Rollo may ideas. Understanding your own role in life

Viorika Untilova: I absolutely love the article “The Wounded Healer”, author Rollo May- American psychologist, one of the leading current representatives existential direction humanistic psychology. I decided to bring her all here.

As Kierkegaard once said: “one can reach infinity only through.” In this little-known article, R. May remembers some of the great therapists and artists, their troubled pasts, and their triumphant emergence as creators and healers.

These ideas came to me while I was interviewing students in New York who were candidates to study at a think tank. I asked myself: “What should a person have in order to become a good psychotherapist?

What should this particular person have that will tell us that he is the very person who can really help other people in this fabulously long journey of a psychoanalyst?

It was quite clear to me that this was not an adaptation or adaptation - an adaptation that we so naively and so ignorantly talked about as graduate students. I knew that the well-adjusted person who walked in and sat down to be interviewed was not going to be a good therapist. Adaptation is absolutely the same thing as neurosis, and that is the problem of this person. This is adaptation to non-existence, so that even the smallest existence can be protected.

And yet she had an amazing insight into people, as you know if you've seen the movie or read the book. She truly died alone. Bieber, when he was in her area, went to visit her. They seemed to be old friends, and he described her as a person filled with desperate loneliness.

Now let's take the third example - Abraham Maslow. He was not a psychotherapist, but he was one of the greatest psychologists.

He came from a family of emigrants, was estranged from his mother and was afraid of his father. In New York, people often lived in co-ethnic neighborhoods, and Aba (he was a Jew) was often beaten by the Italian and Irish boys who lived nearby. He was dystrophic.

This man, who had so many hellish experiences, was the one who introduced the concept of “peak experience” into psychology.

Now it is very curious that each of the listed geniuses became great precisely in what was his weakest point. It is very difficult to believe that Harry Stack Sullivan, a man who could never communicate with others, founded such a psychiatric system as the psychiatry of interpersonal biology.

And Ab, who had so many hellish experiences, compensated, if you will allow me to use this technical term here, by founding a school quite the opposite, namely the school of peaks - experiences and a movement dealing with human potential.

I want to offer you a theory. This is the theory of the wounded healer. I want to suggest that we heal other people with our own wounds. Psychologists who become psychotherapists, just like psychiatrists, are people who, as children, had to become therapists for their own families.

This is quite well established by various teachings. And I propose to take this idea further and suggest that it is the insight that comes to us through our own struggles with our problems that leads us to develop empathy and creativity towards others... and compassion...

In England, in Cambridge, a study was conducted in which they studied geniuses: great writers, artists, etc. And of the 47 people this woman recruited for the study, 18 were hospitalized in a psychiatric clinic or had lithium or electric shocks administered to them.

These were people you know well. Handel - his music grew out of the greatest suffering. Byron, who believed that all he did was suffer, but in fact he was manic-depressive. Anne Sexton, who I think later committed suicide, was also manic-depressive. Virginia Woolf, who I know committed suicide, also suffered greatly from depression. Robert Lowell, an American poet, was a manic depressive.

Now I want to draw your attention to the fact that in mood disorders there is a very positive aspect. This woman who conducted the study was studying bipolar disorder, but there are other types of disorders. I would even extend this to say that there is something positive in all illnesses, whether physical or mental. It can be said that some form of struggle is absolutely necessary to bring us to the depth from which creativity arises.

Jerome Kagan, a professor from Harvard, conducted a long study of creativity and came to the conclusion that the main strength of the artist (creator in general), i.e. what he called “creative freedom” is not innate. Perhaps she is prepared in some way, but creativity itself is not innate. “Creativity,” says Kagan, “is implicated in the pain of teenage loneliness, isolation and physical disability.”

The woman who went through the concentration camps also did research at the Saybrook Institute. She survived Auschwitz. She studied those who survived German camps death, and what's interesting is that they found the same things. We expected that these former prisoners, having gone through all this chaos and horror, would turn out to be absolutely destroyed people. I remember one of them came to me for psychoanalysis in New York.

I listened to what he went through and thought, “How can a person survive all this?” But he not only survived all this, he became incredibly creative and productive person. What Dr. Ager was finding out at the Saybrook Institute was this: “People who have suffered from harmful events in the past can and do function at an average or above average level.”

The coping mechanism can prevent the possible harmful effects of harmful experiences, but survivors can also transform their experiences into something that will promote growth. Ager also adds: “Prisoners who had poor, unspoiled childhoods were the best adapted to the concentration camps, while most of those whose parents were wealthy and allowing them died first.”

I've thought a lot about all of this, as have my colleagues at the Saybrook Institute. They noticed that many of the people we highly respect went through the most terrible situations in early childhood.

Exploring your childhood outstanding people reveals to us the fact that they did not quite receive that “nurturing”, care, which is believed in our culture to be what leads children to mental health.

It turns out that despite this or thanks to such conditions, these children not only survived, but also achieved a lot, many after they had the most deplorable and traumatic childhood.

There was also a study done here at Berkeley about human development over time. A group of psychologists observed people from birth to 30 years of age. They observed 166 men and women and were shocked by the inaccuracy of their expectations. They were wrong in 2 out of 3 cases, mainly because they overestimated the destructive effect of early childhood problems. They also failed to foresee, and I think this is interesting to all of us, what the consequences of a “smooth” and successful childhood would be. The point is that a certain degree of stress and the number of provoking, “challenging” situations causes an increase, strengthens psychological strength and competence.

There was another British doctor, his name was George Pickering, who wrote a book “creative illness”, it had another title, namely “Illness in the lives and heads of Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Mary Baker Eddie, Sigmund Freud, Marcel Proust and Elizabeth Barrett Browning." These people were listed on the cover, but Pickering also added Mozart, Chopin, and Beethoven. All these people were writers and musicians who suffered from various diseases.

He notes that each of them suffered from a serious illness and dealt with it constructively in creativity, while corresponding to our culture. Pickering talks about his own arthritic hips and calls his disease an “ally.” “I put them to bed when they started getting sick,” he said. Lying in bed, this scientist could no longer attend committee meetings, see patients, or entertain guests. He adds: "This ideal conditions For creative work, freedom from the intrusion of others, from ordinary household duties.”

Now you have many questions regarding what I am saying. And, of course, I had and still have many questions. Otto Rank wrote an entire book about these ideas, “Art and the Artist.” In this work of Rank, overcoming neurosis and creating art are understood as absolutely identical things.

What I'm doing today is trying to challenge the entire understanding of health in our culture. We leave people to live day by day, because... We believe that life is simply the sum of the days we are given. We struggle to invent ways to live longer, as if death and disease are our greatest enemies. At T.S. Eliot had these lines in “Four Quarters”:

All our health is a disease,
If you trust a dead nanny,
Repeating to us the same song,
That it’s time for us to gather for another world,
And to save the disease, the disease must worsen.

These are all incredibly important things if you can believe them. When he says, “Ours is Adam's curse as well,” he is referring to the fact that we are all terrible children of Adam. All this is named in words that no longer please our ears, meaning “original sin.” The idea is that it doesn't matter how long you live, it's how many days you can add to yourself. Many people choose to walk away, to die, when their work is done, but this rebuttal is saying that disorder and illness mean something very different than how it is understood in our Faustian civilization.

If alienation is a disease, then it too could be what connects us to new others on a new, deeper level. We see this in compassion. Creativity is one of the products right relationship between nature and the infinity within us.

We see another talent that Fromm certainly possessed - Reichmann, which Aba Maslow and Harry Stack Sullivan had - they had a talent for compassion, the ability to feel other people, the ability to understand their problems - this is another quality that must be possessed good psychotherapist. The period of degeneration and chaos, I hope, is not eternal, but it can often be used as a way to reform and reorganize us on a new level. As C. G. Jung said, “The gods return to us in our illnesses.”

Rollo Reese May was born April 21, 1909 in Ada, Ohio. He was the eldest of six children of Earl Title May and Maty Boughton May. None of the parents had good education and did not care about providing for his children favorable conditions for intellectual development. Quite the contrary. For example, when, a few years after Rollo was born, his older sister began to suffer from psychosis, his father attributed it to the fact that she studied too much, in his opinion.

IN early age Rollo moved with his family to Marine City, Michigan, where he spent most of his childhood. It cannot be said that the boy had a warm relationship with his parents, who often quarreled and eventually separated. May's father, being the secretary of the YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association), constantly moved with his family from place to place. The mother, in turn, cared little about the children, paying more attention to her personal life: in her later memoirs, May calls her “a cat with no brakes.” Both theirs unsuccessful marriage May is inclined to believe that this is a consequence of his mother’s unpredictable behavior and his sister’s mental illness.

Little Rollo repeatedly managed to experience a feeling of unity with living nature. As a child, he often retired and took a break from family quarrels by playing on the banks of the St. Clair River. The river became his friend, a quiet, serene corner where he could swim in the summer and skate in the winter. The scientist later claimed that playing on the river bank gave him much more knowledge than school lessons in Marine City. Even in his youth, May became interested in literature and art, and since then this interest has never left him. He entered one of the colleges at the University of Michigan, where he specialized in English. Shortly after May took charge of a radical student magazine, he was asked to leave educational institution. May transferred to Oberlin College in Ohio and received his bachelor's degree there in 1930.

Over the next three years, May traveled throughout the eastern and southern Europe, painted and studied folk art. The formal reason for the trip to Europe was an invitation to take a teaching position. in English to Anatolia College, located in Thessaloniki, Greece. This work left May enough time to paint, and 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 plunged headlong into teaching activities, but this did not help much: the further it went, the more intense and less effective the work being done became.

“Eventually in the spring of this second year I got, figuratively speaking, breakdown. This meant that the rules, principles, and values ​​that usually guided me in my work and life simply no longer applied. I felt so tired that I had to lie in bed for two weeks to regain my strength so that I could continue working as a teacher. I got enough in college psychological knowledge to understand that these symptoms mean that there is something wrong with my whole way of living. I should have found some new goals and objectives in life and reconsidered the strict, moralistic principles of my existence” (May, 1985, p. 8).

From that moment, May began to listen to his inner voice, which, as it turned out, spoke about the unusual - about soul and beauty. “It was as if this voice had to destroy my entire previous way of life in order to be heard” (May, 1985, p. 13).

Along with the nervous crisis, another important event contributed to the revision of life attitudes, namely, participation in 1932 in the summer seminar of Alfred Adler, held in a mountain resort town near Vienna. May was delighted with Adler and managed to learn a lot about human nature and himself during the seminar.

Returning to the United States in 1933, May entered the seminary of the Theological Society, not to become a priest, but to find answers to fundamental questions about nature and man, questions in which religion plays an important role. While studying at the Theological Society seminary, May met the famous theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich, who had 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.

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. For two years, May served as a pastor, but very quickly 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. May studied psychoanalysis at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology while working at New York City College as a consulting psychologist. 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 observer and of the therapeutic process as an exciting adventure capable of enriching both patient and therapist made a deep impression on May. One more important event What 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.

In 1946, May opened his own private practice; and two years later he became a member of the faculty of the William Alanson White Institute. In 1949, as a mature forty-year-old specialist, he received his first doctorate in the field clinical psychology, awarded by Columbia University, and continued to teach psychiatry at the William Alanson White Institute until 1974.

Perhaps May would have remained one of thousands of unknown psychotherapists, but the same life-changing existential event that Jean Paul Sartre wrote about happened to him. Even before receiving doctorate May experienced the deepest shock of his life. When he was only in his thirties, he suffered from tuberculosis and spent three years in a sanatorium in Saranac, in upstate New York. None effective methods There was no treatment for tuberculosis at the time, 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.

“Until I developed a certain “struggle” in myself, a certain feeling personal responsibility Because I am the person who has tuberculosis, I could not make any lasting progress” (May, 1972, p. 14).

Then they did one more thing major discovery, which May then successfully used in psychotherapy. When he learned to listen to his body, he discovered that healing is not a passive, but an active process. A person who is physically or mental illness, must be an active participant in the treatment process. May finally became firmly established in this opinion after his recovery, and after some time he began to introduce this principle into his clinical practice, cultivating in patients the ability to analyze themselves and correct the doctor’s actions.

Having become interested in the phenomena of fear and anxiety during his illness, May began to study the works of the classics - Freud and at the same time Kierkegaard, the great Danish philosopher and theologian, the direct predecessor of existentialism of the 20th century. May had a high regard for Freud, but Kierkegaard's concept of anxiety as a hidden struggle against non-existence 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” (May, 1950). Three years later, he wrote the book “Man's Search for Himself” (May, 1953), which brought him fame both in professional circles and simply among educated people. In 1958, he co-authored with Ernest Angel and Henry Ellenberger the book Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology. This book introduced American psychotherapists to the basic concepts of existential therapy, and after its appearance the existentialism movement became even more popular. Most famous work May's Love and Will (1969b) became a national bestseller and received the 1970 Ralph Waldo Emerson Award for scholarship in the human sciences. In 1971, May received the American Psychological Association Award "for distinguished contributions to the theory and practice of clinical psychology." In 1972, the New York Society of Clinical Psychologists awarded him the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Award. for his book Power and Innocence (1972), and in 1987 he received Gold medal Associations American psychologists"behind outstanding works in area professional psychology throughout life."

May lectured at Harvard and Princeton, in different time He has taught at Yale and Columbia universities, Dartmouth, Vassar and Oberlin colleges, and at the New School for Social Research. 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 Mental Health Foundation. In 1969, May divorced his first wife, Florence De Vries, with whom he had lived together for 30 years. His marriage to his second wife, Ingrid Kepler Scholl, also ended in divorce, after which in 1988 he connected his life with Georgia Lee Miller, a Jungian analyst. On October 22, 1994, after a long illness, May died in Tiburon, California, where he had lived since 1975.

For many years, May was a recognized leader of American existential psychology, advocating its popularization, but sharply opposing the desire of some colleagues for anti-scientific, overly simplified constructions. He criticized any attempt to present existential psychology as a learning available methods self-realization of the individual. A healthy and full-fledged personality is the result of intense internal work aimed at identifying the unconscious basis of existence and its mechanisms. By placing the process of self-knowledge at the forefront, May, in her own way, continues the tradition of Platonic philosophy.

In his works, he carefully examines the main problems of human existence: good and evil, freedom, responsibility and fate, creativity, guilt and anxiety, love and violence. May's best-known work, Love and Will, became an American national bestseller and received the 1970 Ralph Waldo Emerson Award for scholarship in the human sciences.

Early years and education

Rollo Reese May was born on April 21, 1909 in the small town of Ada, Ohio. He was the eldest of six sons of Earl Title May and Mathie 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.

Young May had to endure a difficult childhood, since his parents were poorly educated and did not care much about raising their children, in addition, he soon had to deal with his parents’ divorce and his sister’s mental illness. The boy's father was a member 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.

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 pictures 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 Theological Society seminary, 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 United States.

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, 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 made sure of 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 nevertheless inclined to the concept of anxiety proposed by Kierkegaard as a struggle against non-existence hidden from consciousness, 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 and became a bestseller in next year was awarded the Ralph Emerson Award. 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 Mental Health Foundation.

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

“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,” he wrote in his declining years American psychotherapist Rollo May. 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 Mathie 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 encourage intellectual development children. Quite 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 was, in his opinion, excessive training sessions. 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 have racked their brains to translate, more or less delicately, 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 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 parental home- 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 a Bachelor of Arts degree there 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, tried his hand at painting. As a free artist, he visited Turkey, Austria, Poland and other countries. But after a year this rich 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 was significantly influenced by 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 therapist 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 the whole world upside down. human life. Even before receiving his doctorate, May unexpectedly fell ill with tuberculosis and was forced to spend about two years in a sanatorium in Sarnak, in rural areas in upstate New York. Effective methods There was no treatment for tuberculosis at that time, and these years are still far from an old man literally spent on the edge of the 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 struggle 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 in life. this segment 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 personal experience in the fight against the disease, and in fact, against a ruthless and unfair fate, 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.

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 at various times taught at Yale and Columbia universities, at 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 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 acquires inner freedom his neurotic symptoms usually disappear. However, this is by-effect, but not the main objective 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 ... "

© Sergey STEPANOV