(1909-04-21 )

After graduating from school, the young man entered the University of Michigan. His rebellious nature led him to the editorial office of a radical student magazine, which he soon headed. Repeated clashes with the administration led to his expulsion from the university. He transferred to Oberlin College in Ohio and received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1930.

After graduating from the university, May traveled extensively throughout eastern and southern Europe, painted and studied folk art; he managed to visit Turkey, Poland, Austria and other countries as a free artist. However, during the second year of traveling, May suddenly felt very lonely. Trying to get rid of this feeling, he diligently plunged into teaching, but this did not help much: the further he went, the more intense and less effective the work he did became.

Soon returning to her homeland, May entered the seminary of the Theological Society to find answers to basic questions about nature and man, questions in which religion plays an important role. While studying at the seminary of the Theological Society, May met the famous theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich, who fled Nazi Germany and continued his academic career in America. May learned a lot from Tillich, they became friends and remained so for more than thirty years.

After graduating from the seminary, he was ordained a minister of the Congregational Church. For two years, May served as a pastor, but quickly became disillusioned, considering this path a dead end, and began to look for answers to his questions in psychoanalysis. May studied psychoanalysis at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology. It was then that he met Harry Stack Sullivan, president and one of the founders of the William Alanson White Institute. Sullivan's view of the therapist as a participant rather than a bystander, and of the therapeutic process as an exciting adventure that could enrich both patient and therapist, deeply impressed May. Another important event that determined May’s development as a psychologist was his acquaintance with Erich Fromm, who by that time had already firmly established himself in the USA.

By 1946, May decided to start his own private practice, and two years later he began teaching at the William Alanson White Institute. In 1949, as a mature forty-year-old, he received his first doctorate in clinical psychology from Columbia University, and continued to teach psychiatry at the William Alanson White Institute until 1974.

Epiphany

Perhaps May would never have stood out among the many other therapists practicing at that time if the same life-changing existential event that Jean Paul Sartre wrote about had not happened to him. Even before receiving his doctorate, May experienced one of the most profound shocks of his life. When he was just over thirty years old, he suffered from tuberculosis, a disease difficult to cure at that time, and spent three years in a sanatorium in Saranac, in upstate New York, and for a year and a half May did not know whether he was destined to survive. The consciousness of the complete impossibility of resisting a serious illness, the fear of death, the agonizing wait for a monthly x-ray examination, each time meaning either a verdict or an extension of the wait - all this slowly undermined the will, lulled the instinct of the fight for existence. Realizing that all these seemingly completely natural mental reactions harm the body no less than physical torment, May began to develop a view of illness as part of his being at a given period of time. He realized that a helpless and passive position contributed to the development of the disease. Looking around, May saw that patients who had come to terms with their situation were fading before their eyes, while those who were struggling usually recovered. It is on the basis of her own experience of fighting the disease that May concludes about the need for active individual intervention in the “order of things” and her own destiny.

At the same time, he discovers that healing is not a passive, but an active process. A person affected by a physical or mental illness must be an active participant in the healing process. Having finally become convinced from his own experience, he began to introduce this principle into his practice, cultivating in patients the ability to analyze themselves and correct the doctor’s actions.

Confession

Having encountered first-hand the phenomena of fear and anxiety during a long illness, May began to study the works of the classics on this topic - primarily Freud, as well as Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher and theologian, the direct predecessor of twentieth-century existentialism. Highly appreciating Freud's ideas, May was still inclined to Kierkegaard's concept of anxiety as a hidden struggle against non-existence, which affected him more deeply.

Soon after returning from the sanatorium, May compiled his thoughts on anxiety into a doctoral dissertation and published it under the title “The Meaning of Anxiety” (1950). This first major publication was followed by many books that brought him national and then world fame. His most famous book, Love and Will, was published in 1969, became a bestseller and was awarded the Ralph Emerson Prize the following year. And in 1972, the New York Society of Clinical Psychologists awarded May the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Award. for the book "Power and Innocence".

In addition, May was active in teaching and clinical work. He lectured at Harvard and Princeton and taught at various times at Yale and Columbia universities, Dartmouth, Vassar and Oberlin colleges, and at the New School for Social Research in New York. He was an adjunct professor at New York University, Chairman of the Council of the Association for Existential Psychology, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the American Foundation for Mental Health.

On October 22, 1994, after a long illness, Rollo May died at the age of 85 in Tiburon, California, where he had lived since the mid-seventies.

Key Ideas

Literature

May R. Discovery of Genesis. - M.: Institute of General Humanitarian Research, 2004. - 224 p. - ISBN 5-88239-137-8

Notes

Keys to Understanding

Choice of fate

Each of us is given the opportunity to manage our own development - this is our freedom. With freedom and self-awareness, we can break the chain of stimuli and reactions and act consciously, so freedom is associated with flexibility, openness, and readiness to change. At the same time, it correlates with the inevitable givens of our life - in other words, with fate. May distinguishes its levels: cosmic, genetic, cultural fate and specific circumstances. And although each of these levels predetermines a lot, we still have the freedom to cooperate with fate, accept it, challenge it. The price of freedom is the inevitability of evil. If I am free to choose, no one can guarantee that I will choose good. All great saints considered themselves great sinners, being extremely sensitive to both good and evil and thereby to the consequences of their actions. Freedom, while expanding potential opportunities for good, simultaneously expands opportunities for evil. And only the person himself is responsible for what he chooses.

The Becoming of Man

“SO MANY PEOPLE WANT TO BE TOLD THAT FREEDOM IS AN ILLUSION AND THAT THERE IS NO NEED TO WORRY ABOUT IT.”

The main dilemma of our life is the fundamental ability inherent only in man to perceive himself both as an active subject and as a passive object. In the space between these two poles, our consciousness fluctuates, choosing the way of our existence. Identity, the sense of “I”, is the starting point of our life. Everything we do is aimed at preserving this inner center, even our neuroses serve this purpose. The formation of personality is the development of the sense of “I”, the feeling of being an active subject influencing events. This process is associated with liberation from various kinds of unconscious dependencies and the transition to freely chosen actions and relationships.

The value of anxiety

Anxiety is a natural and constructive feeling. It is caused by the unpredictability of the future and is associated with a feeling of threat to something significant: personal values or life itself. May translated the philosophical ideas of Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Tillich about existential anxiety as an irreducible condition of our existence into the language of psychological concepts. Only anxiety that is disproportionate to the cause is painful. It arises when we, not wanting to put up with our experiences, try to completely banish anxiety from life, which, on the contrary, leads to its intensification. The task of a psychotherapist is not to eliminate anxiety altogether, but to help accept it, preventing its pathological growth.

About it

Books by Rollo May

“The Art of Psychological Consulting”, Institute of General Humanitarian Research, Astrel Press, 2008.
“The Discovery of Being”, Institute of General Humanitarian Studies, 2004.
“The Meaning of Anxiety”, Klass, 2001.

Peering into the sun. Life without fear of death Yalom Irvin

Rollo May

Rollo May is dear to me as a writer, as a psychotherapist and, finally, as a friend. When I first began studying psychiatry, many theoretical models confused me and seemed unsatisfactory. It seemed to me that both the biological and psychoanalytic models did not include much of what constitutes the very being of a person. When I was in my second year of residency, Roll May's book Existence came out. I read it from cover to cover and felt that a bright and completely new perspective had opened up before me. I immediately began studying philosophy by enrolling in an introduction to the history of Western philosophy course. Since then, I began to read books and listen to lecture courses on philosophy and always found them more useful for the work of a psychotherapist than specialized psychiatric literature.

I am grateful to Rollo May for his book and for showing me the wise path to solving human problems. (I am referring to the first three essays; the others are translations of the works of European Dasein analysts, which seem to me less valuable.) Many years later, when I began to experience a fear of death while working with cancer patients, I decided to undergo psychotherapy with Rollo May . He lived and worked in Tiburon, an hour and a half by car from Stanford. But I knew it was worth the time, and I went to see him once a week for three years. Consultations were interrupted only for the summer, when he went on vacation to his cottage in New Hampshire. I tried to make good use of my time on the road. I recorded our sessions on a dictaphone and listened to my recordings every time along the way. Subsequently, I often recommended this technique to my patients who had to travel to me from afar.

Rollo May and I talked a lot about death and the fear that had settled in me after working with a lot of dying people. What I found most distressing was the isolation that accompanies dying, and at one point, when I realized that I was experiencing a lot of fear during my evening commute, I decided to stay overnight in a lonely motel near his office and have sessions with him the night before and after. this night.

As I thought, that evening fear seemed to be in the air around me; I also had frightening visions - that someone was chasing me or that a witch’s hand was sticking through the window. Although we tried to analyze the fear of death, for some reason it seems to me that we somehow agreed not to look into the sun: we avoided open confrontation with the specter of death. This book is an attempt at such confrontation.

But overall he was an excellent therapist for me. When our therapy came to an end, he offered me his friendship. He approved of my book Existential Psychotherapy, which I wrote for ten years and then finally finished. The difficult and very delicate transition from the “psychotherapist-patient” relationship to friendship went relatively smoothly for us.

Years passed, and Rollo and I switched roles. After suffering a series of minor strokes, he began to experience confusion and panic attacks and often turned to me for help.

One evening I received a call from his wife, Georgia May, also a close friend. She said that Rollo was dying and asked me and my wife to come quickly. That night, the three of us took turns keeping watch at the bedside of Rollo, who was unconscious and breathing heavily - he was suffering from advanced pulmonary edema. Finally he took his last convulsive breath and died. This happened before my eyes. Georgia and I washed the body and did everything necessary, and the next morning we came from the funeral home and took him to the crematorium.

The night before the cremation, I thought with horror about Rollo’s death, and I had a very vivid dream:

My parents and sister are in a shopping center and we decide to go up one floor. Here I am in the elevator, but alone, my family has disappeared. I take a very long time in the elevator. When I finally get out, I find myself on a tropical beach. I still can’t find my loved ones, although I never stop looking for them. It’s very cool there, the tropical beach is a real paradise for me. However, I feel fear creeping into me. Then I put on a nightgown with Smokey the Bear's cute, smiling face on it. Then the image on the shirt becomes brighter, then begins to emit light. Soon this face fills the entire space, as if all the energy of this dream was transferred to the cute smiling face of Smokey Bear.

I woke up from this dream - not so much from fear as from the radiance of a sparkling image on my nightgown. It felt as if the room had been illuminated by a spotlight. At the very beginning of the dream I was calm, almost content. However, when I could not find my family, fear and foreboding crept into me. In the end, all the dream images were swallowed up by the dazzling Smokey Bear.

I'm quite sure that the image of the shining bear cub reflected Rollo's cremation. Rollo's death confronted me with the fact of my own death, and in the dream this is indicated by my separation from my family and the endless upward movement of the elevator. What amazed me was the gullibility of my subconscious. Isn't it amazing that part of me bought into the Hollywood version of immortality (the endless movement of the elevator) and the cinematic version of paradise - a tropical beach. (Although heaven still wasn’t that “heavenly” because I was in complete isolation there.)

This dream reflects great efforts to reduce fear. That night I went to bed, shocked by the horror of Rollo's death and his impending cremation, and sleep was intended to soften this experience, make it less terrible, help me bear it. Death mercifully took the form of an elevator going up to a tropical beach. Even the crematorium fire took on a more friendly look and appeared on the nightgown - are you ready for eternal sleep in a shirt with the cute and familiar face of Smokey the Bear?

This dream seems to be an extremely apt illustration of Freud's idea that dreams guard the sleep process itself. My dreams tried their best to give me rest, and did not allow the dream to turn into a nightmare. Like a dam, they held back the flow of fear, but the dam still collapsed, releasing emotions into me. But even then, with the last of their strength, dreams tried to contain my fear, turning it into the image of a beloved bear, which eventually “heated up” and shone so unbearably that it woke me up.

From the book Existential Psychology by May Rollo R

1. Rollo May. ORIGINS OF EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOLOGY In this introductory essay, I would like to talk about how existential psychology came to be, especially on the American scene. Then I would like to discuss some of the "eternal" questions that have been asked in psychology

From the book Personality Theories and Personal Growth author Frager Robert

4. Rollo May. EXISTENTIAL FOUNDATIONS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY Several attempts have been made in our country to systematize psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic theories in terms of forces, dynamisms and energies. The existential approach is exactly the opposite of these attempts.

From the book How to Overcome Personal Tragedy author Badrak Valentin Vladimirovich

1. Rollo May. THE ORIGINS OF THE EXISTENTIAL ORIGIN IN PSYCHOLOGY AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE Recently, many psychiatrists and psychologists have become more and more aware that there are serious gaps in our understanding of man. For psychotherapists who face

From the author's book

2. Rollo May. THE CONTRIBUTION OF EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOTHERAPY The fundamental contribution of existential therapy is its understanding of man as being. She does not deny the value of dynamism and the study of specific behavioral patterns in appropriate places. But she claims

From the author's book

Chapter 29. Rollo May: Existential Psychology Rollo May, undoubtedly, can be called one of the key figures not only in American, but also in world psychology. Until his death in 1994, he was one of the leading existential psychologists in the United States. Over the past half century this

From the author's book

Rollo May. A disease that affirms a mission Fate cannot be ignored; we cannot simply erase it or replace it with something else. But we can choose how to meet our destiny using the abilities given to us. Rollo May Rollo May is rightfully considered one of the

“Fate cannot be ignored; we cannot simply erase it or replace it with something else. But we can choose how to respond to our destiny, using the abilities given to us,” wrote American psychotherapist Rollo May in his declining years. An experienced clinician and consultant, May considered it unacceptable to reduce human nature to the realization of deep instincts or to reactions to environmental stimuli. He was convinced that a person is largely responsible for what he is and how his life path develops. His numerous works (most of which are still awaiting translation into Russian) are devoted to the development of this idea; he has been teaching this to his clients for decades. And the life path of May himself can serve as a vivid example of the implementation of this idea.

GAMES BY THE RIVER

Rollo Reese May was born on April 21, 1909 in Ada, Ohio. He was the eldest of six sons of Earl Title May and Maty Boughton May. There were seven children in the family - the eldest was my sister. Soon after the boy was born, the family moved to Marine City, Michigan, where he spent his childhood.

Rollo's parents were poorly educated people and did not in any way encourage the intellectual development of their children. On the contrary, when his daughter was given a disappointing diagnosis of “psychosis,” the father, in a philistine manner, attributed the origin of the disease to what he considered to be excessive educational activities. He himself was a functionary of the Young Christian Association, spent a lot of time traveling and, because of this, did not have a serious influence on the children. The mother also cared little about the children and led, as humanistic psychologists would say, a very spontaneous lifestyle.

It is not surprising that Russian translators racked their brains to translate, in the slightest degree, the unflattering characteristics that May bestowed on his mother in his memoirs. The parents often quarreled and eventually separated. You can debate as much as you like about the fateful significance of childhood experience, but May himself believed that his mother’s frivolous behavior, and partly also his sister’s mental pathology, seriously influenced the fact that his personal life subsequently did not develop in the most successful way (his two marriages broke up). One way or another, the boy’s relationship with his parents could not be called warm, and life in his parents’ home could not be called joyful. Perhaps this led to his subsequent interest in psychological counseling, helping people solve their life problems.

Deprived of a sense of spiritual closeness in the family circle, the boy found delight in unity with nature. He often retired and took a break from family quarrels by playing on the banks of the St. Clair River. He later said that playing on the river bank gave him much more than schoolwork (especially since at school he had a well-deserved reputation as a fidget and troublemaker).

Even in his youth, May became interested in art and literature, and this passion did not leave him throughout his life (perhaps this partly explains his literary prolificacy and remarkable literary style).

He attended Michigan State University, where he majored in languages. His rebellious nature led him to the editorial office of a radical student magazine, which he soon headed. Any administration encourages loyalty and discourages dissidence. The University of Michigan administration was no exception. May was shown the door. He transferred to Oberlin College in Ohio and received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1930.

ACCORDING TO THE INNER VOICE

Over the next three years, May traveled throughout Europe. The formal reason was an invitation to the position of English teacher at a college in the Greek city of Thessaloniki. However, the young teacher not only taught, but also studied himself, especially since his work left enough free time for this.

May studied ancient history, folk art, and tried his hand at painting. As a free artist, he visited Turkey, Austria, Poland and other countries. But after a year of such a busy life, he suddenly felt completely empty and exhausted.

May defined his condition as a nervous breakdown. A feeling of loneliness began to overcome him. Trying to get rid of him, May plunged headlong into teaching. However, this not only did not help, but on the contrary, it led to the final depletion of mental strength. According to May himself, “this meant that the rules, principles, values that usually guided me in work and in life were simply no longer suitable. I had gained enough psychological knowledge in college to know that these symptoms meant that there was something wrong with my entire lifestyle. I should have found some new goals and objectives in life and reconsidered the strict moralistic principles of my existence.”

From that moment on, May began to listen to his inner voice, which spoke about things that were completely unusual for him - about the soul, about beauty...

Another important event contributed to the revision of life attitudes. In 1932, May took part in Alfred Adler's summer seminar, held in a mountain resort near Vienna. May admired Adler and was significantly influenced by the ideas of individual psychology.

DEAD-DEAD PATH

Returning to the United States in 1933, May entered the Theological Society seminary. This step of his was dictated not so much by the intention to take the pastoral path, but by the desire to find answers to basic questions about the nature of the universe and man - questions in attempts to answer which it was religion that had accumulated a centuries-old tradition.

While studying at the seminary, May met the famous theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich, who had fled to America from Nazi Germany. May became friends with Tillich, a friendship that lasted for many years. There is no doubt that he experienced a noticeable influence of this European thinker - many of May's ideological judgments echo the ideas of Tillich.

Although May did not initially seek to devote himself to the clergy, in 1938, after receiving a Master of Divinity degree, he was ordained as a minister of the Congregational Church. He served as a pastor for two years, but then became disillusioned and, considering this path a dead end, left the church and began to look for answers to the questions that tormented him in science.

UNFAIR DESTINY

May studied psychoanalysis at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology, while working at the City College of New York as a consulting psychologist. During these years he met G.S. Sullivan, president and one of the founders of the institute.

Sullivan's view of the psychotherapist as a participant observer and of the therapeutic process as an exciting adventure capable of enriching both patient and therapist made a deep impression on May. Another important event that determined the formation of his professional worldview was his acquaintance with E. Fromm, who by that time had already firmly established himself in the USA. As we see, May’s “reference circle” as a psychologist could be the envy of any specialist.

In 1946, May opened his own private practice, and two years later he joined the faculty of the William Alanson White Institute, where he worked until 1974. In 1949, already a mature forty-year-old specialist, he received a doctorate in clinical psychology from Columbia University.

Perhaps May would have remained one of thousands of ordinary psychotherapists if a fateful event had not happened to him - one of those that, according to Sartre’s definition, is capable of turning a person’s entire life upside down. Even before receiving his doctorate, May unexpectedly contracted tuberculosis and was forced to spend about two years in a sanatorium in Sarnac, in rural upstate New York. There were no effective methods for treating tuberculosis at that time, and the still far from old man literally spent these years on the edge of his grave.

The consciousness of the complete impossibility of resisting a serious illness, the fear of death, the agonizing wait for a monthly x-ray examination, which each time meant either a sentence or a postponement - all this slowly undermined the will, lulled the instinct of the fight for existence.

Realizing that all these seemingly completely natural experiences bring suffering no less than a physical illness, May tried to form an attitude towards illness as part of his being at a given period of time. He realized that a helpless and passive position aggravates the course of the disease. Before his eyes, patients who had come to terms with their situation slowly faded away, while those who fought for life often recovered. It is on the basis of personal experience in the fight against illness, and in fact, against a ruthless and unfair fate, that May concludes that it is necessary for the individual to actively intervene in the “order of things”, in his own destiny.

LOVE AND WILL

Having become interested in the phenomena of fear and anxiety during his illness, May began to study the works of the classics on this topic - primarily Freud, as well as Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher and theologian, the direct predecessor of twentieth-century existentialism. May had a high regard for Freud, but Kierkegaard's concept of anxiety as a hidden struggle against non-existence affected him more deeply.

On October 22, 1994, after a long illness, Rollo May died in Tiburon, California, where he had lived since the mid-seventies.

INNER FREEDOM

Unlike many eminent psychotherapists, May did not found his own school. However, having himself been influenced by the outstanding psychologists of his era and having developed his own approach based on a critical rethinking of their ideas, he continues to influence many independent-minded psychologists of a humanistic orientation throughout the world.

May argued that "the purpose of psychotherapy is to make people free." “I believe,” he wrote, “that the work of a psychotherapist should be to help people find the freedom to realize and realize their potential.”

May believed that a therapist who focuses on symptoms is missing something more important. Neurotic symptoms are only ways to escape from one’s freedom (a cross-cutting theme in many existential-humanistic works) and indicators that a person is not using his capabilities. As a person gains inner freedom, his neurotic symptoms usually disappear. However, this is a side effect and not the main goal of therapy. May firmly held the belief that psychotherapy should primarily help people experience their existence.

How does a therapist help patients become free and responsible people? May did not offer specific recipes that followers could use to solve this problem. Existential psychologists do not have a clearly defined set of techniques and techniques applicable to all clinical cases - they appeal to the patient’s personality, its unique properties and unique experience.

According to May, one should establish a trusting human relationship with the patient and, with its help, lead him to a better understanding of himself and to a more complete disclosure of his own world. This may mean that the patient must be challenged to a duel with his own destiny, with despair, anxiety, and guilt. But this also means that there must be a one-on-one human encounter in which both therapist and patient are persons and not objects.

R. May wrote: “Our task is to be guides, friends and interpreters for people during their journey through their inner hell and purgatory. More precisely, our task is to help the patient get to the point where he can decide whether to continue to be a victim or to leave this victim position and make his way through purgatory with the hope of reaching heaven ... "

This is a very simple and accessible book for anyone who wants to acquire counseling skills, even without any special education, written by the founder of existential psychology, a prominent psychologist, a recognized expert in the field of psychotherapy and counseling, Rollo May.

Rollo May is one of the world's best-known psychiatrists, awarded the American Psychological Association's Gold Medal, recognizing the "grace, wit and style" of his books, which have repeatedly appeared on bestseller lists. This book contains a brilliant analysis of love and will as fundamental dimensions of human existence and their historical perspective and current phenomenology.

In his book, the famous psychoanalyst and one of the leading representatives of the American existential school analyzes the complex psychological mechanism of creating works of art.

Desperate to find the meaning of life, people today resort to various ways to dull their consciousness of existence - through withdrawal into apathy, mental insensitivity, in search of pleasure.
Others, especially young people, are choosing the terrible option of committing suicide, and such cases are becoming more and more common.

Written in brilliant literary language and addressed to a wide readership, the book by one of the leading representatives of existential psychology is dedicated to the search for the psychological roots of aggression and violence, the problems of good and evil, strength and powerlessness, guilt and responsibility.
The cover design uses René Magritte's painting "Titanic Days"

Whether we are trying to understand the psychological causes of crises in politics, economics, entrepreneurship, professional or domestic troubles, whether we want to delve into the essence of modern fine art, poetry, philosophy, religion - everywhere we are faced with the problem of anxiety. Anxiety is omnipresent. This is the challenge that life throws at us.

The book “Existential Psychology” became a manifesto of humanistic psychology, a special direction of modern psychological science that emerged in the early 60s in the USA. The founders of humanistic psychology and its recognized leaders were Abraham Maslow, Rollo May and Carl Rogers.