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27 Cards in this Set

  • Front
  • Back

Overview of May's Existential Theory

Existential psychology began in Europe shortly after World War II and spread to the United States, where Rollo May played a large part in popularizing it. A clinical psychologist by training, May took the view that modern people frequently run away both from making choices and from assuming responsibility.
What Is Existentialism?
The first tenet of existentialism is that existence takes precedence over essence, meaning that process and growth are more important than product and stagnation. Second, existentialists oppose the artificial split between subject and object. Third, they stress people's search for meaning in their lives. Fourth, they insist that each of us is responsible for who we are and what we will become. Fifth, most existentialists take an antitheoretical position, believing that theories tend to objectify people.
Dasein
a basic unity exists between people and their environments, a unity expressed by the term, or being-in-the-world.
Three simultaneous modes of the world characterize us in our Dasein
Umwelt, or the environment around us; Mitwelt, or our world with other people; and Eigenwelt, or our relationship with our self.
Anxiety
People experience anxiety when they become aware that their existence or something identified with it might be destroyed. The acquisition of freedom inevitably leads to anxiety, which can be either pleasurable and constructive or painful and destructive.
Normal Anxiety
Growth produces normal anxiety, defined as that which is proportionate to the threat, does not involve repression, and can be handled on a conscious level.
Neurotic Anxiety
Neurotic anxiety is a reaction that is disproportionate to the threat and that leads to repression and defensive behaviors. It is felt whenever one's values are transformed into dogma. Neurotic anxiety blocks growth and productive action.
Guilt
Guilt arises whenever people deny their potentialities, fail to accurately perceive the needs of others, or remain blind to their dependence on the natural world.
Both anxiety and guilt are ontological
that is, they refer to the nature of being and not to feelings arising from specific situations.
Intentionality
The structure that gives meaning to experience and allows people to make decisions about the future is called intentionality. May believed that intentionality permits people to overcome the dichotomy between subject and object because it enables them to see that their intentions are a function of both themselves and their environment.
Care, Love, and Will
Care is an active process that suggests that things matter. Love means to care, to delight in the presence of another person, and to affirm that person's value as much as one's own. Care is also an important ingredient in will, defined as a conscious commitment to action.
Union of Love and Will
May believe that our modern society has lost sight of the true nature of love and will, equating love with sex and will with will power. He further held that psychologically healthy people are able to combine love and will because both imply care, choice, action, and responsibility.
Forms of Love
May identified four kinds of love in Western tradition—sex, eros, philia, and agape.
Sex
He believed that Americans no longer view sex as a natural biological function, but have become preoccupied with it to the point of trivialization.
Eros
is a psychological desire that seeks an enduring union with a loved one. It may include sex, but it is built on care and tenderness.
Philia,
an intimate nonsexual friendship between two people, takes time to develop and does not depend on the actions of the other person.
Agape
is an altruistic or spiritual love that carries with it the risk of playing God. Agape is undeserved and unconditional.
Freedom and Destiny
Psychologically healthy individuals are comfortable with freedom, able to assume responsibility for their choices, and willing to face their destiny.
Freedom Defined
Freedom comes from an understanding of our destiny. We are free when we recognize that death is a possibility at any moment and when we are willing to experience changes even in the face of not knowing what those changes will bring.
May recognized two forms of freedom
(1) freedom of doing or freedom of action, which he called existential freedom, and (2) freedom of being or an inner freedom, which he called essential freedom.
Destiny Defined
"the design of the universe speaking through the design of each one of us." our destiny includes the limitations of our environment and our personal qualities, including our mortality, gender, and genetic predispositions. Freedom and destiny constitute a paradox because freedom gains vitality from destiny, and destiny gains significance from freedom.
The Power of Myth
Because westerns have lost many of their traditional myths, they turn to religious cults, drugs, and popular culture to fill the vacuum. The Oedipus myth has had a powerful effect on our culture because it deals with such common existential crises as birth, separation from parents, sexual union with one parent and hostility toward the other, independence in one's search for identity, and finally death.
Psychopathology
May saw apathy and emptiness—not anxiety or depression—as the chief existential disorders of our time. People have become alienated from the natural world (Umwelt), from other people (Mitwelt) and from themselves (Eigenwelt). Psychopathology is a lack of connectedness and an inability to fulfill one's destiny.
Psychotherapy
The goal of May's psychotherapy was not to cure patients of any specific disorder, but rather to make them more fully human. May said that the purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free, that is, to allow them to make choices and to assume responsibility for those choices.
Mortality Salience and Denial of Our Animal Nature
when death becomes salient through disasters, death of a loved one, or images of death, people respond by clinging more closely to cultural worldviews and bolstering their self-esteem. mortality salience would increase feelings of disgust basic terror management assumption that people distance themselves from animals because animals remind us of our own physical mortality. when mortality is made more salient, people are increasingly disgusted by human features that remind us of our animal nature. This body of work points to the general conclusion that disgust serves the function of defending us against the existential threat posed by our inevitable death.
Critique of May
antitheoretical and unjustly criticized as being anti-intellectual. we give it a very low rating on its ability to generate research, to be falsified, and to guide action; low on internal consistency (because it lacks operationally defined terms), average on parsimony, and high on its organizational powers, due to its consideration of a broad scope of the human condition.
Concept of Humanity

May viewed people as complex beings, capable of both tremendous good and immense evil. People have become alienated from the world, from other people, and, most of all, from themselves. On the dimensions of a concept of humanity, May rates high on free choice, teleology, social influences, and uniqueness. On the issue of conscious or unconscious forces, his theory takes a middle position.