Rollo May

(1909-1994)
Existential Psychology
Overview
• Rooted in European Existential Philosophy: Sartre,
Kierkegaard, Nietzche, Heiddeger, Camus, Kafka after World
War II.
• His approach is based on clinical experience he was a
psychotherapist.
• Ludvig Binswanger, Medard Boss, Rollo May, Irvin Yalom are
important persons who adapt Existential Psychology to
psychotherapy
His Life

• Born in Ohio as the first son of six children lived as a traveler artist in Europe for three years after college, briefly study with
Adler
• Graduated from Union Theological Seminary with Master of Divinity in 1938
• Served as a pastor for two years and then quit and began to study psychoanalysis, met with Sullivan and Fromm
• Received his PhD in clinical psychology from Columbia University in 1949
• Suffered from tuberculosis and spent 3 years in a Sanitarium
• Published The Meaning of Anxiety (1950) Man’s Search for Himself (1953), Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and
Psychology (1958 with Angel and Ellenberk), Love and Will (1969-National best-seller), Power and Innocence (1972)
• Served as a visiting professor at various institutions including Harvard and Princeton
• Died in California
What is Existentialism?

1. Existence takes precedence (first in order) over essence

2. No split between subject and object
3. People search for some meaning to their lives
4. Each of us is responsible for who we are and what we become
5. Basically antitheoretical
Rollo May’s view
• People live in the present and are responsible for their experiences
• Many people lack the courage to face destiny and in the process of fleeing (running away
to escape) from it, they give up their freedom
• They cancel out their freedom so they run away from their responsibility
• Not making choice, neglect who they are, feeling alienated
• Healthy people challenge destiny and live authentically with other people and with
themselves, recognize the inevitability of death and live life in the present
Basic Concepts of Existentialism
• Phenomenology: The study of «phenomena»
• Study of consciousness as experienced from the first person point of
view
• “Dasein” :Translates as being-in-the-world
• A sense of experience as an autonomous, separate, evolving entity in
the world
• Nonbeing: awareness of being brings the dread of not being (DEATH)
and it is inseparable part of being
• Healthy People Live Simultaneously in Umwelt (being in physical
world), Mitwelt (being in the social World), and Eigenwelt (being in the
personal- bodily existence)
Anxiety

• Human behavior is motivated by a sense of dread (fear) and anxiety

• «The subjective state of individual’s becoming aware that his/her existence can be destroyed,
that he can become nothing.»
• And also acqusition of freedom brings anxiety!
• Normal Anxiety: That “which is proportionate to the threat, does not involve repression, and
can be confronted constructively on the conscious level”, (May, 1967)
• 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”, (May, 1967) (What Philip suffered and beheaved in a non-productive and
self-defeating manner)
Guilt

Arises when people deny their potentialities

Fail to accurately perceive the needs of others

Remain oblivious to their dependence on the natural world

Three forms of Ontological Guilt

• Umwelt (lack of awareness of one’s being-in-the-world) (due to civilization and tech)

• Mitwelt (inability to perceive accurately the world of others)
• Eigenwelt (like jonah complex of Maslow)
Intentionality

Structure that gives

meaning to experience Bridges the gap
and allows people to between subject and
make decisions about object
the future
 Care: a state in which something does matter
Love: deligh in the presence of the other person and affirming of that person’s
value and development as much as one’s own
Will: capacity to organize one’s self so that movement in a certain direction or

Care, Love, toward a certain goal may take place

and Will • Union of love and will: care, choice, action and responsibility

• Forms of Love
• Sex: biological
• Eros: psychological
• Philia: salvation of sex
• Agape: esteem for others
Freedom and Destiny

• Capacity to know that he is the determined one

• Forms of Freedom
• Existential Freedom: the freedom of doing
• Essential Freedom: the freedom of being
What is destiny?
• The design of the universe speaking through th design of each one of us
• The paradox is that freedom owes its vitality to destiny, and destiny owes
its significance to freedom.

• Power of myth

• Psychopathology
• Apathy and emptiness are the illness of modern times
• People have become alienated from the natural world or Umwelt, from
other people or Mitwelt, and from themselves or Eigenwelt
• Symptoms can be temporary or permanent
Psychotherapy Goal of May
• To make people more fully human, for example, expand their
consciousness
• To set people free
• Existential psychotherapy de-emphasizes techniques while
stressing the personal qualities of the therapist
• Must establish one-to-one relationship
All in all
Key issue in life is the inevitability of death

Results with anxiety

How to respond to this realization

Nothingness Authentic Being

So, what is the dynamic of existence? CHOICE! RESPONSIBILTY! Our choices

determines our personality.
Critique
Useful theory but hard to produce scientific research

Low on falsification

Organize data to know human natüre

Practical to guide action

Not very consistent internally

Moderate on parsimony
From his own words!
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEoXxnE_H04

• Podcast suggestion: Varolmanın Dayanılmaz Hafifliği (Ferhat

Jak İçöz)
Next week’s movie
• ??