Biography

• • Father of Rollo May

  Earl Tittle May
• • Mother of Rollo May

  Matie Boughton May
• May’s mother often left the children to care for themselves and, according to May’s description, was a “ bitch kitty on wheels ”
• • This became his friend, a serene place to swim during the summer and to ice skate during the winter
  • He claimed to have learned more from this than from the school he attended in Marine City

  River
• • He first attended college at Michigan State University, where he majored in ?

  English
• He roamed throughout eastern and southern Europe as an artist, painting pictures and studying native art.
• • While at the Union Theological Seminary, he met this renowned existential theologian and philosopher, who was then a recent refugee from Germany and a faculty member at the seminary.
  • Remained friends for 30 years

  Paul Tillich
• • May was impressed with this person who notion that the therapist is a participant observer and that therapy is a human adventure capable of enhancing the life of both patient and therapist.
  • He also met and was influenced by this person, who at that time was a faculty member at the William Alanson White Institute.

  Harry Stack Sullivan and Erich Fromm
• • While still in his early thirties, he contracted this disease and spent 3 years at the Saranac Sanitarium in upstate New York.
  • At that time, no medication for this disease was available, and for a year and a half, May did not know whether he would live or die.

  Tuberculosis
• As May learned to listen to his body, he discovered that healing is an active, not a passive, process
• Wives of Rollo May

  • First Wife - Florence Defrees - Divorced after 30 yrs of marriage
  • Second Wife - Ingrid Kepler Scholl - Didn't last long