Rollo May Powerpoint presentation TOP.pptx

Rollo May Powerpoint presentation TOP.pptx

1. EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOLOGY Rollo May

2. Overview of Existential Psychology For nearly 50 years, the foremost spokesperson for existential psychology in the United States was Rollo May. His approach was not based on any controlled scientific research but rather on clinical experience. H ealthy people challenge their destiny, cherish their freedom, and live authentically with other people and with themselves

3. Biography of Rollo May Rollo Reese May was born April 21, 1909, in Ada, Ohio, the first son of the six children born to Earl Tittle May and Matie Boughton May. As a young boy, May was not particularly close to either of his parents, who frequently argued with each other and eventually separated. He claimed to have learned more from the St. Clair river than from the school he attended in Marine City. He first attended college at Michigan State University, where he majored in English. May then transferred to Oberlin College in Ohio, from which he received a bachelor’s degree in 1930. For the next 3 years, he roamed throughout eastern and southern Europe as an artist, and work as an itinerant artist in Turkey, Poland, Austria, and other countries. However, by his second year, May poured himself into his work as a teacher, but beca me less effective. From that point on, May began to listen to his inner voice, the one that spoke to him of beauty.

4. Biography of Rollo May A second experience in Europe also left a lasting impression on him, namely, his attendance at Alfred Adler’s 1932 summer seminars at a resort in the mountains above Vienna. After May returned to the United States in 1933, he enrolled at Union Theological Seminary in New York He studied psychoanalysis at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology while working as a counselor to male students at City College of New York.  At about this time, he met Harry Stack Sullivan. He also met and was influenced by Erich Fromm. In 1946, May opened his own private practice and, 2 years later, joined the faculty of the William Alanson White Institute. In 1949, at the relatively advanced age of 40, he earned a PhD in clinical psychology from Columbia University.

5. Biography of Rollo May While still in his early thirties, he contracted tuberculosis and spent 3 years at the Saranac Sanitarium in upstate New York. At that time, no medication for tuberculosis was available, and for a year and a half, May did not know whether he would live or die. At that point, he began to develop some insight into the nature of his illness. After May recovered from his illness, he wrote books: The Meaning of Anxiety, Man’s Search for Himself, Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology, Love and Will (became a national best-seller and won the 1970 Ralph Waldo Emerson Award. May won three prestigious awards: Distinguished Contribution to the Science and Profession of Clinical Psychology Award from the American Psychological Association, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Award and the American Psychological Foundation Gold Medal Award for Lifetime Contributions to Professional Psychology. In 1969, May and his first wife, Florence DeFrees , were divorced after 30 years of marriage. He later married Ingrid Kepler Scholl, but that marriage too ended in divorce. On October 22, 1994, after 2 years of declining health, May died in Tiburon, California,. He was survived by his third wife, Georgia Lee Miller Johnson.

6. Background of Existentialism Modern existential psychology has roots in the writings of Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855). He wished to understand people as they exist in the world as thinking, active, and willing beings. Kierkegaard, like later existentialists, emphasized a balance between freedom and responsibility. Other existentialist philosophers: Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) and Martin Heidegger (1899–1976), Swiss psychiatrists Ludwig Binswanger and Medard Boss. Binswanger and Boss, along with Karl Jaspers, Victor Frankl, and others, adapted the philosophy of existentialism to the practice of psychotherapy. Existentialist writers and artists: Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus; Martin Buber, Paul Tillich, and Cezanne, Matisse, and Picasso .

7. What Is Existentialism? First, existence takes precedence over essence.  Second, existentialism opposes the split between subject and object. Third, people search for some meaning to their lives. Fourth, existentialists hold that ultimately each of us is responsible for who we are and what we become. Fifth, existentialists are basically antitheoretical.

8. Being-in-the-World The basic unity of person and environment is expressed in the German word Dasein , meaning to exist there. Hence, Dasein literally means to exist in the world and is generally written as being-in-the-world. Alienation is the illness of our time, and it manifests itself in three areas: (1) separation from nature, (2) lack of meaningful interpersonal relations, and (3) alienation from one’s authentic self. 3 modes in the being-in-the-world : Umwelt, or the environment around us; Mitwelt , or our relations with other people; and Eigenwelt , or our relationship with our self.

9. Being-in-the-World

10. Nonbeing Being-in-the-world necessitates an awareness of self as a living, emerging being. This awareness, in turn, leads to the dread of not being: that is, nonbeing or nothingness. When we do not courageously confront our nonbeing by contemplating death, we nevertheless will experience nonbeing in other forms, including addiction to alcohol or other drugs, promiscuous sexual activity, and other compulsive behaviors. Our nonbeing can also be expressed as blind conformity to society’s expectations or as generalized hostility that pervades our relations to others.

11. The case of philip

12. Anxiety Philip was suffering from neurotic anxiety. Like others who experience neurotic anxiety, he behaved in a nonproductive, self-defeating manner. People experience anxiety when they become aware that their existence or some value identified with it might be destroyed. May (1958a) defined anxiety as “ the subjective state of the individual’s becoming aware that his [or her] existence can be destroyed, that he can become ‘nothing’” N ormal anxiety- is proportionate to the threat, does not involve repression, and can be confronted constructively on the conscious level” N eurotic anxiety- reaction which is 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”

13. GUILT 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 w orld. B oth anxiety and guilt are ontological; that is, they refer to the nature of being and not to feelings arising from specific situations or transgressions. In all, May recognized three forms of ontological guilt, each corresponding to one of the three modes of being-in-the-world, that is, Umwelt, Mitwelt , and Eigenwelt . 

14. The structure that gives meaning to experience and allows people to make decisions about the future is called intentionality . Intentionality

15. In spite of Philip’s pattern of taking care of women, he never really learned to care for them. Care is a state in which something does matter   Love is the delight in the presence of the other person and an affirming of [that person’s] value and development as much as one’s own W ill is the capacity to organize one’s self so that movement in a certain direction or toward a certain goal may take place . cARE, LOVE, AND WILL

16. Forms of Love

17. FREEDOM

18. DESTINY Destiny is the design of the universe speaking through the design of each one of us Our ultimate destiny is death, but on a lesser scale our destiny includes other biological properties such as intelligence, gender, size and strength, and genetic predisposition toward certain illnesses. In addition, psychological and cultural factors contribute to our destiny.