Rollo May

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Rollo May bigraphy, stories - Psychologists

Rollo May : biography

April 21, 1909 – October 22, 1994

Rollo May (April 21, 1909 – October 22, 1994) was an American existential psychologist. He was the author of the influential book Love and Will, which was published in 1969. He is often associated with both humanistic psychology and existentialist philosophy. He along with Viktor Frankl was a major proponent of "existential psychotherapy" which seeks to analyze the structure of human existence with the aim of understanding the reality underlying all situations of humans in crises ((1)). May was a close friend of the philosopher and theologian Paul Tillich, who also had a significant influence on his work. His works include "The Meaning of Anxiety", Love and Will, and The Courage to Create, the latter title honoring Tillich’s The Courage to Be.

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.May, Rollo. (October 2009) Rollo May on Existential Therapy. Volume 49 Number 4. Journal of Humanistic Psychology. 419-434.

Perspective on 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". May’s interest in isolation and 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 on their freedom to live a life of dignity. He is adamant in the importance of anxiety and feelings of threat and powerlessness because it gives humans the freedom to act courageously as opposed to conforming to be comfortable ((8)). 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”. He claims that by shifting anxiety to a fear, one can therefore discover incentives to either avoid the feared object or find the means to remove this fear of it.

Accomplishments

  • The Meaning of Anxiety was Rollo May’s first book. It was based on his doctoral dissertation, which in turn was based on his reading of the 19th century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. "The Meaning of Anxiety" was written mainly to relate to people of western cultures, who are more likely to focus on anxiety as an issue in their life. May wrote this book with the intentions of it being easily read, yet still providing all the information that came from the research in studying the cause and effects of anxiety.
  • In 1956, he edited the book Existence with Ernst Angel and Henri Ellenberger. Existence helped introduce existential psychology to the US. He explained how existentialism is not just a varied form of Freudianism in the books. He also explained what the many concepts of existential psychology covers.
  • "Love and Will" is another of May’s famous texts. This book investigates the shifting viewpoints of love and will in human behavior. It looks at the deep, internal dilemmas a human faces through their relationships.

Perspective on love

May’s thoughts on love is documented mainly through his book "Love and Will", which focuses on love and sex in human behavior. He specifies 5 particular types of love, however, he believes that they should not be separate, but society has separated love and sex into two different ideologies.