Rollo may

Rollo May Theories of Personality

1. ROLLO MAY (1909 – 1994)

2. Background of Rollo Resse May Rollo Reese May was born April 21, 1909, in Ada , Ohio.  His childhood was not particularly pleasant:  His parents didn’t get along and eventually divorced, and his sister had a psychotic breakdown .

3. Background of Rollo Resse May After a brief stint at Michigan State (he was asked to leave because of his involvement with a radical student magazine), he attended Oberlin College in Ohio, where he received his bachelors degree. After graduation, he went to Greece, where he taught English at Anatolia College for three years.  During this period, he also spent time as an itinerant artist and even studied briefly with Alfred Adler .

4. Background of Rollo Resse May When he returned to the US, he entered Union Theological Seminary and became friends with one of his teachers, Paul Tillich, the existentialist theologian, who would have a profound effect on his thinking.  May received his Bachelor Degree in 1938. May suffered from tuberculosis, and had to spend three years in a sanatorium.  This was probably the turning point of his life.  While he faced the possibility of death, he also filled his empty hours with reading. 

5. Background of Rollo Resse May   Among the literature he read were the writings of Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish religious writer who inspired much of the existential movement, and provided the inspiration for May’s theory. He went on to study psychoanalysis at White Institute, where he met people such as Harry Stack Sullivan and Erich Fromm.  And finally, he went to Columbia University in New York, where in 1949 he received the first PhD in clinical psychology that institution ever awarded .

6. Background of Rollo Resse May After receiving his PhD, he went on to teach at a variety of top schools.  In 1958, he edited, with Ernest Angel and Henri Ellenberger, the book Existence, which introduced existential psychology to the US.  He spent the last years of his life in Tiburon, California, until he died in October of 1994.

7. Influences and psychological background Rollo May is the best known American existential psychologist.  Much of his thinking can be understood by reading about existentialism in general, and the overlap between his ideas and the ideas of Ludwig Binswanger is great.  Nevertheless, he is a little off of the mainstream in that he was more influenced by American humanism than the Europeans, and more interested in reconciling existential psychology with other approaches, especially Freud’s.

8. BASIC CONCEPT OF ROLLO MAY

9. BASIC CONCEPT OF ROLLO MAY

10. Influences and psychological background May uses some traditional existential terms slightly differently than others, and invents new words for some of existentialism’s old ideas.  Destiny , for example, is roughly the same as thrownness combined with fallenness .  It is that part of our lives that is determined for us, our raw materials, if you like, for the project of creating our lives.  Another example is the word  courage , which he uses more often than the traditional term "authenticity" to mean facing one’s anxiety and rising above it.

11. Concept of his theory Rollo May combined psychoanalytic traditions of psychology and the existentialist movement to explain his view of psychology. WHAT IS THE EXISTENTIALIST VIEW? The Existentialists philosophy emphasizes "existence" rather than "essence". It suggests that there is no  truth  or  reality  except as we participate in it. Knowledge is an act of doing. The Latin word " exsistere ", which means "to standout or "to emerge", and the existential approach focuses upon the human being as he or she is emerging and becoming.

12. Concept of his theory Ontology the study of being, the essence of people in general, human nature Being in the world; the emphasis is on an individual's existence at a certain time under certain circumstances  Dasein

13. Concept of his theory Modes of existence 1. umwelt objective aspects of the internal and external environment (nature); what the physical and biological sciences study

14. Concept of his theory Modes of existence 2 . Mitwelt Social relationships, interpersonal relationships

15. Concept of his theory Modes of existence 3 . Eigenwelt self-awareness, the subjective world of the self

16. OUR PREDICAMENT Rollo points out that the central problem that we face is a feeling of "powerlessness", a "pervasive conviction that the individual cannot do anything effective in the face of enormous cultural, social, and economic problems". Our feelings of powerlessness are compounded by anxiety and the loss of traditional values .

17. POWERLESSNESS In the early 1950s, May observed many patients who came to see him were suffering from inner feelings of emptiness. May predicted that these experiences of emptiness and powerlessness would in time increase and of course it did. The 1970s saw considerable talk about  human potentialities , yet, very little confidence on the part of the individual to make a difference. This feeling of powerlessness continued throughout the 1980s and even into the 1990s. ".

18. Example: The Vietnam War, unrest in the Middle East, the threat of nuclear War With our increase in technology, power has become impersonal, an autonomous force acting on its own behalf. No one person or group feels capable of exercising significant power. Our feeling of powerlessness subsequently leads to "Anxiety".

19. Anxiety is a major focus of Rollo May and is the subject of his work "The Meaning of Anxiety". He defines it as "the apprehension cued off by a threat to some value which the individual holds essential to his existence as a self" (1967, p. 72). He also quotes  Kierkegaard : "Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom".

20. May's interest in isolation and anxiety developed strongly after his time in the sanatorium when he had tuberculosis. His own feelings of depersonalization and isolation as well as watching others deal with fear and anxiety gave him important insight into the subject. He concluded that anxiety is essential to an individual's growth and in fact contributes to what it means to be human. This is a way that humans enact their freedom to live a life of dignity.

21. He is unwavering in the importance of anxiety, feelings of threat and powerlessness because it gives humans the freedom to act courageously as opposed to conforming to be comfortable This struggle gives humans the opportunity to live life to the fullest (Friedman). One way in which Rollo proposes to fight anxiety is by displacing anxiety to fear as he believes that “anxiety seeks to become fear”. [7] He claims that by shifting anxiety to a fear, one can therefore discover incentives to either avoid the feared object or find the means to remove this fear of it.

22. STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT REDISCOVERING SELFHOOD  Rediscovering selfhood  involves rediscovering our own feelings and desires and fighting against those things that prevent us from feeling and wanting. May suggests four stages of consciousness of self: 1. Innocence  --is before consciousness of self is born, the pre- egoic , pre-self-conscious stage of the infant. The innocent is premoral , i.e. is neither bad nor good.  Like a wild animal who kills to eat, the innocent is only doing what he or she must do.  But an innocent does have a degree of will in the sense of a drive to fulfil their needs!

23. 2. Rebellion  -- the childhood and adolescent stage of developing one’s ego or self-consciousness by means of contrast with adults, from the “no” of the two year old to the “no way” of the teenager.  The rebellious person wants freedom, but has as yet no full understanding of the responsibility that goes with it.  The teenager may want to spend their allowance in any way they choose -- yet they still expect the parent to provide the money, and will complain about unfairness if they don't get it!

24. Decision : a transitional stage during which a teenager or young adult makes decisions about his or her life, while seeking further independence from her parents. 

25. 3 . Ordinary  consciousness of self-- the normal adult ego, conventional and a little boring, perhaps.  They have learned responsibility, but find it too demanding, and so seek refuge in conformity and traditional values. 4 . Creative consciousness of self  -- the authentic adult, the existential stage, beyond ego and self-actualizing.  This is the person who, accepting destiny, faces anxiety with courage!

26. Not everyone achieves each level of consciousness. The fourth stage, is achieved only rarely, and it is somewhat analogous to Maslows self actualization stage.

27. THE GOALS OF INTEGRATION Integrating the daimonic Experiencing our power Rediscovering care Facing intentionality Freedom and Destiny Courage and creativity Developing a new myth

28. Love and Will Many of May’s unique ideas can be found in the book ,  Love and Will .  In his efforts at reconciling Freud and the existentialists, he turns his attention to  motivation.  His basic motivational construct is  the daimonic . 

29. Love and Will The daimonic is the entire system of motives, different for each individual.  It is composed of a collection of specific motives called  daimons . The word daimon i s from the Greek, and means little god.  It comes to us as demon, with a very negative connotation.  But originally, a daimon could be bad or good.  Daimons include lower needs, such as food and sex, as well as higher needs, such as love. 

30. Basically, he says, a daimon is anything that can take over the person, a situation he refers to as  daimonic possession .  It is then, when the balance among daimons is disrupted, that they should be considered “evil” -- as the phrase implies!  This idea is similar to Binswanger's idea of themes, or Horney's idea of coping strategies.

31. For May, one of the most important daimons is  eros .  Eros is love (not sex), and in Greek mythology was a minor god pictured as a young man.  Later, Eros would be transformed into that annoying little pest, Cupid.  May understood love as the need we have to “become one” with another person, and refers to an ancient Greek story by Aristophanes:  People were originally four-legged, four-armed, two-headed creatures.  When we became a little too prideful, the gods split us in two, male and female, and cursed us with the never-ending desire to recover our missing half! like any daimon, eros is a good thing until it takes over the personality, until we become obsessed with it.

32. Another important concept for May is  will :  The ability to organize oneself in order to achieve one’s goals.  This makes will roughly synonymous with ego and reality-testing, but with its own store of energy, as in ego psychology.  May hints that will, too, is a daimon that can potentially take over the person. Another definition of will is “the ability to make  wishes  come true.”  Wishes are “playful imaginings of possibilities,” and are manifestations of our daimons .  Many wishes, of course, come from eros .  But they require will to make them happen! 

33. May has three “personality types” coming out of our relative supply,, .of our wishes for love and the will to realize them . . 1. “ neo-Puritan ,” who is all will, but no love.  They have amazing self-discipline, and can “make things happen”... but they have no wishes to act upon.  So they become “anal” and perfectionistic , but empty and “dried-up.” 

34. 2. The second type he refers to as “ infantile .”  They are all wishes but no will.  Filled with dreams and desires, they don’t have the self-discipline to make anything of their dreams and desires, and so become dependent and conformist.  They love, but their love means little.  Perhaps Homer Simpson is the clearest example! 3. The last type is the " creative " type.  May recommends, wisely, that we should cultivate a balance of these two aspects of our personalities.  He said “Man’s task is to unite love and will.” 

35. Love May's thoughts on love are documented mainly by  Love and Will , which focuses on love and sex in human behavior and in which he specifies five particular types of love. He believes that they should not be separate, but that society has separated love and sex into two different ideologies.

36. Sex   : Lust, tension release; Eros   : Procreative love, savoring , experiential; Philia   : Brotherly love, liking; Agape   : Unselfish love, devotion to the welfare of others; Authentic love  : Incorporates all other types of love

37. May particularly investigated and criticized the "Sexual Revolution" in the 1960s, in which many individuals were exploring their sexuality. "Free sex" was replacing the ideology of free love. May explains that love is intentionally willed by an individual, whereas sexual desire is the complete opposite. Love is real human instinct reflected upon deliberation and consideration. .

38. May then shows that to give in to these impulses does not actually make one free, but to resist these impulses is the meaning of being free. May perceived the Hippie subculture and sexual mores of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as commercialization of sex and pornography, as having influenced society such that people believed that love and sex are no longer associated directly. According to May, emotion has become separated from reason, making it acceptable socially to seek sexual relationships and avoid the natural drive to relate to another person and create new life

39. May believed that sexual freedom can cause modern society to neglect more important psychological developments. May suggests that the only way to remedy the cynical ideas that characterize our times is to rediscover the importance of caring for another, which May describes as the opposite of apathy.

40. Myths May’s last book was  The Cry for Myth .  He pointed out that a big problem in the twentieth century was our loss of values .  All the different values around us lead us to doubt all values.  May says we have to create our own values, each of us individually.  This, of course, is difficult to say the least.  So we need help, not forced on us, but “offered up” for us to use as our will.

41. Enter  myths , stories that help us to “make sense” out of our lives, “guiding narratives.”  They resemble to some extent Jung’s archetypes, but they can be conscious and unconscious, collective and personal.  A good example is how many people live their lives based on stories from the Bible.  

42. Criticism of modern psychotherapy [ May believed that psychotherapists in the late 1900s had fractured away from the Jungian, Freudian and other influencing psychoanalytic thought and started creating their own 'gimmicks' causing a crisis within the world of psychotherapy. These gimmicks were said to put too much stock into the  self  where the real focus needed to be looking at 'man in the world'. To accomplish this, May pushed for the use of existential therapy over individually created techniques for psychotherapy .

43. Mays theory is not a scientific theory of personality giving us a series of hypotheses that may be tested by an empirical procedure. Instead he suggested a philosophical picture of human nature that is coherent, relevant, comprehensive, and compelling.

44. The therapeutic process of the existentialists seeks to understand the patients mode of being in the world. It's the context that distinguishes the existential approach rather than any specific technique. Much of the psychotherapeutic devices of both Freud and gestalt psychotherapists have been used. May criticized contemporary psychological research for being impressed with data and uninterested in theory.