These are not "stages" in the traditional sense. Ordinary – the normal adult ego learned responsibility, but finds it too demanding, and so seeks refuge in conformity and traditional values.Ĭreative – the authentic adult, the existential stage, self-actualizing and transcending simple egocentrism. In this stage they must decide what to do with their life, and fulfilling rebellious needs from the rebellious stage. Rebellion – the rebellious person wants freedom, but does not yet have a good understanding of the responsibility that goes with it.ĭecision – The person is in a transition stage in their life such that they need to be more independent from their parents and settle into the "ordinary stage". However, an innocent does have a degree of will in the sense of a drive to fulfill needs.
Innocence – the pre-egoic, pre-self-conscious stage of the infant.Īn innocent is only doing what he or she must do. He defined certain "stages" of development: He also used the word "courage" to signify resisting anxiety. Destiny, for example, could be "thrownness" combined with "fallenness" - the part of our lives that is determined for us, for the purpose of creating our lives. May used some traditional existential terms in a slightly different fashion than others, and he invented new words for traditional existentialist concepts. “I have long considered Otto Rank to be the great unacknowledged genius in Freud’s circle,” wrote May (Rank, 1996, p. Shortly before his death, May wrote the foreword to Robert Kramer's edited collection of Rank’s American lectures. May considered Otto Rank (1884-1939) to be the most important precursor of existential therapy. May was influenced by American humanism, and interested in reconciling existential psychology with other philosophies, especially Freud's. He spent the final years of his life in Tiburon on San Francisco Bay, where he died in October 1994. May was a founder and faculty member of Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center in San Francisco. His educational career took him to Michigan State College majoring in English and Oberlin College for a bachelor's degree, teaching for a time in Greece, to Union Theological Seminary for a BD during 1938, and finally to Teachers College, Columbia University for a PhD in clinical psychology during 1949.
He experienced a difficult childhood, with his parents divorcing and his sister becoming schizophrenic. His works include Love and Will and The Courage to Create, the latter title honoring Tillich's The Courage to Be.
May was a close friend of the theologian Paul Tillich. He authored the influential book Love and Will during 1969.Īlthough he is often associated with humanistic psychology, his philosophy was influenced strongly by existentialist philosophy.
Rollo May (Ap– October 22, 1994) was an American existential psychologist.
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