Cervantes, Congayao, Costales, Cruz, De Lara

Existential Theory

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Rollo May
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Biography of May

• B.A. from Oberlin College in 1930

• Lived as an itinerant artist in Europe for three
years after college, where he heard Adler speak
• Returns to the U.S. in 1933
• Graduates from Union Theological Seminary
with Master of Divinity in 1938

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Biography of May

• Served as a pastor for two years, then quits and begins

to study psychoanalysis
• Received his PhD in clinical psychology from Columbia
University in 1949
• Published The Meaning of Anxiety in 1950
• Served as visiting professor at institutions including
Harvard and Princeton
• Died in Tiburon, California in 1994

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Overview of Existential
Psychology
• Rooted in European Existential Philosophy
• Based in Clinical Experience
• People live in the Present and are Responsible for
Experiences
• People lack Courage to Face Destiny and Flee from
Freedom
• Healthy People Challenge Destiny and Live
Authentically
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Background of
Existentialism

• Existence takes precedence over essence

• There is no split between subject and object
• People search for some meaning in their lives
• Each of us is responsible for who we are and
what we become
• Basically Antitheoretical

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Being

Being-in-the-world
Alienation: The illness of our time
• Separation from nature
• Lack of meaningful interpersonal relationships
• Alienation from one’s authentic self

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Being

Modes of Eigenwel
being-in-the- t
(Our relationship
world with our self)

(simultaneous) Umwelt Mitwelt

(The (Relationship
environment with other
around us) people)

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Non-being or Nothingness

Fear of death
Living defensively
Not making active choices
Expressed in the various forms

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Non-being or Nothingness

“Death is a fact of my life which is not

relative but absolute and my awareness of
this gives my existence and what I do each
hour and absolute quality.”

- Rollo May

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Anxiety
• People experience anxiety when they
become aware that their existence or
something identified with it might be
destroyed.

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Normal Anxiety
• Growth and changing one’s values.

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Neurotic Anxiety
• Reaction that is disproportionate to
the threat and that leads to
repression and defensive behaviors.
• Values transformed into dogma

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Guilt
• Arises whenever people deny their
potentialities and remain blind to
their dependence on the natural
world.
• Ontological – Part of our being.

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Intentionality

• The structure that gives meaning to

experience and allow people to make
decision about the future is called
Intentionality( May, 1969b).
• Intentionally bridges the gap
between subject and the object (May
1969b).

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Care, Love and

Will
CARE
• To recognize a person as a fellow
human being, to identify with that
person’s joy, guilt or pity - is an active
process; it is a state where
something does matter - is the
source of love and will.

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Care, Love and

Will
LOVE
• A delight in the presence of the other
person - affirming of a person’s value
and development as much as one’s
own.

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Care, Love and

Will
WILL
• Capacity to organize one’s self so
that movement in a toward a certain
goal may take place.

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Union of Love and

Will
• Modern society suffers from an
unhealthy division of love and will.
Love is seen as sensual sex, whereas
will is seen as dogged determination
or will power.

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Forms of Love

SEX
• A biological function that can be
satisfied through sexual
intercourse or some other
release of sexual tension.

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Forms of Love

EROS
• A psychological desire that seeks
procreation or creation through an
enduring union with a loved one;
making love; wish to establish a
lasting union - built on care and
tenderness - salvation of sex.

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Forms of Love

PHILIA
• Intimate nonsexual friendship
between two people - cannot be
rushed; it takes time to grow and
develop - necessary requisite for
healthy erotic relationships during
early and late adolescence.

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Forms of Love

AGAPE
• Concern for the other’s welfare
beyond any gain that one can
get out of it - altruistic love.

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Freedom and
FREEDOM Destiny
• Comes from understanding of our destiny.
• Possibility of changing, although we may
not know what those changes might be.

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Forms of
Freedom
1. Existentialist Freedom
• The freedom of doing.
• Freedom to pursue tangible goals.

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Forms of
Freedom
2. Essential Freedom
• Freedom of being.
• Freedom to think, to plan, to hope.

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Freedom and
DESTINY Destiny
• May (1981) defined destiny as “The
design of the universe speaking through
the design of each one of us.”
• Biological, psychological and cultural
factors.

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Myth
 Conscious and unconscious belief systems that
provide explanations for personal and social
problems.
 Oedipus story
• Birth
• Exile and separation • Incest and patricide
• Identity • Repression of guilt
• Conscious meditation and
death

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Psychopathology

• Apathy and emptiness as the malaise

of modern times.
• People have become alienated from
the natural world (Umwelt), from
other people (Mitwelt), and from
themselves (Eigenwelt).
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Psychopathology

• Symptoms can be temporary or

permanent.
• Psychopathology is a lack of
communication.
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Psychotherapy

• The goal of May’s psychotherapy was

to make people more fully human.
• He believed that the purpose of
psychotherapy is to set people free.
• May did not offer many specific
directions for the therapist to follow.
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Psychotherapy

• Existential therapists have no special set of

technique or method that can be applied to all
patients.
• They must establish a one-to-one relationship
(Mitwelt) that enables the patient to become more
aware of themselves and to live more fully in their
own world (Eigenwelt). It means challenging
patients to confront their destiny, to experience
despair, anxiety, and guilt.
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Psychotherapy

• But it also means establishing an I-thou

encounter in which both therapist and
patient are viewed as subjects rather than
objects. In an I-thou relationship, the
therapist has empathy for the patient’s
experience and is open to the patient’s
subjective world.
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Critique of May

• Moderate on Organizing Knowledge and

Parsimony.
• Low on Internal Consistency.
• Very Low on Generating Research,
Falsifiability, and Guiding Action .