JESSICA RAMONA ROLLO MAY –
MATHEWS
MSC PSYCHOLOGY 1ST
EXISTENTIAL-
YEAR
ANALYTIC POSITION
• Biographical sketch of Rollo May OVERVIE
W
• What is existentialism
• Important concepts – Dasein, Anxiety,
Guilt, and Stages of consciousness of
self
• Evaluation of the theory
ROLLO MAY – BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
• Rollo May was born in Ada, Ohio in 1909 into a family
characterized by intense marital conflicts. He described
his parents as austere disciplinarians and anti-
intellectuals. May’s parents were religious and instilled
in him the high ideal of Christian service to others. May
was the oldest child and treated favorably.
• In 1930 he earned his bachelors degree from Oberlin
college in Ohio. He travelled extensively through
Europe, taught at a college in Greece and attended
summer classes led by Alfred Adler.
• After graduation, he pursued an early interest in art.
The impact of Greek art, philosophy, and mythology is
clear in his writings.
• Later he enrolled in Union Theological Seminary and earned bachelor
of divinity in 1938. There he was exposed to the existentialism of
Kierkegaard and Heidegger
• He studied psychoanalysis at the William Alanson White Institute of
Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology. In 1946 he opened a
private practice.
• In 1949 he was awarded PhD in clinical psychology. The dissertation
was “The Meaning of Anxiety”.
• During this period of his life he suffered from tuberculosis. It was a
terrifying and depressing time and he was close to death. During his
illness he studied the works of Kierkegaard and Freud on anxiety.
• Some of his books – Man’s search for himself, Psychology and the
Human Dilemma, Love and Will, The Courage to Create.
EXISTENTIALISM
• Existentialism is a philosophical and psychological movement that emerged in
Europe, influenced by resistance movements during World War II and the ideas of
thinkers like Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre. The term comes from the Latin
exsistere, meaning "to emerge" or "to stand out," and it focuses on individuals as
they grow, change, and define themselves through their choices and actions.
• Existentialism and psychoanalysis grew out of the same cultural situation. Both
seek to understand anxiety, despair, and the alienation that people feel from
themselves and society.
• Rollo May’s work brings together the psychoanalytic tradition in psychology and
the existentialist movement in philosophy .
• Existentialism focuses on the human individuals experience. It emphasizes on free
will and the idea that people are responsible for creating their own meaning and
purpose in life. We are what we do. They believe that “Existence precedes
Essence”
• Existentialism is concerned with ontology – study of nature of being. May preferred
the term “becoming”. Being or becoming is a process in which we ourselves are the
source of change, as we struggle as individuals to realize our potential – as we try to
become what we truly are. We must become aware of what our unique potentialities
are and then take responsibility for realizing them.
• Existentialist suggest that there is no truth or reality for us as humans except as we
participate in it, are conscious of it and have some relation to it.
• May emphasized Kierkegaard's idea of relational truth, where the observer and the
observed cannot be fully separated. He defined existentialism as understanding
humans by going beyond the divide between subject and object, a flaw in Western
thought since the Renaissance. Existentialists criticize Western science for treating
people as detached objects, arguing that scientific approaches must acknowledge
humans as beings first.
• Existentialists argue that science should include our inner
experiences and not ignore the subjective side of reality.
They believe we should start by focusing on meaningful
human experiences and then study them objectively.
Instead of forcing human problems to fit rigid scientific
methods, scientists should adapt their methods to address
real human concerns.
DASEIN AND 3 MODES OF BEING-IN-THE-
WORLD
• Dasein – a germen word taken from Heidegger’s work that is often left untranslated in the
works of existentialist psychologists. Its English translation is “being there or “being-in-the-
world”. It is a way of describing human beings and their place in the world or their existence.
• There are 3 modes of being-in-the-world –
1. Umwelt – or biological environment. It is the natural environment for animals and humans.
It is a world that includes biological needs, drives and instincts. A world that would still
exist if we had no self consciousness.
2. Mitwelt – it is the world of interrelationships. It includes the meaning of things that we
share with others. Thus love can never be totally understood by focusing only on its
connections with
the biological world of lust and sex. It also depends on such Mitwelt
factors as personal decisions and commitment to the other person.
3. Eigenwelt – it is the self in relation to itself. It involves self-awareness
and self-relatedness. It occurs when I become aware of the impact that
another person has on me. Without eigenwelt the world would be
intellectually arid and impersonal.
According to May, human beings live in all three worlds simultaneously.
Any complete understanding of the personality of the individual would
have to examine all three modes of being-in-the-world. Existentialist seek
to understand the unique problems of human beings without
fragmenting their humanity.
ANXIETY
• According to May, anxiety is the human being’s basic reaction to a danger to his
existence or to some value he identifies with his anxiety .
• In his view anxiety isn’t just something negative to be avoided. It can also be a
sign of personal growth and a necessary part of making meaningful choices.
• According to May, the conflict that generates ontological anxiety is between
being(realizing our potential) and nonbeing(failing to fulfil our possibilities).
Anxiety occurs as the individual attempts to realize his or her potentialities.
• Keirkegaard describes the feeling of anxiety as the dizziness of freedom. May
was impressed by Keirkegaard’s idea that anxiety must be understood in the
context of freedom. anxiety arises when we become aware of the boundless
possibilities before us—the realization that we are free to make choices, yet this
freedom also carries the weight of responsibility and uncertainty.
May clarified the meaning of ontological anxiety further by dividing it into 2
components –
Normal anxiety and Neurotic anxiety.
• Normal anxiety – anxiety that is proportionate to the threat to our
values. It does not involve repression and can be confronted
constructively on the conscious level. May described this as a natural and
healthy response to uncertainty or change. It happens when we confront
meaningful challenges and it can lead us toward growth and self
discovery.
• Neurotic anxiety – it is the reaction that is disproportionate to the
threat and involves repression. It develops when we are unable to
address the normal anxiety arising at the time of the actual crisis in our
growth and the threat to our values. This is the anxiety that becomes
overwhelming and paralyzing holding a person back rather than helping
them grow.
For May the goal in helping people to maximize their mental health is not
to free the person from all anxiety. It is rather to help free them from
neurotic anxiety so that they can confront normal anxiety constructively.
Normal anxiety is an integral part of growth and creativity.
GUILT
Like anxiety, guilt is also an ontological characteristic of human
existence. But ontological guilt does not occur because the person fails
to act in terms of cultural prohibitions, as Freud thought. It occurs
because an individual who can choose fails to do so. Such a person fails
to act in terms of his central need in life—the fulfillment of his
potentialities.
It’s the guilt we feel when we don’t live up to what we’re capable of or
don’t take steps to fulfill our potential.
STAGES OF CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF
• May believed that consciousness of self is the unique mark of the human person.
Self consciousness enables us to distinguish between ourselves and the world, to
learn from the past and to plan for the future, to see ourselves as others do, and to
have empathy with others. However such self consciousness comes at the risk of
anxiety and inward crisis.
• May is unique among existential psychologists for proposing 4 stages of
consciousness of self. These are not stages in the traditional sense of being age
defined phases that succeed one another in time, they can and do overlap in
everyday lives.
• 4 stages - Innocence, Rebellion, Ordinary consciousness and Creative consciousness
1. INNOCENCE - This stage is characteristic of infants who do not yet
have consciousness of self. Innocent people are premoral that is they
are neither bad nor good but only doing what they must do. The
innocents do however have a degree of will in the sense of a drive to
fulfil their needs. They act based on instinct and immediate needs
rather than thoughts or self reflection.
2. REBELLION – It is the stage of consciousness of self in which people
define themselves in opposition to or defiance of another. The
individual seeks to establish some inner strength. Such people desire
freedom but do not understand or comprehend the responsibility that
accompanies it.
Rebellion is defiance, an active rejection of parental and societal rules.
Such behaviour is automatic, rigid and reflexive. True freedom
involves openness, a readiness to grow or change and being flexible.
3. ORDINARY CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF – This is the stage most
people refer to when they speak of a healthy and mature personality.
Ordinary consciousness to May is the normal adult ego. In this stage a
person is capable of understanding some of their errors and
recognizing some of their prejudices. They become capable of learning
from their mistakes and assuming responsibility for their actions. They
tend to show conformity to external pressures and expectations, rather
than deep internal values.
4. CREATIVE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF – It involves the ability to
transcend or to see something outside one’s usual limited viewpoint
and gain a glimpse of ultimate truth as it exists in reality. These
moments of insight are joyous ones and occur only occasionally. It is
similar to Maslow’s peak experience. In this stage, people not pushed
along by deterministic forces. They are conscious of these forces, but
are able to choose freely whether or not to act in accordance with
EVALUATION OF MAY’S THEORY
• COMPREHENSIVENESS - Rollo May focused on developing a model of positive growth
to alleviate human suffering, emphasizing understanding and changing abnormal behavior.
His theory is more comprehensive than those of Rogers and Maslow, integrating
psychoanalytic, existential principles, and a detailed developmental process. May also
sought to incorporate elements of behaviorism and learning principles, though he
acknowledged their limitations.
• PRECISION AND TESTABILITY - May's theory is imprecise and difficult to test due to
vague terms like being and ontological guilt and its lack of cohesive propositions. Its
philosophical focus hinders scientific validation, limiting acceptance by mainstream
psychology despite its provocative ideas advocating for a humanistic science of psychology.
• PARSIMONY – May’s theory lacks parsimony, with redundant terms
like awareness, self awareness, self consciousness, self relatedness etc.
As well as overlapping explanations for traits like spontaneity,
originality, and genuineness.
• EMPIRICAL VALIDITY - Empirical support for the theory is limited.
Much of the evidence is based on clinical observation in therapy
sessions and is largely unsystematic and retrospective. Research on
May’s position is still in an exploratory stage.
• HEURISTIC VALUE - May’s position has proved highly stimulating to
investigators in the humanistic psychology movement and to members
of the public but, for the most part, his efforts have been ignored by
traditional investigators within psychology.
• APPLIED VALUE - May’s theory has been fruitfully applied to
problems in areas such as education, pastoral counseling, family life,
• FREEDOM- DETERMINISM – May’s theory leans toward
freedom. He believes that humans have the capacity to make
choices and take responsibility for their actions, even in the
face of external constraints.
• RATIONALITY- IRRATIONALITY – May emphasized the
importance of self awareness and rational reflection in human
existence. Individuals can understand their motivations and
make reasoned decisions. He also acknowledged the irrational
aspects of human nature, such as anxiety, fear, and the
unconscious. These play a critical role in human experiences
and must be confronted rather than suppressed.
• HOLISM- ELEMENTALISM - May’s theory is holistic. He
saw individuals as integrated beings whose thoughts,
emotions, and behaviors cannot be separated into distinct
elements. Personality is shaped by the interplay between the
• CONSTITUTIONALISM- ENVIRONMENTALISM – He gave
significant weight to the environment including cultural and social
influences as contexts in which individuals exercise their freedom and
make choices. However, he believed that individuals could overcome
these influences.
• CHANGEABILITY- UNCHANGEABILITY - May emphasized change
and growth, suggesting that people can transform their lives through
self-awareness and conscious effort. The confrontation with existential
anxieties often leads to personal growth and change.
• SUBJECTIVITY- OBJECTIVITY - May valued subjective experience,
as existential psychology focuses on how individuals perceive and
interpret their existence. He considered personal meaning and self-
awareness as central to personality.
• PROACTIVITY- REACTIVITY – He leaned toward proactivity,
highlighting individuals’ ability to take initiative, make choices, and
REFERENCES
• Engler, B. (2014). Personality Theories: An Introduction,
International Edition, 9th Edition. Wadsworth Cengage
Learning, USA.
• Ryckman, R. M. (2008). Theories of personality (9th ed.).
Thomson Wadsworth
