Existenti

al
Psycholo
gy Rollo
reese May

OVERVIEW OF EXISTENTIAL
PSYCHOLOGY

Rooted in European Existential

Philosophy
Based in Clinical Experience
People live in the Present and are
Responsible for Experiences
People lack Courage to Face Destiny
and Flee from Freedom
Healthy People Challenge Destiny
and Live Authentically

BIOGRAPHY OF MAY
Born in Ada, Ohio in 1909
B.A. from Oberlin College in 1930
Lived as an itinerant artist in Europe for three years
after college, where he heard Adler speak
Returns to the U.S. in 1933
Graduates from Union Theological Seminary with
Master of Divinity in 1938

 Serves as a pastor for two years, then quits and

begins to study psychoanalysis
Received his PhD in clinical psychology from
Columbia University in 1949
Published The Meaning of Anxiety in 1950
Served as visiting professor at institutions including
Harvard and Princeton
Died in Tiburon, California in 1994

EXISTENTIALISM
Concerned with the struggle to work through lifes
experiences and to grow toward becoming more
fully human

Common elements found in

Existential Thinkers:
1. Existence takes precedence over essence
2. Existentialism opposes the split between subject
and object
3. People search for some meaning into their lives
4. Existentialists hold that ultimately each of us is
responsible for who we are and what we become
5. Existentialists are basically antitheoretical

BASIC CONCEPTS
Being in the world
Nonbeing

BEING-IN-THE-WORLD
Expressed in the German word Dasein
Dasein- to exist in the world
Hyphens in the term imply a oneness of subject and
object
Many people suffer from anxiety and despair brought on
by their alienation from themselves or from their world
Feelings of isolation and alienation of self from the world
is suffered not only by pathologically disturbed individuals
but also by most individuals in modern societies.

Manifestations of Alienation:
1. Separation from nature
2. Lack of meaningful interpersonal relations
3. Alienation from ones authentic self

Simultaneous modes of being in

peoples world
Umwelt - environment around us
Mitwelt - relations with other people
Eigenwelt - relationship with our self
Healthy people live in Umwelt, Mitwelt, and
Eigenwelt simultaneously

Healthy people live in Umwelt, Mitwelt,

and Eigenwelt simultaneously
Eigenw
elt
Umwelt Mitwelt

NON-BEING

Also nothingness
Dread of not being
Death is not the only avenue of nonbeing
Provokes us to live defensively and receive less
from life than if we would confront the issue of our
nonexistence

Dread of nonbeing can take the form of:

Isolation
Alienation

DYNA
MICS

ANXIETY
the subjective state of the individuals becoming
aware that his or her existence can be destroyed,
that he can become nothing
it exists when one confronts the issue of fulfilling
ones potentials

FORMS OF ANXIETY
NORMAL ANXIETY
which is proportionate to the threat, does not
involve repression, and can be confronted
constructively on the conscious level

FORMS OF ANXIETY
NEUROTIC ANXIETY
a 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

GUILT
When people deny their potentialities, fail to
accurately perceive the needs of fellow humans or
remain oblivious to their dependence on the nature
1. UMWELT
2. MITWELT
3. EIGENWELT

INTENTIONALITY
the structure of meaning which makes it possible
for us to see and understand the outside world
sometimes unconscious

CARE, LOVE
and WILL

CARE, LOVE & WILL

Care
- to recognize a person as a fellow human being, to
identify with that persons joy, guilt or pity
- is an active process; it is a state where
something does matter
- is the source of love and will

 Love
- to have an active regard for a persons
development
- a delight in the presence of the other person
- affirming of a persons value and development
as much as ones own

 Will
- capacity to organize ones self so that movement
in a toward a certain goal may take place

 UNION of LOVE and WILL

- Modern society suffers from an unhealthy division
of love and will. Love is seen as sensual sex,
whereas will is seen as dogged determination or will
power.

Biological reasons why love and will are separated:

- When children come into the world, are at one

with the universe, their mother, and themselves.
- As will begins to develop, it manifests itself as
opposition. The no , unfortunately, is seen by the
parents negatively.
- Child learns to dissociate will from the blissful
love.

- Our task is to unite love and will.

- For the mature person, both love and will mean a
reaching out toward another person. Both involve
care, both necessitate a choice both imply action
and both require responsibility.

FORMS OF LOVE
Sex
- a biological function that can be satisfied through
sexual intercourse or some other release of sexual
tension
- the source at once of the human beings most
intense pleasure and his most pervasive anxiety

 Eros
- a psychological desire that seeks procreation or
creation through an enduring union with a loved
one; making love; wish to establish a lasting union
- built on care and tenderness
- salvation of sex

 Philia
- intimate nonsexual friendship between two people
- cannot be rushed; it takes time to groow and
develop
- necessary requisite for healthy erotic relationships
during early and late adolescence

 Agape
- concern for the others welfare beyond any gain
that one can get out of it
- altruistic love

FREEDOM
AND
DESTINY

FREEDOM
Comes from an understanding of our destiny
Possibility of changing, although we may not know
what those changes might be
Increases anxiety

FORMS OF FREEDOM
Existential Freedom
freedom of doing
freedom to pursue tangible goals

Essential Freedom
freedom of being
freedom to think, to plan, to hope

DESTINY
Biological, psychological, and cultural factors
Terminus, goal
Death

As we challenge our destiny, we gain freedom, and

as we achieve freedom, we push at the boundaries of
destiny

MYTHS
Conscious and unconscious belief systems that
provide explanations for personal and social
problems
Oedipus story

Birth
Exile and separation
Identity
Incest and patricide
Repression of guilt
Conscious meditation and death

GROWTH and
DEVELOPMENT

May divided personality

development into 4 stages.
Centers on the physical and psychological ties
between us and our parents and parental
substitutes
the conflict is between every human beings
need to struggle toward enlarged selfawareness, maturity, freedom and responsibility.
And his tendency to remain a child and cling to
the protection of parents or parental substitutes
Dependency struggle

STAGE OF INNOCENCE
Stage before consciousness of self is born
Characteristic of the infant

STAGE OF REBELLION
Takes

place at age 2 or 3 and again during

adolescence

Individual

seeks to establish some inner

strength
may

involve defiance and hostility

STAGE OF REBELLION
Rebellion

is defiance, an active rejection of

parental and societal rules. Behavior is
automatic rigid and reflexive.

True

freedom- involves openness, a

readiness to grow: it means being flexible,
ready to change for the sake of greater
human values.

ORDINARY CONSCIOUSNESS
OF SELF
Healthy

personality

able

to learn from ones mistakes and live

responsibly

capable

of understanding some of his errors

and of recognizing some of his prejudices

CREATIVE CONSCIOUSNESS
OF SELF
Signifies

maturity

Ability

to see something outside ones usual

limited viewpoint and gain a glimpse of
ultimate truth as it exists in reality

Cuts

through the dichotomy between

subjectivity and objectivity

Achieved

only rarely

Consciousness of self gives us the power to

stand outside the rigid chain of stimulus and
response, to pause, and by this pause to
throw some weight on either side, to cast
some decision about what the response will
be

PSYCHOPAT
HOLOGY

 People have become alienated from:

- the natural world (Umwelt)
- other people (Mitwelt)
- themselves (Eigenwelt)
* Feeling of insignificance = apathy and emptiness

APATHY AND EMPTINESS

- malaise of modern times

- chief existential disorders

Deny their
destiny/
Abandon
their myths
(Thus, one loses
his freedom)

DIRECTIONLE
SS

Become sick
and engage in
self-defeating
and selfdestructive
behaviors

NEUROTIC SYMPTOMS
a way to renounce freedom
narrows the persons phenomenological
world to a size that makes coping easier
represent a proper and necessary
adjustment by which ones Dasein can be
preserved

PSYCHOTH
ERAPY

EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOTHERAPY

should make people more human

set people free
must be concerned with helping
people experience their existence

EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOTHERAPY

- an encounter between the patient and

therapist coming together and sharing
their experience
- I-thou encounter
- EMPATHY for the client key
ingredient
- partly religion, partly science and
partly friendship
- PHILOSOPHICAL

CRITIQU
E

Low in generating a scientific research

Low in falsifiability
Moderate in organizing data
Low in guiding action
Low in internal consistency
Moderate in parsimony

CONCEPT OF
HUMANITY

 Free Choice over

Determinism
Optimism over Pessimism
Teleology over Causality
Conscious and
Unconscious
Social and Biological
Influences
Uniqueness over
Similarities