ROLLO MAY

• What does it mean to exist?

  Important questions concerning our living:

  • Who am I?
  • Is life worth living?
  • Does it have a meaning?
  • How can I realize my humanity?
• Healthy People


  • - Challenge Destiny, cherish their freedom and Live Authentically with other people and with themselves.
  • They recognize the inevitability of death and have the courage to live life in the present.
• What is Existential Psychology?

  People acquire freedom of action through expanding their self-awareness and then by assuming responsibility for their actions. The acquisition of freedom and responsibility, however, is achieved only at the expense of anxiety. As people realize that, ultimately, they are in charge of their own destiny, they experience the burden of freedom and the pain of responsibility.
• Basic Assumptions of Existentialism

  • - Existence precedes essence
  • Do not believe in the split between subjective and objective world
  • Assumes that people want to find meaning in their life
  • Hold that ultimately each of us is responsible for who we are and what we become
  • Concerned with the struggle to work through life's experiences and to grow toward becoming more fully human
• Dasein


  Being in the world
• Nonbeing


  Also nothingness, dread of not being
• Dasein - Being in the World

  • - Expressed in the German word "Dasein" which means "to exist in the world" or "being-in-the-world"
  • The idea that people exist in their own subjective world or being in the world
  • Many people suffer from anxiety and despair brought on by their alienation from themselves or from their world
  • Feelings of isolation and alienation of self from the world is suffered not only by pathologically disturbed individuals but also by most individuals in modern societies
• Simultaneous Modes of Being in People's World

  • Umwelt - environment around us; world of object and things

  Mitwelt - We also live in the world with people. We must relate to people as people, not as things.

  Eigenwelt - relationship with our self; be aware of oneself as a human being and to grasp who we are as we relate to the world of thing and to the world of people.
• Healthy people live in Umwelt, Mitwelt, and Eigenwelt simultaneously
• Non-being


  • Dread of not being
  • Death is not the only avenue of nonbeing
  • Provokes us to live defensively and receive less from life than if we would confront the issue of our nonexistence
  • Life becomes more vital, more meaningful when we confront the possibility of our death
  • When we do not courageously confront our nonbeing by contemplating death, we nevertheless will experience nonbeing in other forms
• Dread of Nonbeing can take the form of:

  • Isolation

  Alienation
• Anxiety


  • People experience anxiety when they become aware that their existence or some value identified with it might be destroyed
  • It is the subjective state of the individual's becoming aware that his or her existence can be destroyed, that he can become 'nothing'
  • Can spring either from an awareness of one's nonbeing or from a threat to some value essential to one's existence
  • Arises when people are faced with the problem of fulfilling their potentialities
• Forms of Anxiety


  • Normal Anxiety - proportionate to the threat, does not involve repression, and can be confronted constructively

  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
• 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
  • Umwelt Guilt - as we become more advanced, we become more separated with nature which makes guilty
  • Mitwelt Guilt - Our inability to perceive the subjective world of other people can make us feel guilty
  • Eigenwelt Guilt - Jonah Complex
• Intentionality


  The ability to make a choice implies some underlying structure upon which that is made. The structure that gives meaning to experience and allows people to make decisions about the future.
• Care, Love and Will


  • Care - to recognize a person as a fellow human being, to identify with that person's joy, guilt or pity

  Love - To love means to care, to recognize the essential humanity of the other person, to have an active regard for that person's development

  Will - capacity to organize one's self so that movement in a toward a certain goal may take place
• Union of Love and Will

  Modern society suffers from an unhealthy division of love and will. Our task is to unite love and will. For the mature person, both love and will mean a reaching out toward another person. Both involve care, both necessitate a choice both imply action and both require responsibility.
• Forms of Love


  • Sex - a biological function that can be satisfied through sexual intercourse or some other release of sexual tension

  Eros - a psychological desire that seeks procreation or creation through an enduring union with a loved one

  Philia - intimate nonsexual friendship between two people

  Agape - concern for the other's welfare beyond any gain that one can get out of it
• Freedom


  Comes from an understanding of our destiny. Possibility of changing, although we may not know what those changes might be. Increases anxiety.
• Forms of Freedom


  • Existential Freedom - freedom of doing, freedom to pursue tangible goals

  Essential Freedom - freedom of being, freedom to think, to plan, to hope
• Destiny


  Biological, psychological, and cultural factors. Terminus, goal. Death. As we challenge our destiny, we gain freedom, and as we achieve freedom, we push at the boundaries of destiny.
• Psychopathology


  • People have become alienated from:
  • the natural world (Umwelt)
  • other people (Mitwelt)
  • themselves (Eigenwelt)

  Feeling of insignificance = apathy and emptiness
• Concept of Humanity