ROLLO MAY

• Existential psychology


  Began shortly after WW2 from Europe to US
• Søren Kierkegaard


  • Danish philosopher and theologian, modern existential psychology has roots in his writings
• Freedom and responsibility


  People acquire freedom of action through expanding their self-awareness and then by assuming responsibility for their actions
• Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger


  • Helped popularize existential philosophy during the 20th century
• Existence over essence


  Existence means to emerge, essence implies a static immutable substance. Existence suggests process, essence refers to a product. Existence is associated with growth and change, essence signifies stagnation and finality
• Split of subject and object


  People are more than mere cogs in the machinery of an industrialized society, but they are also more than subjective thinking beings living passively through armchair speculation
• Search for meaning in life


  Ask questions concerning their being, "who am I", "is life worth living"
• Responsibility for who we are and what we become


  "Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself"
• Existentialists are anti-theoretical


  Theories further dehumanize people and render them as objects
• Being-in-the-world


  The hyphens imply oneness of subject and object, daesin
• Daesin


  The basic unity of person and environment, to exist in the world
• 3 areas of alienation


  • Separation from nature
  • Lack of meaningful interpersonal interactions
  • Alienation from one's authentic self
• Umwelt


  The environment around us, objects and things that would exist even if people had no awareness such as hunger and sleep, emphasis on biology and instincts
• Mitwelt


  Relations with people, relate to people as people, not as things
• Eigenwelt


  Relationship with self, to be aware of oneself as a human being and to grasp who we are as we relate to the world of things and to the world of people
• Non-being or nothingness


  Dread of not being, death
• Philip, an architect, suffered neurotic anxiety
• Death


  An absolute of life that everyone must face
• Anxiety


  The subjective state of the individual's becoming aware that his existence can be destroyed, that he can become 'nothing'. Can be constructive or destructive; normal or neurotic
• Normal anxiety


  Proportionate to the threat, does not involve repression, and can be confronted constructively on the conscious level. Experience when values are threatened
• Neurotic anxiety


  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. Experience when values transformed into dogma
• Guilt


  Arises when people deny their potentialities, fail to accurately perceive the needs of fellow humans, or remain oblivious to their dependence on the natural world
• Ontological guilt


  Refer to the nature of being and not to feelings arising from specific situations
• 3 forms of ontological guilt

  • Separation guilt (umwelt) - result from separation from nature
  • Inability to perceive accurately the world of others (mitwelt) - we can see other people only through our own eyes and can never perfectly judge the needs of other people
  • Denial of our own potentialities or failure to fulfill them (eigenwelt) - reminiscent of Maslow's concept of the Jonah complex, or the fear of being or doing one's best
• Intentionality


  The structure that gives meaning to experience and allows people to make decisions about the future. May used this to bridge the gap between subject and object. Intentionality and action are inseparable
• Care


  Means to recognize that person as a fellow human being, to identify with that person's pain or joy, guilt or pity. An active process, the opposite of apathy. "Care is a state in which something does matter". Source of will
• Love


  Delight in the presence of the other person and an affirming of value and development as much as one's own. Without care, there can be no love
• Will


  "The capacity to organize one's self so that movement in a certain direction or goal may take place"
• Union of love and will


  Neither blissful love nor self-serving will have a role. For the mature person, both love and will mean a reaching out toward another person
• 4 forms of love

  • Sex - biological function that can be satisfied through sexual intercourse or some other release of sexual tension
  • Eros - psychological desire that seeks procreation through an enduring union with a loved one, built on care and tenderness
  • Philia (chumship) - intimate nonsexual friendship between two people, necessary requisite for healthy erotic relationships during early and late adolescence
  • Agape - esteem for the other, the concern for the other's welfare beyond any gain that one can get out of it; disinterested love, typically, the love of God for man
• Freedom


  The individual's capacity to know that he is the determined one. Comes from understanding our own destiny. Harbor different possibilities in one's mind even though it is not clear at the moment which way one must act
• 2 forms of freedom

  • Existential freedom - freedom of action, the freedom of doing
  • Essential freedom - freedom of being
• Destiny


  "The design of the universe speaking through the design of each one of us". Our ultimate destiny is death. Our terminus or goal. Freedom and destiny give birth to each other
• Philip gained his freedom of being or essential freedom
• Myths


  Are not falsehoods; rather, they are conscious and unconscious belief systems that provide explanations for personal and social problems. Stories that unify a society; "they are essential to the process of keeping our souls alive and bringing us new meaning to often meaningless world
• 2 levels of communication

  • Rationalistic language - truth takes precedence over the people who are communicating
  • Myth - the total human experience is more important than the empirical accuracy of the communication
• The Oedipus story contains existential crises which include birth, separation or exile from parents and home, sexual union with one parent and hostility toward the other, the assertion of independence and the search for identity, and death