept of the Jonah complex, or
the fear of being or doing one's best.
Intentionality
 the structure that gives meaning to experience and
allows people to make decisions about the future.
 "the structure of meaning which makes it possible for us,
subjects that we are, to see and understand the outside
world, objective that it is,"
 "the dichotomy between subject and object is partially
overcome".
Care, Love and Will
“Care is a state in which something does
matter.”
“Love as a delight in the presence of other
person and an affirming of [that person's] value
and development as much as one’s own”
“Will is the capacity to organize one’s self so
that movement in a certain direction or toward
a certain goal may take place.”
May distinguished between will and
wish, saying that

 ‘Will’ requires self-consciousness; ‘wish’ does not. ‘Will’


implies some possibility of either/or choice; ‘wish’ does
not. ‘Wish’ gives the warmth, the content, the
imagination, the child’s play, the freshness and the
richness to ‘will’. ‘Will’ gives the self-direction, the
maturity to ‘wish’.
Union of Love and Will

 May believe that our modern society has lost sight of the
true nature of love and will, equating love with sex and
will with will power.
Forms of Love
 Sex is a biological function that can be satisfied through
sexual intercourse or some other release of sexual tension.
 Eros is psychological desire that seeks procreation or creation
through enduring union with a loved one. Eros is built on care
and tenderness.
 Philia is an intimate nonsexual friendship between two
people. Philia cannot be rushed; it takes time to grow, to
develop, to sink its roots.
 Agape is the esteem for the other, the concern for the other’s
welfare beyond any gain that one can get out of it;
disinterested love, typically, the love of God for man. Agape
is altruistic love.
Freedom
 Freedom is the individual’s capacity to know that he is
the determined one.

Two forms of Freedom:


 Existential freedom – freedom to act or freedom of
doing.
 Essential freedom – freedom of being
Destiny
 “Destiny is the design of the universe speaking through
the design of each one of us.”
 Destiny does not mean preordained or foredoomed. It is
our destination, our terminus, our goal.
Philip’s Destiny
THE POWER OF MYTH
 May was concerned with the powerful effects of myths on individuals and cultures.
 Myths are not falsehood; rather, they are conscious and unconscious belief systems
that provide explanations for personal and social problems.
 He also believe that the Oedipus story is a powerful myth in our culture because it
contains elements of existential crises common to everyone.
 People communicate with one another on two levels. First is Rationalistic language
and the second is through Myths.
 These crises include 1. Birth 2. Separation or exile from parents and home 3. Sexual
union with hostility toward each other 4. The assertion of independence and the
search for identity and 5. Death.
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
 May saw psychopathology as lack of communication –
the inability to know others and to share oneself with
them.
 Three modes of being in the world are (Umwelt) one's
relationship with the world of things; (Miltwelt) one's
relationship with the world of people and (Eigenwelt)
one's relationship with the world oneself which has
Modern Western societies have problem about.
 Phillips Psychopathology
PSYCHOTHERAPY
 May rejected the idea that psychotherapy should reduce
anxiety and ease feelings of guilt. Instead, he suggested
that psychotherapy should make people more human.
 May also described therapy as partly religion, partly
science and partly friendship.
 Techniques that May uses to Philip
1. His relationship with Nicole was an attempt to hold
on to his mother.
2. Fantasy Conversation
3. Photo of himself

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