After graduating from school, the young man entered the University of Michigan. His rebellious nature led him to the editorial office of a radical student magazine, which he soon headed. Repeated clashes with the administration led to his expulsion from the university. He transferred to Oberlin College in Ohio and received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1930.
After graduating from the university, May traveled extensively throughout eastern and southern Europe, painted and studied folk art; he managed to visit Turkey, Poland, Austria and other countries as a free artist. However, during the second year of traveling, May suddenly felt very lonely. Trying to get rid of this feeling, he diligently plunged into teaching, but this did not help much: the further he went, the more intense and less effective the work he did became.
Soon returning to her homeland, May entered the seminary of the Theological Society to find answers to basic questions about nature and man, questions in which religion plays an important role. While studying at the seminary of the Theological Society, May met the famous theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich, who fled Nazi Germany and continued his academic career in America. May learned a lot from Tillich, they became friends and remained so for more than thirty years.
After graduating from the seminary, he was ordained a minister of the Congregational Church. For two years, May served as a pastor, but quickly became disillusioned, considering this path a dead end and began to look for answers to his questions in psychoanalysis. May studied psychoanalysis at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology. It was then that he met Harry Stack Sullivan, president and one of the founders of the William Alanson White Institute. Sullivan's view of the therapist as a participant rather than a bystander, and of the therapeutic process as an exciting adventure capable of enriching both patient and therapist, made a deep impression on May. Another important event that determined May’s development as a psychologist was his acquaintance with Erich Fromm, who by that time had already firmly established himself in the USA.
By 1946, May decided to start his own private practice, and two years later he began teaching at the William Alanson White Institute. In 1949, as a mature forty-year-old, he received his first doctorate in clinical psychology from Columbia University, and continued to teach psychiatry at the William Alanson White Institute until 1974.
Epiphany
Perhaps May would never have stood out among the many other therapists practicing at that time if the same life-changing existential event that Jean Paul Sartre wrote about had not happened to him. Even before receiving his doctorate, May experienced one of the most profound shocks of his life. When he was just over thirty years old, he suffered from tuberculosis, a disease difficult to cure at that time, and spent three years in a sanatorium in Saranac, in upstate New York, and for a year and a half May did not know whether he was destined to survive. The consciousness of the complete impossibility of resisting a serious illness, the fear of death, the agonizing wait for a monthly x-ray examination, each time meaning either a verdict or an extension of the wait - all this slowly undermined the will, lulled the instinct of the fight for existence. Realizing that all these seemingly completely natural mental reactions harm the body no less than physical torment, May began to develop a view of illness as part of his being at a given period of time. He realized that a helpless and passive position contributed to the development of the disease. Looking around, May saw that patients who had come to terms with their situation were fading away before their eyes, while those who were struggling usually recovered. It is on the basis of her own experience in dealing with the disease that May concludes that it is necessary for the individual to actively intervene in the “order of things” and his own destiny.
At the same time, he discovers that healing is not a passive, but an active process. A person affected by a physical or mental illness must be an active participant in the healing process. Having finally become convinced from his own experience, he began to introduce this principle into his practice, cultivating in patients the ability to analyze themselves and correct the doctor’s actions.
Confession
Having encountered first-hand the phenomena of fear and anxiety during a long illness, May began to study the works of the classics on this topic - primarily Freud, as well as Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher and theologian, the direct predecessor of twentieth-century existentialism. Highly appreciating Freud's ideas, May was still inclined to the concept of anxiety proposed by Kierkegaard as a struggle against non-existence hidden from consciousness, which affected him more deeply.
Soon after returning from the sanatorium, May compiled his thoughts on anxiety into a doctoral dissertation and published it under the title “The Meaning of Anxiety” (1950). This first major publication was followed by many books that brought him national and then world fame. His most famous book, Love and Will, was published in 1969, became a bestseller and was awarded the Ralph Emerson Prize the following year. And in 1972, the New York Society of Clinical Psychologists awarded May the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Award. for the book "Power and Innocence".
In addition, May was active in teaching and clinical work. He lectured at Harvard and Princeton, and at various times taught at Yale and Columbia universities, at Dartmouth, Vassar and Oberlin colleges, and at the New School for Social Research in New York. He was an adjunct professor at New York University, Chairman of the Council of the Association for Existential Psychology, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the American Mental Health Foundation.
On October 22, 1994, after a long illness, Rollo May died at the age of 85 in Tiburon, California, where he had lived since the mid-seventies.
Key Ideas
Literature
May R. Discovery of Genesis. - M.: Institute of General Humanitarian Research, 2004. - 224 p. - ISBN 5-88239-137-8
Notes
see also
- Love and Will
Categories:
- Personalities in alphabetical order
- Born on April 21
- Born in 1909
- Died on October 22
- Died in 1994
- Persons: Transpersonal psychology
- Psychologists USA
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Rollo May Rollo May Famous American existential psychologist. Date of birth: April 21, 1909 ... Wikipedia
May Rollo (born 1909) American psychologist, representative of humanistic psychology. He studied individual psychology by A. Adler, then received a theological education. 1940s worked at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and... ... Psychological Dictionary
MAY Rollo Reese- (1909–1994) – American psychoanalyst, psychotherapist, psychologist. Born April 21, 1909 in Ada, Ohio. He was the second child of six children. His father was the secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association and often moved together... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary of Psychology and Pedagogy
- (p. 1909). May is known as one of the leaders of humanistic psychology, promoting and explaining such existential principles as “encounter”, “choice”, “authenticity”, “responsibility”, “transcendence”, as well as others... ... Psychological Encyclopedia
- (English May) German surname. Famous speakers: May, Brian English rock musician, guitarist of the band Queen May, James English journalist, known as one of the co-hosts of the TV show Top Gear May, Teresa English politician May, David... ... Wikipedia
Others, especially young people, are choosing the terrible option of committing suicide, and such cases are becoming more and more common.Written in brilliant literary language and addressed to a wide readership, the book by one of the leading representatives of existential psychology is dedicated to the search for the psychological roots of aggression and violence, the problems of good and evil, strength and powerlessness, guilt and responsibility.
The cover design uses René Magritte's painting "Titanic Days"Whether we are trying to understand the psychological causes of crises in politics, economics, entrepreneurship, professional or domestic troubles, whether we want to delve into the essence of modern fine art, poetry, philosophy, religion - everywhere we are faced with the problem of anxiety. Anxiety is omnipresent. This is the challenge that life throws at us.The book “Existential Psychology” became a manifesto of humanistic psychology, a special direction of modern psychological science that emerged in the early 60s in the USA. The founders of humanistic psychology and its recognized leaders were Abraham Maslow, Rollo May and Carl Rogers.
American existential psychologist and psychotherapist, reformer of psychoanalysis, who introduced existential ideas into it. (It is believed that existential psychology is based on the postulate about the uniqueness of the specific life of each person, which is fundamentally irreducible to general patterns - see).
In youth Rollo May suffered from tuberculosis, lived in a sanatorium and saw how tuberculosis patients, resigned to their situation, slowly faded away, while those who fought for life often recovered...
He later wrote about the role of the psychotherapist: “Our task is to be guides, friends and interpreters for people during their journey through their inner hell and purgatory. More precisely, our task is to help the patient reach the point where he can decide whether to continue to be a victim or to leave this victim position and make his way further through purgatory with the hope of reaching heaven...” and “Fate cannot be ignored, we cannot simply erase it or replace it with something else. But we can choose how to meet our destiny, using the abilities given to us ... "
The most famous book was published in 1969 Rollo May: Love and Will / Love and Will.
“...the awareness of one’s own desires and the affirmation of them includes the acceptance of one’s own originality and uniqueness and implies that it is necessary to be prepared not only to be isolated from the parental figures on whom one was dependent, but also to immediately remain alone in the entire psychic universe” .
Rollo May, Existential foundations of psychotherapy, in Sat.: Existential psychology. Existence, M., “April Press”; "Eksmo-press", 2001, p. 65.
In 1975, a friend's famous book was published Rollo May: The Courage to Create.
“It’s not for nothing that one of May’s latest books was called “The Courage to Create” - he calls on both his patients and all of humanity to do this. Of course, creativity has been and remains the ideal of human activity. However, when May writes that each individual creates his own world, he does not only mean that human activity is capable of transforming the world in accordance with the needs of people. The world, according to May, changes with the transformation of the individual's own point of view.
This situation is also reflected in the understanding of psychotherapy: it should help the patient become able to recreate his goals, orientations, and attitudes.
A model for May, as well as for Binswanger, serves the life of the artist. To cure neurosis means to teach how to create, to make a person an “artist of his own life.”
But, firstly, if mental health and artistic creativity are identical, then most people will have to be recognized as neurotic.
Secondly, creativity can only rarely be a means of healing for those who are truly sick.
Neither willpower nor creative impulses will help most neurotics.
Finally, human creativity itself becomes for May some kind of demonic, magical force, capable, at the will of a person, of changing not only his goals and attitudes, but also the entire surrounding reality. If you accept the instructions May, you can become like Don Quixote and live in a fantasy world, which may be beautiful, but does not correspond to reality at all. It turns out that May's Patients can only in their imagination freely and responsibly choose themselves as great artists. May doesn't stop there. Like many other representatives of humanistic and existential psychology, he calls for a “transformation of consciousness.”
The book “The Courage to Create” also became bestseller, and for obvious reasons. The time of its release - the mid-70s - was a time of widespread counterculture, whose adherents paid great attention to Eastern religions, meditation, and psychedelic drugs such as LSD. Although May, unlike some other existential analysts, is quite cautious in assessing such means of transforming consciousness, he is talking about the same thing. For example, he writes: “Ecstasy is a well-deserved ancient method of transcending our ordinary consciousness, helping us to achieve insights otherwise inaccessible. Element of Ecstasy [...]
is part and premise of every true symbol and myth: for if we truly participate in the symbol or myth, we are temporarily “withdrawn” and are “outside” ourselves.”
Such complicity becomes for May the main characteristic of the authenticity of human existence. The rejection of positivist psychology thus leads May to mysticism: hidden behind calls to “create courageously” is a technique of ecstasy, participation in myth and ritual.
May became one of the most consistent supporters of the rejection of positivist approaches in psychology.
Without going beyond the humanistic movement as a whole, May dissociated himself from the eclecticism of his colleagues. He believed that positivist methods play a very insignificant role in understanding the ontological characteristics of human existence.”
Tikhonravov Yu.V., Existential psychology, M., Intel-Sintez, 1998, pp. 155-156.
On personality formation Rollo May in his youth, a German theologian who fled to the USA from the Nazis had a great influence - Paul Tillich, who recommended to him the works of European existentialist philosophers.
A 100-percent American from the Midwest, May taught English in Greece after college while traveling through Europe, educating himself and pursuing a career in clinical psychology. Returning to the United States, he published the country's first (and still one of the best) manuals on psychological counseling. At the same time, he graduated from seminary and became a practicing clergyman.
He tried to “combine” these two sides of his personality in the 1940 book “The Origins of Creative Life,” dedicated to the relationship between psychotherapy and religion, with an epigraph from Berdyaev: “...To talk about a person means at the same time to talk about God...” The book was a success, but May soon bought up the remainder of the circulation and forbade mentioning or reprinting it. “I realized that I didn’t believe what I wrote.” The next turning point was tuberculosis, which was deadly in those years, and put him to bed for a year and a half. Recovery was facilitated by the realization that death threatens primarily those who are ready to give in to it in advance or who go enchanted towards it. “Looking death in the face was a valuable experience,” May said, “it taught me to look life in the face.” After recovering, May broke with religion, finding in psychology a more effective means of reducing suffering. However, the main thing for him was not consulting, but writing books. Almost all of his works are addressed to a wide audience; they brought him not only scientific but also literary prizes.
Rollo May became the main propagandist of the ideas of European existentialism in the USA, one of the founders and leaders of humanistic psychology. The existential view allowed him to see in a person not what is given by genes and environment, but, first of all, what he creates from himself, making certain choices.
- April 21, 1909: born in Ada (USA).
- 1930–1933: After graduating from college, he teaches in Thessaloniki (Greece), attends seminars with psychoanalyst Alfred Adler in Vienna.
- 1933–1938: studies at the Unionist Theological Seminary, graduating with honors. The beginning of a long-term friendship with Paul Tillich.
- 1939: "The Art of Psychological Counseling."
- 1942–1943: Treatment in a tuberculosis sanatorium: “The main reason why I contracted tuberculosis was despair and a sense of doom.”
- 1949: Defense of dissertation “The Meaning of Anxiety” at Columbia University.
- 1958: Elected president of the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology in New York.
- 1971: Awarded the American Psychological Association Gold Medal for outstanding contributions to the science and practice of clinical psychology.
- October 29, 1994: died in Tiburon (USA).
Keys to Understanding
Choice of fate
Each of us is given the opportunity to manage our own development - this is our freedom. With freedom and self-awareness, we can break the chain of stimuli and reactions and act consciously, so freedom is associated with flexibility, openness, and readiness to change. At the same time, it correlates with the inevitable givens of our life - in other words, with fate. May distinguishes its levels: cosmic, genetic, cultural fate and specific circumstances. And although each of these levels predetermines a lot, we still have the freedom to cooperate with fate, accept it, challenge it. The price of freedom is the inevitability of evil. If I am free to choose, no one can guarantee that I will choose good. All great saints considered themselves great sinners, being extremely sensitive to both good and evil and thereby to the consequences of their actions. Freedom, while expanding potential opportunities for good, simultaneously expands opportunities for evil. And only the person himself is responsible for what he chooses.
The Becoming of Man
“SO MANY PEOPLE WANT TO BE TOLD THAT FREEDOM IS AN ILLUSION AND THAT THERE IS NO NEED TO WORRY ABOUT IT.”
The main dilemma of our life is the fundamental ability inherent only in man to perceive himself both as an active subject and as a passive object. In the space between these two poles, our consciousness fluctuates, choosing the way of our existence. Identity, the sense of “I”, is the starting point of our life. Everything we do is aimed at preserving this inner center, even our neuroses serve this purpose. The formation of personality is the development of the sense of “I”, the feeling of being an active subject influencing events. This process is associated with liberation from various kinds of unconscious dependencies and the transition to freely chosen actions and relationships.
The value of anxiety
Anxiety is a natural and constructive feeling. It is caused by the unpredictability of the future and is associated with a feeling of threat to something significant: personal values or life itself. May translated the philosophical ideas of Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Tillich about existential anxiety as an irreducible condition of our existence into the language of psychological concepts. Only anxiety that is disproportionate to the cause is painful. It arises when we, not wanting to put up with our experiences, try to completely banish anxiety from life, which, on the contrary, leads to its intensification. The task of a psychotherapist is not to eliminate anxiety altogether, but to help accept it, preventing its pathological growth.
About it
Books by Rollo May
- “The Art of Psychological Consulting”, Institute of General Humanitarian Research, Astrel Press, 2008.
- “The Discovery of Being”, Institute of General Humanitarian Studies, 2004.
- “The Meaning of Anxiety”, Klass, 2001.
Peering into the sun. Life without fear of death Yalom Irwin
Rollo May
Rollo May
Rollo May is dear to me as a writer, as a psychotherapist and, finally, as a friend. When I first began studying psychiatry, many theoretical models confused me and seemed unsatisfactory. It seemed to me that both the biological and psychoanalytic models did not include much of what constitutes the very being of a person. When I was in my second year of residency, Roll May's book Existence came out. I read it cover to cover and felt that a bright and completely new perspective had opened up before me. I immediately began studying philosophy, enrolling in an introduction to the history of Western philosophy course. Since then, I began to read books and listen to lecture courses on philosophy and always found them more useful for the work of a psychotherapist than specialized psychiatric literature.
I am grateful to Rollo May for his book and for showing me the wise path to solving human problems. (I am referring to the first three essays; the others are translations of the works of European Dasein analysts, which seem to me less valuable.) Many years later, when I began to experience a fear of death while working with cancer patients, I decided to undergo psychotherapy with Rollo May . He lived and worked in Tiburon, an hour and a half by car from Stanford. But I knew it was worth the time, and I went to see him once a week for three years. Consultations were interrupted only for the summer, when he went on vacation to his cottage in New Hampshire. I tried to make good use of my time on the road. I recorded our sessions on a dictaphone and listened to my recordings every time along the way. Subsequently, I often recommended this technique to my patients who had to travel to me from afar.
Rollo May and I talked a lot about death and the fear that had settled in me after working with a lot of dying people. What I found most distressing was the isolation that accompanies dying, and at one point, when I realized that I was experiencing a lot of fear during my evening commute, I decided to stay overnight in a lonely motel near his office and have sessions with him the night before and after. this night.
As I thought, that evening fear seemed to be in the air around me; There were also frightening visions - that someone was chasing me or that a witch’s hand was sticking through the window. Although we tried to analyze the fear of death, for some reason it seems to me that we somehow agreed not to look into the sun: we avoided open confrontation with the specter of death. This book is an attempt at such confrontation.
But overall he was an excellent therapist for me. When our therapy came to an end, he offered me his friendship. He approved of my book Existential Psychotherapy, which I wrote for ten years and then finally finished. The difficult and very delicate transition from the “psychotherapist-patient” relationship to friendship went relatively smoothly for us.
Years passed, and Rollo and I switched roles. After suffering a series of minor strokes, he began to experience confusion and panic attacks, and he often turned to me for help.
One evening I received a call from his wife, Georgia May, also a close friend. She said that Rollo was dying and asked me and my wife to come quickly. That night, the three of us took turns keeping watch at the bedside of Rollo, who was unconscious and breathing heavily - he was suffering from advanced pulmonary edema. Finally he took his last convulsive breath and died. This happened before my eyes. Georgia and I washed the body and did everything necessary, and the next morning we came from the funeral home and took him to the crematorium.
The night before the cremation, I thought with horror about Rollo’s death, and I had a very vivid dream:
My parents and sister are in a shopping center and we decide to go up one floor. Here I am in the elevator, but alone, my family has disappeared. I take a very long time in the elevator. When I finally get out, I find myself on a tropical beach. I still can’t find my loved ones, although I never stop looking for them. It’s very cool there, the tropical beach is a real paradise for me. However, I feel fear creeping into me. Then I put on a nightgown with Smokey the Bear's cute, smiling face on it. Then the image on the shirt becomes brighter, then begins to emit light. Soon this face fills the entire space, as if all the energy of this dream was transferred to the cute smiling face of Smokey the Bear.
I woke up from this dream - not so much from fear as from the radiance of a sparkling image on my nightgown. It felt as if the room had been illuminated by a spotlight. At the very beginning of the dream I was calm, almost content. However, when I could not find my family, fear and foreboding crept into me. In the end, all the dream images were swallowed up by the dazzling Smokey Bear.
I'm quite sure that the image of the shining bear cub reflected Rollo's cremation. Rollo's death confronted me with the fact of my own death, and in the dream this is indicated by my separation from my family and the endless upward movement of the elevator. What amazed me was the gullibility of my subconscious. Isn't it amazing that part of me bought into the Hollywood version of immortality (the endless movement of the elevator) and the cinematic version of paradise - a tropical beach. (Although heaven still wasn’t that “heavenly” because I was in complete isolation there.)
This dream reflects great efforts to reduce fear. That night I went to bed, shocked by the horror of Rollo's death and his impending cremation, and sleep was intended to soften this experience, make it less terrible, help me bear it. Death mercifully took the form of an elevator going up to a tropical beach. Even the crematorium fire took on a more friendly look and appeared on the nightgown - are you ready for eternal sleep in a shirt with the cute and familiar face of Smokey the Bear?
This dream seems to be an extremely apt illustration of Freud's idea that dreams guard the sleep process itself. My dreams tried their best to give me rest, and did not allow the dream to turn into a nightmare. Like a dam, they held back the flow of fear, but the dam still collapsed, releasing emotions into me. But even then, with the last of their strength, dreams tried to contain my fear, turning it into the image of a beloved bear, which eventually “heated up” and shone so unbearably that it woke me up.
From the book Existential Psychology by May Rollo R1. Rollo May. ORIGINS OF EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOLOGY In this introductory essay, I would like to talk about how existential psychology came to be, especially on the American scene. Then I would like to discuss some of the "eternal" questions that have been asked in psychology
From the book Personality Theories and Personal Growth author Frager Robert4. Rollo May. EXISTENTIAL FOUNDATIONS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY Several attempts have been made in our country to systematize psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic theories in terms of forces, dynamisms and energies. The existential approach is exactly the opposite of these attempts.
From the book How to Overcome Personal Tragedy author Badrak Valentin Vladimirovich1. Rollo May. THE ORIGINS OF THE EXISTENTIAL ORIGIN IN PSYCHOLOGY AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE Recently, many psychiatrists and psychologists have become more and more aware that there are serious gaps in our understanding of man. For psychotherapists who face
From the author's book2. Rollo May. THE CONTRIBUTION OF EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOTHERAPY The fundamental contribution of existential therapy is its understanding of man as being. She does not deny the value of dynamism and the study of specific behavioral patterns in appropriate places. But she claims
From the author's bookChapter 29. Rollo May: Existential Psychology Rollo May, undoubtedly, can be called one of the key figures not only in American, but also in world psychology. Until his death in 1994, he was one of the leading existential psychologists in the United States. Over the past half century this
From the author's bookRollo May. A disease that affirms a mission Fate cannot be ignored; we cannot simply erase it or replace it with something else. But we can choose how to meet our destiny using the abilities given to us. Rollo May Rollo May is rightfully considered one of the