Chapter 29. Rollo May: Existential Psychology
Rollo May, no doubt, 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 trend, whose roots go back to the philosophy of Seren Kierkegaard (Seren Kierkegaard), Friedrich Nietzsche (Friedrich Nietzsche), Martin Heidegger (Martin Heidegger), Jean-Paul Sartre (Jean-Paul Sartre) and other major European thinkers half of XIX and the first half of the 20th century, spread widely around the world. existential psychology holds the view that people bear a significant share of the responsibility for who they are. Existence is given precedence over essence, growth and change are considered more important than stable and immovable characteristics, the process takes precedence over the result.
During his years as a psychotherapist, May developed new concept person. His approach relied more on clinical experimentation than on armchair theory. A person, from the point of view of May, lives in the present, what is important for him first of all is what is happening Here And Now. In this one true reality, man shapes himself and is responsible for who he ultimately becomes. Insightful insights into the nature of human existence, which receive convincing confirmation in the course of further analysis, contributed to May's popularity not only among professional psychologists, but also among the general public. And it's not just that. May's works are distinguished by the simplicity and depth of the main provisions, cultivating a healthy pragmatism and rationality in the behavior of a particular individual.
Thinking about the fundamental differences between a mentally healthy, full-fledged person and a sick person, May came to the following conclusions. Many people, he believed, lacked the courage to face their destiny. Attempts to avoid such a collision lead to the fact that they sacrifice most of their freedom and try to avoid responsibility, declaring the initial lack of freedom of their actions. Unwilling to make a choice, they lose the ability to see themselves as they really are, and are imbued with a sense of their own insignificance and alienation from the world. Healthy people, on the other hand, challenge their destiny, value and protect their freedom, and live authentic lives that are honest with themselves and others. They are aware of the inevitability of death, but they have the courage to live in the present.
From the book Woman plus Man [To Know and Conquer] author Sheinov Viktor PavlovichChapter 1. Psychology of a woman and psychology of a man
From the book Woman plus Man [To Know and Conquer] author Sheinov Viktor PavlovichChapter "Psychology of a woman and psychology of a man"
From the book Psychotherapy: a textbook for universities author Zhidko Maxim EvgenievichChapter 7 EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOTHERAPY By the mid-50s. 20th century the confrontation between psychotherapeutic systems based, on the one hand, on psychodynamic principles, and on the other hand, on behavioral principles, inevitably led to the formation of a “third force”,
From book Social Psychology and history author Porshnev Boris Fedorovich From the book Peering into the Sun. Life without fear of death by Yalom IrwinRollo May Rollo May is dear to me as a writer, as a psychotherapist and, finally, as a friend. When I first started studying psychiatry, many of the theoretical models were confusing and unsatisfactory to me. It seemed to me that both biological and psychoanalytic
From the book Transpersonal Project: Psychology, Anthropology, Spiritual Traditions Volume I. World Transpersonal Project author Kozlov Vladimir Vasilievich12. Existential Psychology and Psychotherapy Nietzsche's "God is dead" was more than our own nihilistic (or humanistic) pragmatism. Although Nietzsche understood God as an unconscious projection of human nature, for him it was also ours.
From the book Existential Psychology by May Rollo R1. Rollo May. THE ORIGINS OF EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOLOGY In this introductory essay, I would like to talk about the origins of existential psychology, 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 Enea-Typological Structures of Personality: Introspection for the Seeker. author Naranjo Claudio2. Abraham Maslow. EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOLOGY - WHAT DOES IT HAVE FOR US? I am neither an existentialist nor a diligent and complete follower of this movement. In existential reasoning, I find much that is extremely difficult or even impossible to understand,
From the book Shame. Envy author Orlov Yuri Mikhailovich4. 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 directly opposed to these attempts.
From the book Legal Psychology [With the Basics of General and Social Psychology] author Enikeev Marat Iskhakovich1. Rollo May. THE ORIGINS OF THE EXISTENTIAL TREND IN PSYCHOLOGY AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE Recently, many psychiatrists and psychologists are increasingly aware that there are serious gaps in our understanding of man. For psychotherapists who face in their
From the book How to Overcome a Personal Tragedy author Badrak Valentin Vladimirovich2. 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 dynamisms and the study of specific behavioral stereotypes in their proper places. But she claims
From the author's book3. Existential Psychodynamics The over-development of the ability to act in order to fight in a dangerous and untrustworthy world is perhaps the fundamental path by which the ennea-type VIII character failed to develop all of his human
From the author's book3. Existential Psychodynamics Just as at the bottom of the enneagram (IV and V) conscious existential pain is maximum, in ennea-type IX, at the top, it is minimal; and while ennea-type III tic obscuration is best understood by an outside observer who might ask, "Oh
From the author's bookExistential envy Self-concept contains a large number of traits, each of which can be the subject of comparison. I envy growth, wealth, external attractiveness, the social position of the parents of others. If breast hair is socially valuable, then
From the author's bookChapter 8 Psychology of social interaction of personality (social psychology) § 1. Main categories of social psychology Man is a social being. The division of general and social psychology is conditional. Social psychology studies human psychology in conditions
From the author's bookRollo May. Mission Affirming Disease Fate cannot be ignored, we cannot simply erase it or replace it with something else. But we can choose how we respond to our destiny, using the abilities bestowed on us. Rollo May Rollo May is rightfully considered one of the
Rollo May, no doubt, 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 trend, whose roots go back to the philosophy of Seren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre and other major European thinkers of the second half of the XIX and the first half of the 20th century, spread widely around the world. Existential psychology holds the view that people are largely responsible for who they are. Existence is given precedence over essence, growth and change are considered more important than stable and immovable characteristics, the process takes precedence over the result.
During his years as a psychotherapist, May developed a new concept of the human. His approach relied more on clinical experimentation than on armchair theory. A person, from May's point of view, lives in the present, for him, first of all, what is happening here and now is relevant. In this one true reality, man shapes himself and is responsible for who he ultimately becomes. Insightful insights into the nature of human existence, which receive convincing confirmation in the course of further analysis, contributed to May's popularity not only among professional psychologists, but also among the general public. And it's not just that. May's works are distinguished by the simplicity and depth of the main provisions, cultivating a healthy pragmatism and rationality in the behavior of a particular individual.
Thinking about the fundamental differences between a mentally healthy, full-fledged person and a sick person, May came to the following conclusions. Many people, he believed, lacked the courage to face their destiny. Attempts to avoid such a collision lead to the fact that they sacrifice most of their freedom and try to avoid responsibility, declaring the initial lack of freedom of their actions. Unwilling to make a choice, they lose the ability to see themselves as they really are, and are imbued with a sense of their own insignificance and alienation from the world. Healthy people, on the other hand, challenge their destiny, value and protect their freedom, and live authentic lives that are honest with themselves and others. They are aware of the inevitability of death, but they have the courage to live in the present.
Biographical excursion.
Rollo Reese May was born April 21, 1909 in Ada, Ohio. He was the eldest of six children of Earl Title May and Matthew Bouton May. None of the parents had good education and did not care about providing his children with favorable conditions for intellectual development. Rather the opposite. For example, when a few years after the birth of Rollo, his older sister began to suffer from psychosis, the father attributed this to the fact that she studied too much, in his opinion.
IN early age Rollo moved with his family to Marin City, Michigan, where he spent most of his childhood. It cannot be said that the boy had a warm relationship with his parents, who often quarreled and eventually parted. May's father, being the secretary of the YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association), constantly moved with his family from place to place. The mother, in turn, cared little for the children, paying more attention to her personal life: in her later memoirs, Mei calls her "a cat without brakes." May is inclined to consider both of his unsuccessful marriages the result of the unpredictable behavior of his mother and the mental illness of his sister.
Little Rollo repeatedly managed to experience the feeling of unity with wildlife. As a child, he often retired and rested from family quarrels, playing on the banks of the St. Clair River. The river became his friend, a quiet, serene corner where he could swim in summer and skate in winter. Later, the scientist claimed that the games on the river bank gave him much more knowledge than the school classes in Marin City. Even in his youth, May became interested in literature and art, and since then this interest has never left him. He entered one of the colleges at the University of Michigan, where he majored in English. Shortly after May took over the leadership of a radical student magazine, he was asked to leave educational institution. May transferred to Oberlin College in Ohio and received his bachelor's degree there in 1930.
Over the next three years, May traveled throughout eastern and southern Europe, painting and studying folk art. The formal reason for the trip to Europe was an invitation to the position of a teacher in English to Anatolia College, located in Greece, in Thessaloniki. This work left May enough time for painting, and he managed to visit Turkey, Poland, Austria and other countries as a free artist. However, in the second year of his wanderings, Mei suddenly felt very lonely. Trying to get rid of this feeling, he plunged headlong into teaching, but this did little to help: the further, the more stressful and less effective the work being done became.
“Finally, in the spring of this second year, I had, figuratively speaking, a nervous breakdown. It meant that the rules, the principles, the values that I used to go by in my work and in my life, simply no longer worked. I felt so exhausted that I had to lie in bed for two weeks to recuperate and continue to work as a teacher. In college, I got enough psychological knowledge to understand that these symptoms mean that there is something wrong with my whole way of living. I had to find some new goals and objectives in life and reconsider the strict, moralistic principles of my existence” (May, 1985, p. 8).
From that moment, Mei began to listen to his inner voice, which, as it turned out, spoke about the unusual - about the soul and beauty. “It looked as if this voice needed to destroy my entire previous lifestyle in order to be heard” (May, 1985, p. 13).
Along with the nervous crisis, another important event contributed to the revision of life attitudes, namely, participation in 1932 in the summer seminar of Alfred Adler, held in a mountain resort town near Vienna. May was fascinated by Adler and managed to learn a lot about human nature and about himself during the seminar.
Returning to the United States in 1933, May entered the seminary of the Theological Society, not to become a priest, but to find answers to basic questions about nature and man, questions in which religion plays a significant role. While studying at the seminary of the Theological Society, May met the famous theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich, who had 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.
Although May did not initially seek to devote himself to the spiritual field, in 1938, after receiving a master's degree in divinity, he was ordained a priest in the Congregational Church. May served as a pastor for two years, but very quickly became disillusioned and, considering this path a dead end, left the bosom of the church and began to look for answers to the questions that tormented him in science. May studied psychoanalysis at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology while working at New York City College as a counseling psychologist. Then he met Harry Stack Sullivan, president and co-founder of the William Alenson White Institute. May was deeply impressed by Sullivan's view of the therapist as a participatory observer and of the therapeutic process as an exciting adventure capable of enriching both patient and therapist. 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 United States.
In 1946 May opened his own private practice; and two years later joined the faculty of the William Alanson White Institute. In 1949, a mature forty-year-old specialist, he received his first doctorate in clinical psychology awarded by Columbia University and continued to teach psychiatry at the William Alanson White Institute until 1974.
Perhaps May would have remained one of the thousands of psychotherapists unknown to anyone, but the very life-changing existential event that Jean Paul Sartre wrote about happened to him. Even before receiving his doctorate, May experienced the most profound shock of his life. In his early thirties, he contracted tuberculosis and spent three years in a sanitarium in Saranac, upstate New York. There were no effective treatments for tuberculosis at that time, and for a year and a half May did not know if he was destined to survive. The consciousness of the complete impossibility to resist a serious illness, the fear of death, the painful expectation of a monthly x-ray examination, each time meaning either a sentence or an extension of the wait - all this slowly undermined the will, lulled the instinct of the struggle 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 the disease as part of his being in this period of time. He realized that a helpless and passive attitude contributes to the development of the disease. Looking around, May saw that the sick who resigned themselves to their situation were fading before his eyes, while those who struggled usually recovered. It is on the basis of her own experience of fighting the disease that May concludes that the individual needs to actively intervene in the "order of things" and his own destiny.
“Until I had developed some sort of 'struggle', some sense of personal responsibility for being the one who had TB, I could not make any lasting progress” (May, 1972, p. 14) .
At the same time, he made another important discovery, which May then successfully used in psychotherapy. When he learned to listen to his body, he discovered that healing is not a passive but an active process. A person affected by a physical or mental illness should be an active participant in the healing process. May finally established himself in this opinion after his recovery, and some time later he began to introduce this principle into his clinical practice, cultivating in patients the ability to analyze themselves and correct the doctor's actions.
Having become interested during his illness in the phenomena of fear and anxiety, May began to study the works of the classics - Freud and at the same time Kierkegaard, the great Danish philosopher and theologian, a direct predecessor of XX century existentialism. May held Freud in high regard, but Kierkegaard's conception of anxiety as a struggle against non-existence hidden from consciousness touched him more deeply.
Soon after returning from the sanitarium, May wrote down his thoughts on anxiety in the form of a doctoral thesis and published it under the title The Meaning of Anxiety (May, 1950). Three years later, he wrote the book Man's Search for Himself (May, 1953), which brought him fame both in professional circles and simply among educated people. In 1958, he co-authored Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology with Ernest Angel and Henry Ellenberger. This book introduced American psychotherapists to the basic concepts of existential therapy, and after its appearance, the existentialist movement became even more popular. May's best-known work, Love and Will (1969b), became a national bestseller and won the 1970 Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize for erudition in the human sciences. In 1971, May received the American Psychological Association Award "for outstanding contributions to the theory and practice of clinical psychology." In 1972, the New York Society of Clinical Psychologists awarded him the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for Power and Innocence (1972), and in 1987 he received gold medal Associations American psychologists"for distinguished lifetime work in occupational psychology."
May has lectured at Harvard and Princeton, different time taught at Yale and Columbia Universities, at Dartmouth, Vassar and Oberlin Colleges, and at The New School social studies. He was an adjunct professor at New York University, chairman of the Council of the Existential Psychology Association, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the American Foundation for Mental Health. In 1969, May divorced his first wife, Florence De Vries, with whom they lived together for 30 years. Marriage to his second wife, Ingrid Kepler Scholl, also ended in divorce, after which, in 1988, he connected his life with Georgia Lee Miller, a Jungian analyst. On October 22, 1994, after a long illness, May died in Tiburon, California, where he had lived since 1975.
For many years, May was the recognized leader of American existential psychology, who advocated its popularization, but sharply opposed the desire of some colleagues for anti-scientific, overly simplistic constructions. He criticized any attempt to present existential psychology as teaching accessible methods of self-realization of the individual. A healthy and full-fledged personality is the result of intense inner work aimed at revealing the unconscious basis of existence and its mechanisms. By focusing on the process of self-knowledge, May in his own way continues the tradition of Platonic philosophy.
Fundamentals of existentialism.
Existential psychology originates in the works of Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), a Danish philosopher and theologian. Kierkegaard was extremely concerned about the growing tendency to dehumanize man before his eyes. He strongly disagreed with the fact that people can be perceived and described as some kind of objects, thereby reducing them to the level of things. At the same time, he was far from assigning to subjective perception the property of the only reality accessible to man. For Kierkegaard, there was no rigid boundary between the subject and the object, as well as between the inner experiences of a person and those who experience them, because at any given moment in time, a person involuntarily identifies himself with his experiences. Kierkegaard sought to understand people as they live inside their reality, that is, as thinking, acting, willed beings. As May wrote: "Kierkegaard tried to bridge the gap between reason and feeling by drawing people's attention to the reality of direct experience, which underlies both objective and subjective realities" (1967, p. 67).
Kierkegaard, like later existentialist philosophers, emphasized the balance of freedom and responsibility. People gain freedom of action through the expansion of self-awareness and the subsequent acceptance of responsibility for their actions. However, a person pays for his freedom and responsibility with a feeling of anxiety. As soon as he finally realizes anxiety as an inevitability, he becomes the master of his fate, bears the burden of freedom and experiences the pain of responsibility.
The views of Kierkegaard, who died in obscurity at the age of 42, significantly influenced two German philosophers - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and Martin Heidegger (1899-1976), the first of whom outlined the main directions in the philosophy of the 20th century, and the second actually outlined the boundaries her competencies. The importance of these thinkers for contemporary humanitarian thought can hardly be overestimated. Among other merits, they own the copyright for the formation and development of existential philosophy exactly in the form in which it entered the circle of the main directions of modern intellectual history. With regard to the narrower field of psychology, Heidegger's writings had a great impact on the views of the Swiss psychiatrists Ludwig Binswanger and Medard Boss. Along with Karl Jaspers and Viktor Frankl, they made unsuccessful attempts to adapt the provisions of existential psychology to clinical psychotherapy.
Existentialism has penetrated modern artistic practice thanks to the works of influential French writers and essayists - Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, with whose names the current movement is often associated in the first place. Existentialism has made a large and varied contribution to recent theology and religious philosophy: the work of Martin Buber, Paul Tillich and others has already become one of the most influential in this field. Finally, the art world was also partly influenced by the existentialist complex of ideas, reflected in the work of Cezanne, Matisse and Picasso, who abandoned the restrictive standards of a realistic style and tried to express the freedom of being in the language of their whimsical non-objectivity.
The first existentialists among psychologists and psychotherapists also began to appear in Europe. Ludwig Binswanger, Medard Boss, Victor Francl belong to the largest figures.
After the Second World War, European existentialism in all its various forms spread to the United States and became an even more vague concept, since it was raised to the shield by a very heterogeneous near-philosophical public, consisting of writers and artists, professors and college students, playwrights and clergymen, even journalists and secular wits. The number of followers, each of whom had his own understanding of the essence of the doctrine, reached such a level that it began to threaten the existence of existentialism as such. Recently, existentialism has lost its former popularity, which clearly benefited it, paradoxically strengthening its position both in philosophy and in related fields.
principles of existentialism.
Despite the continuing abundance of various interpretations of the concept of "existentialism", among them one can single out some common features inherent in all representatives of this direction without exception.
First, it is the idea that existence (existence) precedes essence (essence). Existence means appearance and becoming, while essence means static matter that is not capable of changing on its own. Existence presupposes a process, essence refers to the final product. Existence is associated with growth and change, essence marks static and exhaustion. Western civilization, backed by the authority of science, has traditionally valued essence over existence. She tried to explain the world, including man, from the standpoint of his immutable essence. Existentialists, on the other hand, argue that the essence of human beings lies in their ability to continually redefine themselves through the choices they make.
Secondly, existentialism does not recognize the gap between subject and object. May defined existentialism as "the persistent attempt to understand man by expanding his field of study beyond the line along which the crack between subject and object runs" (1958 b, p. 11). We have already mentioned that Kierkegaard was skeptical about considering the person solely as a thinking subject. Quoting Kierkegaard, May wrote: "Only such a truth really exists for a person, which he himself produces by his actions." In other words, it is useless to seek the truth sitting at a desk; it can be known only by honestly accepting all the diversity of true life. At the same time, Kierkegaard did not support those who tried to make people only faceless objects, like machines. Each person is unique, and one cannot see in him only a cog in the mechanism of an industrial society.
Thirdly, people are looking for the meaning of their lives. They ask themselves (though not always consciously) critical issues relating to being. Who am I? Is life worth living? Does it make sense? How can I fulfill my human calling? The propensity, if not to systematic reflection on this subject, then at least to the experience of such problems, is one of the universal properties of human nature.
Fourth, existentialists hold the view that each of us is primarily responsible for what he is and what he becomes. We cannot blame parents, teachers, superiors, God, or circumstances. As Sartre said, “Man is nothing but what he makes of himself. This is the first principle of existentialism." Although we are able to connect with others, connect with each other, and build productive and healthy relationships, ultimately, each of us remains alone at heart. We cannot freely choose our destiny, having only a chance to bring together the abstract “I can” with the concrete “I want”. At the same time, even disclaiming responsibility and trying to avoid choice ends up being our own choice as well. We cannot get away from responsibility for our “I”, just as we cannot get away from ourselves.
Fifthly, existentialists generally reject the principle of explaining phenomena, which underlies all theoretical knowledge. In their opinion, all theories dehumanize people, portray them as mechanical objects, dismember the unity of the individual. Existentialists believe that direct experience always takes precedence over any artificial explanations. When experiences are melted down into some kind of supra-existent theoretical models, they are separated from the one who originally experienced them, and, therefore, lose their authenticity.
Before proceeding to the presentation psychological views Rollo May, we will briefly consider two basic concepts that create the ideological framework of existentialism, namely, being-in-the-world and non-being.
Being-in-the-world.
To explain the nature of man, existentialists adhere to the so-called phenomenological approach. In their opinion, we live in a world that can best be understood from our own point of view. When dogmatic scientists view people from an “external” position with the help of a system of abstract constructions, they forcibly adjust the living, changing principle and its existential world to a convenient and, if possible, unambiguous theoretical framework. The basic concept of the unity of the individual and environment expressed by the German term Dasein, which means "to exist there" and which became widespread with the beginning of the wide popularity of its author, Martin Heidegger. Literally, Dasein can mean "to exist in the world" and is usually translated as being-in-the-world. The hyphens in this term indicate the unity of subject and object, personality and world.
Many people suffer from anxiety and despair caused by self-estrangement and indifference to their own inner world. They do not have a clear idea of themselves and feel separated from the world, which seems distant and alien to them, the category of Dasein as the awareness of their being in the world remains inaccessible to them. Striving for power over nature, a person loses touch with it: the original unity turns into a conflict, a state of endless war with oneself. When a person blindly relies on the products of the industrial revolution, he forgets about earth and sky, that is, about the only real context of his being. The loss of orientation in the living space and the automatism of existence lead to a gradual alienation from own body. Learning new details about yourself as an object scientific analysis, a person loses the ability to control such a complex mechanism and begins to rely on outside help - be it technology, medicine or psychiatry. The body is at the mercy of those who have information about its structure and functions, while the owner of the body is deprived of the right to manage his life. There is a surrender of oneself to the power of another's consciousness, which leads first to spiritual, and then to physical death. Recall that Rollo May began to recover from tuberculosis only after he realized that he was the patient and no one else, and that the only way to survive was to return to himself, interrupting the lethargic serenity of self-estrangement.
The feeling of isolation and self-alienation affects not only pathologically restless individuals, but practically all the inhabitants of modern Western-type society. Alienation is the disease of our time, which has at least three distinct features: 1) separation from nature; 2) lack of significant interpersonal relationships; 3) alienation from one's true self. In other words, the world in which being is carried out is divided into three coexisting hypostases. The first of these is the Umwelt, or environment, the second is the Mitwelt (literally: "together with the world"), or the structure of relationships with other people, and the third is the Eigenwelt, or the structure of a person's internal relationship with himself.
Umwelt is a world of objects and things that exist independently of us. This is the world of nature and its laws, it includes our biological urges, such as hunger or the desire to sleep, and such natural phenomena like birth and death. We cannot completely isolate ourselves from this world and must learn to live in it and adapt to its changing structure. Umwelt is that invisible wholeness that, in particular, classical psychoanalysis dealt with, working with the instinctive, unconscious level of reactions. However, as is known, most of these unconscious reactions are the result of the hidden work of consciousness, carried out against the will of the individual, but having a distinctly cultural, and not natural, origin. This is where the sector of mutual intersection of the Umwelt and Mitwelt spheres is formed, between which it is sometimes difficult and completely pointless to draw a strict boundary. However, if our relations with others are not qualitatively different from our relations with things, we find ourselves locked in our Umwelt, which in this case turns into a field of alienation. We must treat other people as people, not as things. If we treat people as inanimate objects, then we are living exclusively in the Umwelt. Significant differences between Umwelt and Mitwelt are revealed when comparing sex and love. The use of the other as an instrument of sexual satisfaction or reproduction is opposed by responsibility and respect for the other person, readiness for its acceptance and forgiveness. At the same time, not all interaction in the world of Mitwelt necessarily involves love. A more general condition is respect for the Dasein of the other person. The theories of Sullivan and Rogers especially emphasize the importance of connection between people and deal mainly with Mitwelt.
Man's relationship with himself constitutes the Eigenwelt. Many areas of personality theory do not pay due attention to this world. Meanwhile, to live in the Eigenwelt means to be aware of oneself as a human being and to understand that there is an “I” in relation to the world of things and people, that is, to raise one of the key issues discussed by psychological science.
Healthy people live in Umwelt, Mitwelt and Eigenwelt at the same time. They are able to adapt to the natural world, interact with others as if they were their own kind, and are clearly aware of the value of their own experience.
Non-existence.
Being-in-the-world necessarily evokes an understanding of oneself as a living being who has appeared in the world. On the other hand, such an understanding leads to the fear of non-existence or non-existence. May wrote about this:
“In order to grasp the meaning of his existence, a person must first grasp the fact that he may not exist, that every second he is on the verge of possible extinction and cannot ignore the inevitability of death, the occurrence of which cannot be programmed for the future” (1958a, pp. 47-48 ).
May said of death that it is “the only non-relative but absolute fact of our life, and my consciousness of this fact gives my existence and everything I do every hour the quality of absoluteness” (1958a, p. 49). Death is not only the road by which non-existence enters our life, it is also the most obvious thing. Life becomes more important, more significant in the face of possible death.
If we are not ready to face non-existence, calmly contemplating death, it manifests itself in many other ways. This includes alcohol and drug abuse, promiscuity and other types of compulsive behavior. Non-existence can also express itself in the blind adherence to the expectations of our environment, and in the general hostility that pervades our relationships with people.
Rollo May said: "We are afraid of non-existence and therefore we crumple our being." The fear of death often compels us to live in such a way that we constantly defend ourselves against it, thereby getting less out of life than we could get, calmly acknowledging the outcome of our non-existence. We avoid active choice because it is based on thinking about who we are and what we want. We try to get away from the fear of non-existence by clouding our self-consciousness and denying our individuality, but such a choice leaves us with a feeling of despair and emptiness. Thus, we avoid the threat of non-existence at the cost of narrowing the scope of our existence in the world. A healthier alternative is to face the inevitability of death and realize that non-existence is an inseparable part of being.
Anxiety.
Before May published The Meaning of Anxiety in 1950, most theories were of the view that high levels anxiety indicates the presence of neurosis or another form of psychopathology. Directly in the course of writing the book, May personally experienced constant anxiety about his future fate. Not sure of his recovery, he was also constantly weighed down by his disability, as well as the knowledge that his wife and young son were left without a livelihood. In the book The Meaning of Anxiety, May argued that the driving force behind human behavior in many cases is the feeling of fear or anxiety that appears in him every time the feeling of uncertainty, insecurity, and fragility of his being increases. The inability to recognize death helps to temporarily get rid of anxiety or fear of non-existence. But this deliverance cannot be permanent. Death is an unconditional component of our life, and, sooner or later, everyone will have to face it.
May defined anxiety as "the subjective state of a person who realizes that her existence can be destroyed, that she can become 'nothing'" (1958a, p. 50). We experience anxiety when we realize that our existence, or some of the values identified with it, may be destroyed. In later work, he put forward another definition of anxiety - as a sense of threat aimed at values that are important to a person. Anxiety, May wrote, is "fear caused by the threat to some values that a person considers important for his existence as a person" (1967, p. 72).
So, anxiety can come both from the realization of the possibility of our non-existence, and from the threat to some vital values. It also arises when we encounter obstacles on the way to the realization of our plans and opportunities. This resistance can cause stagnation and decline, but it can also stimulate change and growth.
Freedom cannot exist without anxiety, just as anxiety cannot exist without the awareness of the possibility of freedom. Becoming more free, a person inevitably experiences anxiety. May quoted Kierkegaard as saying that "anxiety is the dizziness of freedom." Anxiety, like dizziness, can be both pleasant and painful, constructive and destructive. It can give us energy and zest for life, but it can also paralyze and panic us. Moreover, anxiety can be both normal and neurotic.
Normal anxiety
We live in an age of anxiety. None of us can escape its impact. To grow and redefine your values is to experience normal or constructive anxiety. May defined normal anxiety as "proportionate to the threat, not causing suppression, which can be confronted constructively at a conscious level" (1967, p. 80).
As an individual grows and develops from infancy to old age, his values change, and each time he climbs a new step, he experiences normal anxiety. “All growth consists in the abandonment of old values, which creates anxiety” (May, 1967, p. 80). Normal anxiety also comes in moments when the artist, scientist, philosopher suddenly achieve insight, the euphoria from which is accompanied by awe of the changes opening up in perspective. Thus, scientists who witnessed the first test atomic bomb in Alamogordo, New Mexico, experienced normal anxiety, realizing that from that moment the world had changed irreversibly.
Normal anxiety experienced during periods of growth or unpredictable change is common to everyone. It can be constructive as long as it remains proportionate to the threat. Otherwise, anxiety turns into painful, neurotic.
neurotic anxiety
May defined neurotic anxiety as "a reaction disproportionate to the threat, causing suppression and other forms of intrapsychic conflict, and driven by various forms of blocking-off action and understanding" (1967, p. 80).
If normal anxiety is always felt when values are threatened, then neurotic anxiety visits us if the questioned values are in fact dogmas, the rejection of which will deprive our existence of the meaning. The need to realize one's absolute correctness limits the individual to such an extent that his needs ultimately come down to regular confirmation of the inviolability of the existing order. Whatever this order may be, it gives us a sense of illusory security "acquired at the price of giving up free knowledge and new growth" (May, 1967, p. 80).
Guilt
We have already said that the feeling of anxiety increases when we are faced with the problem of realizing our potentialities. When we deny possibilities, when we fail to correctly recognize the needs of those close to us, or when we neglect our dependence on the world around us, guilt (guilt) builds up (May, 1958a). The term "guilt", like the term "anxiety", was used by May when describing being-in-the-world. In this sense, the concepts described by these terms can be considered ontological concepts, that is, related to the nature of being, and not to feelings that arise in special situations or as a result of some actions.
In the most general form, May singled out three types of ontological guilt, each of which corresponds to one of the images of being-in-the-world: Umwelt, Mitwelt and Eigenwelt. The type of guilt corresponding to Umwelt is rooted in our lack of awareness of our being-in-the-world. The further civilization advances along the path of scientific and technological progress, the further we move away from nature, that is, from Umwelt. This alienation leads to the ontological guilt of the first type, which prevails in "advanced" societies, where people live in temperature-controlled houses, use mechanical transport to get around, and eat food collected and prepared by others. Our mindless reliance on others to meet our needs contributes to our ontological guilt. May called this type of guilt "separation guilt" - the separation of man and nature, which is somewhat reminiscent of Erich Fromm's "human dilemma".
The second type of guilt comes from our inability to properly understand the world of others (Mitwelt). We see other people only with our own eyes and can never quite determine what they really need. By our assessment, we commit violence against their true personality. Since we cannot accurately anticipate the needs of others, we feel inadequate in dealing with them. This leads to a deep sense of guilt felt towards everyone. May wrote that "it is not a matter of moral imperfection ... it is the inevitable result of the fact that each of us is an individual and has no choice but to look at the world with his own eyes" (1958a, p. 54).
The third type of ontological guilt is associated with our denial of our capabilities, as well as with failures on the way to their realization. In other words, this kind of guilt is based on a relationship with one's own self (Eigenwelt). This type is also universal, because none of us can fully realize our full potential. It is reminiscent of A. Maslow's concept of the development of a Jonah complex in a person, or the fear of success.
Like anxiety, the feeling of ontological guilt can affect the state of the individual both positively and negatively. On the one hand, under certain conditions, it can contribute to a healthy understanding of the world around us, accepting it as it is, improving relationships with people and creative use of one's abilities. On the other hand, if we refuse to acknowledge ontological guilt, it becomes painful. Ontological guilt, like neurotic anxiety, causes unproductive or neurotic symptoms such as sexual impotence, depression, cruelty to others, inability to make choices, etc.
Intentionality.
The ability to make a choice presupposes the presence of some structure on the basis of which this choice is made. The framework in which we think about our past experience and imagine the future accordingly is called intentionality (May, 1969 b). Outside this structure, neither the choice itself nor its further implementation is possible. An act implies intentionality, just as intentionality implies an act. These concepts are inseparable: "There is an action in the intention, and in any action there is an intention."
May used the term "intentionality" to bridge the gap between subject and object. Intentionality is “a structure that we, essentially subjects, need to see and understand the world around us, which is essentially an object. In the act of intentionality, the gap between subject and object is partly bridged” (May, 1969b, p. 225).
May used one simple example to illustrate this thesis: a person (subject) is sitting at a desk and sees a sheet of paper (object) in front of him. A person can write something on this sheet, fold it into a paper airplane for his grandson, or draw a picture on it. In all three cases, the subject (person) and the object (sheet of paper) are the same, but the person's actions are different, they depend on his intentions and on what meaning he attaches to his experience. In this case, meaning is a function of the properties of both the personality itself (the subject) and the environment (the object world).
Intentionality is not always fully conscious. It "lies below the level of immediate awareness and includes spontaneous, bodily elements and other characteristics usually called 'unconscious'" (May, 1969b, p. 234).
Care, love and will.
“Care is a state in which something matters” (May, 1969b, p. 289). To truly care means to consider the other person as a truly close being, to accept their pain, joy, regret or guilt as your own. Caring is an active process, the opposite of apathy.
Care and love are not the same thing, but often the former entails the latter. To love means to care, to see and accept the unique personality of another person, to pay active attention to his creative development. May defined love as "the delight in the presence of another person and the recognition of his values and his development no less important than his own values and the development of his own personality" (1953, p. 206). When there is no care, there can be no love - there can be only empty sentimentality or a quickly passing sexual attraction.
Caring is also a source of will. May defined will as "the ability to organize one's self in such a way that movement takes place in a certain direction or towards a certain goal" (1969b, p. 218). He made a distinction between will (will) and desire (wish), the latter for him being a simple "play of the imagination with the possibility that something will be done or happen." May insisted that “'will' requires self-consciousness, 'desire' does not. "Will" implies some possibility and/or choice, "desire" does not. "Desire" gives warmth, content, fantasies, childish play, freshness and soil for "will". "Will" gives "desire" a direction and a sense of maturity. "Will" protects "desire", allows it to realize itself, despite the fact that the risk is sometimes very great.
Unity of love and will.
May claimed that modern society suffers from an unhealthy separation of love and will. The concept of love is associated with sensual attraction, identified with sex, while the concept of will is attributed the meaning of stubborn determination in achieving goals and realizing any ambitions (the so-called "will to power" is a textbook example in this case). Meanwhile, this representation does not reveal the true meaning of these two terms. When love is seen as sex, it becomes temporary and uncommitted; the will disappears and only desire remains. When the concept of will is narrowed down to the will to power, the effect of self-alienation of the subject arises. Paying attention only to his own needs, he quickly loses passion and fervor. Real caring gives way to pure manipulation.
Love and will "are not automatically combined in the process of biological growth, but must be part of our conscious development" (May, 1969 b, p. 283). In fact, there are biological reasons for the separation of love and will. At the moment when we first come into the world, we are in harmony with the Universe (Umwelt), with the mother (Mitwelt) and with ourselves (Eigenwelt). “In early childhood, when the mother nurses us on her breast, all our needs are met without any conscious effort on our part. This is our first freedom, our first yes” (May, 1969b, p. 284).
Then, when the will begins to develop, it manifests itself as disagreement, as the first no. The carefree existence of early infancy is now opposed by the emerging will of late infancy. This "no" should not be seen as a statement directed against the parents, but as a positive statement of one's "I". Unfortunately, parents often take "no" in a negative sense and therefore trap children's attempts at self-affirmation in the bud. As a result, children begin to separate the will from the carefree feeling of love that they previously enjoyed so much.
Our task, May said, is to unite will and love. It's not easy, but it's possible. Neither love without care, nor will that serves exclusively selfish purposes, are suitable for the union of love and will. For a mature personality, both love and will mean striving outside, towards another person. Love and will together provide a sense of caring for one's neighbor, help to understand the need for choice, imply action, and require responsibility.
Obviously, love is more than sex, although sex is one of the dominant manifestations of love. May identified four types of love in the Western cultural tradition: sex, eros, philia, and agape.
Sex
Sex is a biological function that is realized through sexual intercourse or with the help of some other way of relieving sexual tension. Although in modern Western society, attitudes towards sex have become much easier, “sex is still the generative energy, the force that ensures procreation, the source of both the greatest pleasure and the deepest anxiety for human beings” (May, 1969b, p. 38).
May believed that in ancient times, sex was taken for granted, like the way we perceive food or sleep. In modern times, sex has become a problem. At first, in the Victorian period, Western culture completely denied the sexual side of life, when talking about sex was considered well-mannered person invalid. Then, starting in the 1920s, people try to get out of the grip of these prohibitions; the topic of sex receives a new impetus for development, becomes open again. Until the 1980s, Western society was so much concerned with the problem of sex and sexual relationships that in the end, sex again began to be perceived as quite ordinary. However, the rapid spread of AIDS in recent years has rekindled the flames of sexual anxiety that had been extinguished. May noted that our society has gone from a period when the presence of sexual relations aroused feelings of anxiety and guilt in a person, to a period when the absence of these relations causes similar consequences. Modernity is making its own adjustments, and now he might say that the threat of HIV infection has again linked sexual behavior with anxiety for many people.
Eros
Sex and eros are often confused with each other. However, if sex is a physiological need that is satisfied by relieving tension, then eros is a mental phenomenon - a kind of attraction that is generated and translated into a long-term union of two loving people. Comparing sex and eros, May wrote:
“Unlike sex, eros takes wings from the human imagination and always goes beyond any technique, laughs at all instruction books, circling merrily in an orbit that goes far beyond the mechanical rules that determine the physical operation of organs” (1969b, p. 74 ).
Erotic relationships are built on the basis of tenderness and caring attitude. They lead to the establishment of a long-term alliance with another person, in which both partners experience admiration and passion, which contributes to their mutual personal development. Eros is love that moves two people together to build strong relationships, particularly in marriage. Since the human race could not survive without the desire to strong relationship, we can assume that eros comes to the aid of sexual relations.
Philia
Eros, which comes to the aid of sex, originates in philia (philia) - a close friendship that does not have a sexual orientation. Philia love is not rushed, it needs time to grow, develop, take root, as, for example, in the case of slowly developing love between brothers and sisters or between old friends who have known each other all their lives. “In a love-philia relationship, we don’t need to do anything for the sake of a loved one, except to accept him as he is, be close to him and enjoy his company. It is friendship in the simplest, most direct sense of the word” (May, 1969 a, p. 31).
Harry Stack Sullivan attached great importance to the period of early adolescence and emphasized that this creative time is characterized by an acute need for comrades, that is, for someone who would be more or less like you. According to Sullivan, camaraderie or philia is a necessary quality in healthy erotic relationships in early and late adolescence. May, who studied with Sullivan at the William Alanson White Institute, agreed with him that it was philia-love that created the possibility of eros-love. Gradual, spontaneous development true friendship- a necessary condition for a long union of two people.
Agape
Just as eros depends on philia, so philia needs agape. May defined agape as "respect for the other, concern for the well-being of the other without any self-interest in mind, unselfish love, the ideal example of which is the love of God for man" (1969b, p. 319).
Agape is altruistic love. This love is spiritual, sublime, but at the same time carrying with it the risk of becoming like God. It does not depend directly on the behavior or any properties of another person. In this sense, it is always undeserved and unconditional.
According to May, healthy adult relationships combine all four types of love. They are based on sexual satisfaction, the desire to create a strong and lasting union, sincere friendship and selfless concern for the well-being of another person. But the path to such true love, unfortunately, is far from easy. It requires a special quality of maturity - self-confidence and the ability to reveal yourself. “It requires at the same time tenderness, acceptance and affirmation of the personality of another person, liberation from feelings of rivalry, sometimes - abandoning oneself in the name of the interests of a loved one, as well as such ancient virtues as mercy and the ability to forgive” (May, 1981, p. 147).
Freedom and destiny.
We have seen that the unification of the four types of love requires both the revelation of one's own personality and the affirmation of the personality of another. But that's not all. You must assert your freedom (freedom) and resist your destiny (destiny). Healthy people are able not only to achieve freedom, but also to meet their fate with dignity.
Definition of freedom
Defining the concept of freedom, May said that "the freedom of the individual is in her ability to know about her predestination" (1967, p. 175). The word "predestination" in this phrase refers to what May called destiny in his later writings. In this case, freedom is born from the awareness of the inevitability of our fate: the understanding that death is possible at any moment, that we are born men or women, that we have some weaknesses characteristic of us, that, based on the impressions of early childhood, we tend to behave in a certain way in the future, etc.
Freedom is a willingness to change, even if the exact nature of that change remains unpredictable. Freedom "implies the ability to always keep several different possibilities in mind, even if in this moment we are not entirely clear how we should act” (May, 1981, pp. 10-11). This circumstance often leads to an increase in anxiety, but this is a normal anxiety that healthy people readily meet and which is quite manageable.
May distinguished between two types of freedom - freedom of action and freedom of being. The first he called existential freedom, the second - essential freedom.
existential freedom
May insisted that existential freedom should not be confused with existential philosophy or existential psychology. It is the freedom to do something - the freedom to act. Most middle-class American adults enjoy a great deal of existential freedom. They can travel freely to any state, freely choose their acquaintances, vote for their representatives in parliament, and do many other things freely. At a more primitive level of explanation, existential freedom can be identified with the ability to move freely around the supermarket hall in order to make a free choice from thousands of proposed product options. Existential freedom is thus the freedom to act according to one's own choice.
Essential freedom
Meanwhile, freedom of action does not yet ensure freedom of being. Sometimes it seems that, in fact, existential freedom even makes it difficult to achieve essential freedom. May cited several instances of prison and concentration camp inmates talking enthusiastically about their "inner freedom." Perhaps solitary confinement or other restriction of freedom of action helps a person to more clearly imagine his fate and develop in himself the freedom of being. In this regard, May asks the following question: "Only then can we get essential freedom when our everyday existence meets with obstacles?" (1981, p. 60).
He himself answered this question in the negative. It is not necessary to be imprisoned in order to achieve essential freedom, that is, the freedom of being. Fate itself is our inner prison, and the realization of this fact encourages us to think more about the freedom of being, and not about the freedom of action. “Does not fate, which is the basis of our life, keep us imprisoned under the supervision of loneliness, severity, and sometimes cruelty of the world around us, and does this not force us to try to look beyond the ordinary? Isn't the inevitability of death... a concentration camp for all of us? Doesn't the fact that life is both a joy and a burden push us to think about the deeper side of being? (May, 1981, p. 61).
Fate
May defined destiny as "the structure of limitations and abilities that are the 'data' of our lives." Fate is "the structure of the universe, manifesting itself in the structure of each of us" (1981, pp. 89-90). The ultimate fate of all living things is death, but on closer examination, our fate includes other biological properties, such as the level of intelligence, gender, physical strength and size of our body, genetic predisposition to certain diseases, etc. Various psychological and cultural factors also contribute to shaping our destiny.
"Destiny is our 'concentration camp' which nonetheless determines our essential freedom."
Fate is what we are moving towards, our only end station, our goal. This does not mean total predestination and doom. Within the boundaries determined by fate, we have the right to choose, and this freedom allows us, if necessary, to resist our fate and change it. At the same time, it is impossible to change everything, no matter what we want. We cannot achieve success in any work, overcome any disease, build a relationship with any person exactly according to our ideas. Life always makes its own adjustments. “Fate cannot be ignored, we cannot simply erase it or replace it with something else. But we can choose how we respond to our destiny, using the abilities bestowed on us” (May, 1981, p. 89).
May believed that the concepts of fate and freedom, as well as love-hate, life-death, are not mutually exclusive, but complementary, existing inextricably linked as one of the reflections of the greatest paradox that is human life. “The paradox is that freedom owes its vitality to fate, and fate owes its importance to freedom” (May, 1981, p. 17). Freedom and destiny are thus merged into one, one cannot exist without the other. Freedom without fate is licentiousness and permissiveness. Strange as it may seem, at first glance, permissiveness, leading to anarchy, in the end entails the complete destruction of freedom. Thus, there is no freedom without fate, just as fate without freedom loses all meaning.
Freedom and destiny breed each other. By defying fate, we gain freedom. Striving for freedom, we choose our own path, which one way or another passes through the space limited by our destiny.
The power of myth.
In his book The Cry for Myth (1991), May insisted that the people of modern Western civilization have an urgent need for myths. There is a shortage of viable, that is, truly compelling myths, and many turn to religious cults, drugs, and pop culture in a vain attempt to find meaning in their lives.
Of course, May adheres to the modernist concept of myth, according to which myth is not at all a lie and a product of primitive superstitions, but rather a system of conscious and unconscious ideas and beliefs, with the help of which people explain to themselves the phenomena of personal and social life.
“Myths are like floor beams in the construction of a house, they are invisible from the outside, but they form a structure that holds the house, and thanks to them people can live in this house.”
Myths are stories that hold society together; “they are essential to keeping our soul alive and bring new meaning to our complex and often meaningless world” (May, 1991, p. 20). Since ancient times and in various cultures, people have found the meaning of their lives with the help of myths, whose knowledge was often the main sign of belonging to a particular culture.
May believed that people communicate with each other on two levels. The first is the language of rational reasoning, and at this level the idea of impersonal truth obscures from us the personality of the person with whom we communicate. The second level is communication through myths, and here the general impression made by the conversation is much more important than the formal accuracy of statements. We use myths and symbols to go beyond the ordinary situation, to achieve self-understanding, to identify ourselves with something, to reach a new level of concreteness.
May agreed with Freud that the story of Oedipus is a myth of great importance for our culture, since it describes the main features of the existential crises that each of us experiences sooner or later. These include birth, departure or expulsion from the parental home, sexual attraction to one of the parents and hostility towards the other, the assertion of one's independence and the search for a soul mate, and finally death. And the myth of Oedipus is of such importance to us precisely because in it all these stages are presented in their entirety. Like Oedipus, we are separated from our father and mother and driven by an urgent need to know who we are. However, our struggle for self-identification is difficult and can even lead to tragedy, as happened with Oedipus when he demanded that he be told the truth about his origin. Upon learning that he killed his father and married his own mother, Oedipus gouged out his own eyes, thereby depriving himself of the ability to see, which is equated with knowledge and understanding.
But such a narrowing of his world by Oedipus did not lead to a complete denial of consciousness. At this point in Sophocles' tragedy, Oedipus again retires into exile, which May saw as a symbolic expression of self-isolation and ostracism. We then see Oedipus as an old man, having a hard time with his tragedy and accepting responsibility for killing his own father and marrying his own mother. His reflections at the end of his life brought him peace and understanding, gave him the strength to face death with joy and humility. The main themes of the Oedipus story - birth, exile and separation from loved ones, self-identification, incest and parricide, the pressure of guilt and, in the end, conscious reflection on one's life and death - affect each of us and endow this myth with powerful healing energy.
May's views on the meaning of myths can be compared to Jung's idea that the collective unconscious in myths are archetypal structures in human experience that lead to universal images that lie outside our personal experiences. Like archetypes, myths can contribute to our psychological growth if we embrace them and allow ourselves to see them as a new reality. At the same time, if we deny the universality of the myth, considering it just an outdated and unscientific explanation of the world, we risk falling into alienation, spiritual apathy and inner emptiness - the main components of mental pathology.
Psychopathology.
According to May, not anxiety and guilt, but a feeling of emptiness and apathy are the main diseases of our time. When people deny their destiny or deny the positive meaning of a myth, they lose the purpose of life, they lose their direction of movement. Without purpose and direction, people become weak and prone to various manifestations of self-protective and self-destructive behavior.
A person cannot stay in a state of emptiness for a long time, and if he does not develop, does not move forward towards any goal, then he does not just stop in place, since suppressed possibilities are transformed into morbidity and despair, and sometimes into destructive actions (May, 1953, p. 24).
Many people in modern Western society experience a sense of alienation from the world (Umwelt), from other people (Mitwelt), and especially from themselves (Eigenwelt). They are aware of their powerlessness in the face of natural disasters, growing industrialization and lack of dialogue with their own kind. They feel their insignificance in a world where man is becoming more and more dehumanized. This feeling of insignificance leads to apathy and limited consciousness.
In May's understanding, psychopathology is "the inability to take part in the affairs, feelings and thoughts of other people and share their experiences with others" (May, 1981, p. 21). A mentally unbalanced person lacks the skills to communicate with the outside world, he denies his fate and in the process of this denial loses his freedom. He reveals many neurotic symptoms in his behavior, not striving to regain his freedom, but wanting to get even further away from the very possibility of achieving it. Symptoms narrow the phenomenological world of the individual to the extent that it is easy for her to cope with it. An internally unfree person creates for himself a harsh reality in which he does not have to make a choice.
Symptoms may be temporary, as in the case of stress-induced headaches, or they may be relatively permanent and stem from early childhood experiences.
Psychotherapy.
Unlike Freud, Adler, Rogers, and other personality theorists who relied on rich clinical experience, May did not found a school with many ardent followers and a well-defined methodology. Nevertheless, he wrote extensively on the subject of psychotherapy.
As noted above, May did not consider anxiety and guilt to be the main components of mental disorders and, therefore, did not see the goal of therapy in assuaging these feelings. He believed that it was wrong to focus psychotherapy on curing a patient from a specific disease or solving his specific problem. Instead, he set the task of therapy to make people more human, to help them expand and develop their consciousness, thereby pushing them to the possibility of free choice. The possibility of choice, in turn, leads to an increase in freedom and, at the same time, responsibility.
May argued that "the purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free". “I believe,” he wrote, “that the work of the psychotherapist should be to help people gain the freedom to realize and realize their potential” (1981, pp. 19-20). May insisted that the therapist who focuses on the patient's symptoms is missing something more important. Neurotic symptoms are only ways to escape from their freedom and indicators that the patient is not using his possibilities. As the patient becomes freer and more human, his neurotic symptoms tend to disappear, neurotic anxiety gives way to normal anxiety, and neurotic guilt is replaced by normal guilt. But these are all side benefits, not the main goal of therapy. May was of the firm opinion that psychotherapy should primarily help people experience their existence and that "any subsequent recovery from symptoms should be a by-product of this process" (May, 1967, p. 86).
How does the therapist help patients become free and responsible people? May did not offer specific recipes by which therapists could carry out this task. Existential psychologists do not have a well-defined set of techniques and methods applicable to all patients. Instead of using general techniques, they address the patient's personality and its unique characteristics. They must establish a trusting human relationship with the patient (Mitwelt) and with their help lead the patient to a better understanding of himself and to a fuller disclosure of his own world (Eigenwelt). This may mean that the patient will have to be challenged to a duel with his own destiny, that he will experience despair, anxiety and guilt. But it also means that there must be a one-on-one human meeting in which both therapist and patient are persons, not objects. “In this interaction, I must be able to feel, in a sense, the same as the patient feels. My work as a therapist must be open to his inner world” (May, 1967, p. 108).
According to May, therapy incorporates elements of religion, science, as well as trusting interpersonal relationships, ideally reminiscent of friendship. Friendship, however, is not simple social interaction rather, it requires the therapist to be ready for resistance on the part of the patient and the need to push him to action. May believed that human relationships were in themselves healing and that their transformative effect did not depend on what the therapist said or what views he held.
“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 get to the point where he can decide whether to continue to be a victim ... or to leave this position of a victim and make his way further through purgatory with the hope of reaching heaven. Often our patients, approaching the end of the road, are obviously frightened by the possibility of deciding everything on their own or using their chance to complete the enterprise they so bravely started” (May, 1991, p. 165).
May shared many philosophical views Carl Rogers. Central to the approach of both researchers was the understanding of therapy as a human encounter, that is, a close human relationship that can help the growth of both the patient and the therapist. In practice, however, May was much more inclined to ask questions, delve into the patient's early childhood experiences, and offer possible explanations for his current behavior.
Philip case.
Although May worked as a psychotherapist for many years, he did not leave descriptions of the exact techniques and techniques. However, the case of Philip, a patient with inappropriate manifestations of anxious behavior, mentioned by May, can serve as an illustration of the existentialist approach to psychotherapy (May, 1981). Philip, a middle-aged man who had been married twice, and both times unsuccessfully, suffered from neurotic anxiety, which amounted to a lock on his own worthlessness and the doom of any of his actions to failure. Deeply worried about the unpredictable, eccentric behavior of his beloved Nicole, he nevertheless did not dare to break off relations with her, because he himself paralyzed his will, fearing to violate unconscious, deeply rooted prohibitions. Nicole's actions caused Philip to develop a sense of duty towards her, tying and repelling at the same time. What matters in this relationship is that Nicole's obvious need for Philippe's presence obliges him to take care of her.
Philippe's tormenting affection for the uncontrollable Nicole was a replica of his relationship with his relatives in early childhood, when a certain sense of duty develops towards the latter, healthy at its core, but sometimes taking on ugly forms. During the first two years of Philip's life, the main inhabitants of his world were only two people: his mother and sister, who was two years older than Philip. The mental state of Philip's mother bordered on schizophrenia. Her behavior towards her son fluctuated between tenderness and cruelty. The sister was definitely schizophrenic and later spent some time in a psychiatric hospital.
Thus, Philip had to learn from early childhood to adapt to two completely unpredictable women. Of course, he must inevitably have been left with the impression that he must not only protect himself from women, but also be faithful to them, especially considering their deplorable state. Hence the perception of life not as a free development of the personality, but as a test requiring constant guarding or duty. The story of Philip can be used to illustrate how neurotic anxiety blocks the development and productive actions of an individual. Philippe could have found a different way of dealing with Nicole. There is no doubt that Philip's attitude towards his beloved repeats his childish ways of relating to his mother and sister.
May viewed Philip's case as an example of unconscious intentionality: Philip felt he had to take care of Nicole despite her unpredictable and "crazy" behavior. Philip did not notice the connection of his actions with childhood experiences with an unpredictable mother and a mentally deranged sister. He became addicted to his unconscious belief in the need to take care of "crazy" and unpredictable women. Naturally, such intentionality made it impossible for him to establish a new relationship with Nicole.
Philip's story is one of caring for others. He got Nicole a job at his company, one that she could do at home and earn enough to live comfortably. In addition, when Nicole gave up her latest fling and the "crazy" idea of moving to the other side of the country, Philippe gave her several thousand dollars. Needless to say, before meeting her, he felt obliged to take care of his two previous wives, and even earlier - of his mother and sister, thereby implementing the same behavioral model. Despite the fact that the scheme of life that Philip adhered to ordered him to take care of women, he never really knew how to take care of them.
Philip's psychological problems stemmed from his early childhood experiences with an unstable mother and a schizophrenic sister. These impressions were not the cause of his pathology, that is, it cannot be said that they alone brought his psyche to such a state. But they made Philip learn to adjust to his world by holding back his anger, developing a sense of apathy, and trying to be a "good boy." Recall that, from May's point of view, neurotic symptoms are not an inability to adapt to the world, but a suitable and necessary adaptation for a person, allowing him to protect his Dasein (being-in-the-world). Philip's behavior towards his ex-wives and towards Nicole is a denial of his freedom and an attempt to protect himself by avoiding meeting his fate.
While conducting psychotherapy, May, in particular, explained to Philip that his relationship with Nicole was an attempt to continue the relationship with his mother. Carl Rogers would reject such a technique because it comes from an external (that is, the therapist's) belief system. May, on the contrary, believed that such explanations are an effective impulse for the patient to realize what he is hiding from himself.
In working with Philip, May also used another method: he invited Philip to mentally talk with his dead mother. At the same time, Philip spoke for himself and for her. Representing his mother in this dialogue, for the first time he was able to identify himself with her, to see himself through her eyes. As a mother, he said that she was very proud of him and that he had always been her favorite child. Then, in the role of himself, he told his mother that he liked her courage, and recalled the case when her courage saved his eyesight. After the end of this mental conversation, Philip confessed: "Never in my life could I have imagined that something like this would happen."
May asked Philip to bring some of his childhood photos. Philip then began to mentally talk to "little Philip". When this conversation took place, “little Philip” said that he had overcome the problem that most worried the adult Philip, namely, the fear of being abandoned. "Little Philip" became a friend and companion of the adult Philip, helped him cope with loneliness and calm the feeling of jealousy towards Nicole.
Philip did not become a different person as a result of treatment, but he began to better understand and understand some aspects of his personality that had always been inherent in her. Awareness of new opportunities allowed him to move forward and feel freer. The end of treatment was for Philip the beginning of "unification with his childhood self, which he had until then kept in prison in order to survive at a time when life seemed to him not happy, but dangerous and threatening" (May, 1981, p. 41).
Chapter results.
- In his concept of man, May especially emphasized the uniqueness of the individual, free choice and the teleology of behavior, that is, its conscious target aspect. Like other existentialists, May believed that: 1) existence (existence) precedes essence (essence), that is, what people do is more important than what they are; 2) people combine the features of both the subject and the object; this means that they are both thinking and acting beings; 3) people strive to find answers to the most important questions regarding the meaning of life; 4) freedom and responsibility always balance each other, therefore, none of them can be present in a person separately from the other; 5) rigid theories of personality tend to dehumanize a person and turn him into an object or subject for research.
- Existentialists took a phenomenological approach to the study of personality, insisting that a person can best be understood from his own point of view. The unity of man and his phenomenological world is expressed by the term Dasein (being-in-the-world).
- There are three forms of being-in-the-world: Umwelt - our relationship with the world of external objects or things, Mitwelt - our relationship with other people and Eigenwelt - relationship with our own personality. Healthy people live in all these three worlds at the same time.
- If a person is aware of his being-in-the-world, he is also aware of the possibility of non-being, or non-existence (nothingness). Life becomes more significant for us when we face the fact of the inevitability of death or non-existence.
- The recognition of non-existence contributes to the development of a sense of anxiety, which increases if a person understands that he is endowed with freedom of choice and is burdened with responsibility for his actions. All of us experience normal anxiety. It is proportional to the threat, and we are able to deal with it constructively on a conscious level. Neurotic anxiety is disproportionate to the threat, causes suppression and a self-defense reaction.
- Guilt, like anxiety, is normal for a person. People experience guilt as a result of: 1) separation from the natural world; 2) the inability to accurately judge the needs of others; 3) denial of one's own capabilities.
- Intentionality is a fundamental structure that gives meaning to a person's experiences and allows him to make decisions about the future. Intentionality involves active action, not just passive desire.
- Both love and will cause an attitude of care and require responsibility. Love means delight in the presence of another person and the assertion of his values along with his own, the will generates a conscious decision to act. May identified four types of love: 1) sex, which is a physiological function; 2) eros, striving for a long-term union with a loved one; 3) philia - friendship that does not have a pronounced sexual orientation; 4) agape, or altruistic love that does not require anything in return.
- May believed that freedom comes to a person when he confronts his fate and understands that death or non-existence is possible at any moment. There is a freedom of action that many have, but a deeper, rarer kind of freedom is the freedom of being. A person can be internally free, even if he is physically in prison.
- Following Fromm, May believed that the destruction of myths as a cultural basis played a role both in social upheavals and in the fact that a person feels loneliness and alienation from the world.
- Since psychopathology is the result of alienation from nature, from other people and from oneself, the goal of psychotherapy, according to May, is to help people expand their consciousness so that they become able to make choices and live in peace and understanding with nature, with other people. and with yourself.
- Existential psychology deserves high praise for its ability to organize and use everything that is beneficial to personal development, but as a scientific system it has not acquired of great importance neither in the context of new theoretical directions, nor in the field of creating practical methods.
2. Rollo May. CONTRIBUTION OF EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOTHERAPY
The fundamental contribution of existential therapy is its understanding of man as being. She does not deny the value of dynamisms and the study of specific behavioral stereotypes in their proper places. But she claims that attraction or driving forces, whatever they are called, can only be understood in the context of the structure of existence of the person with whom we are dealing. A distinctive feature of existential analysis is the consideration, together with ontology, the science of being, together with Dasein, the existence of this particular individual sitting opposite the psychotherapist.
Before we get to the definition of being and the terminology associated with it, let's start in an existential spirit—reminding ourselves that what we're talking about must be experienced by a sensitive therapist countless times a day. This is the experience of an instant meeting with another person who appears to us as a completely different being compared to what we knew about him. The definition of "instantaneous" does not refer to real time, but to the quality of the experience. We may know a great deal about a patient from his case notes, we may hold certain opinions from the way he was described by other interviewers. But when the patient himself enters, we often have an unexpected, sometimes very strong, impression of "this is a stranger." Usually this impression carries an element of surprise, but not in the sense of bewilderment or confusion, but in the etymological sense of "taken by surprise." This does not mean criticizing the messages of our colleagues, since we have such encounter experiences even with our old acquaintances or work colleagues. The data we learn about a patient can be very accurate and worth reading. But the meaning is rather to grasp the existence of another person, which happened on a completely different level, different from concrete knowledge about him. Obviously, knowledge of the drives and mechanisms of another person is useful; familiarity with the stereotypes of his interpersonal relationships may be directly related to the problem under study; information about his social environment, the meaning of specific gestures and symbolic actions, etc. etc. are undoubtedly also relevant. But all this manifests itself on a completely different level, when we meet with the most real fact that overlaps everything else, namely, directly with the living person himself. When we discover that all our vast knowledge about a person suddenly turns into new form, then one should not conclude that this knowledge was incorrect. Such a transformation means that this knowledge receives its meaning, form and meaning from the reality of a particular person, whose expression these individual moments are. Nothing said here is meant to devalue the collection and serious examination of all the specific data that can be obtained about a given person. This is just a general perception. But no one should turn a blind eye to the experimental fact that these data form a configuration that manifests itself when meeting with the person himself. This also illustrates a fairly common feeling that comes across in everyone who interviews people. It can be said that we do not feel the other person and are forced to continue the interview until the data breaks into our consciousness in its own form. We especially cannot feel the other person when we ourselves are hostile or resist the relationship. Thus, we keep a person at a distance, and it does not matter how reasonable we are at the moment. This is the classic difference between knowing and knowing about. When we want to know a person, knowledge about him must be subordinated to the fact of his actual existence.
In ancient Greek and Hebrew, the verb "to know" also meant "to have sexual intercourse." We find confirmation of this again and again in the King James translation of the Bible: "Abraham knew his wife, and she conceived..." and so on. Thus, the etymological connection between "to know" and "to love" is very close. Although we cannot now deal with this complex issue, we can at least say that knowing the other person, as well as loving him, implies a union, a dialectical participation in the other. Binswanger calls this the dual mode. To be able to understand another, a person must at least be ready to love him.
Encountering the existence of another person has a power that can greatly shock a person and cause an explosion of anxiety in him. But it can also be a source of joy. In any case, it has the power to capture the essence of a person and make changes in him. It is quite understandable that, for the sake of his own comfort, the therapist may be tempted to withdraw from this meeting, thinking of the other person only as a patient, or concentrating only on certain mechanisms. But if in a relationship with another person a mainly technical position is used, then it is obvious that, in defending himself from anxiety, the therapist not only isolates himself from the other, but also greatly distorts reality. In this case, he does not really see the other person. This does not detract from the importance of technology at all, but demonstrates that technology, like data, must obey the fact of the reality of two people in a room.
Sartre showed this moment in a slightly different way. If we consider a person, he writes, "as someone who can be analyzed and reduced to primary data, determine his motives (or desires), see him as a subject as the property of an object", then we can really end up developing impressive system substances that we can later call mechanisms, dynamisms or stereotypes. But we are faced with a dilemma. Our human existence has become "a kind of formless clay that can accept (desires) passively, or can be reduced to a simple bundle of all these irresistible attractions or tendencies. In any case, the person disappears. We can no longer find the one with whom that happened or other experience.
From the book Encyclopedia of Bluff author3.17. ELEMENTS OF MANIPULATIONAL PSYCHOTHERAPY IN TRADITIONAL METHODS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY. MANIPULATIONS IN HYPNOTHERAPY It is known that the most effective ways hypnotization lies an element of delusion. We have already talked about binding in hypnotherapy above. In order for this
From the book Personal Illusionism as a New Philosophical and Psychological Concept author Garifullin Ramil RamzievichIllusionism in psychotherapy or recovery by delusion (manipulation in psychotherapy) "In my youth, I read O'Henry's story "The Last Leaf" about a sick, dying girl who looked out the window and watched the leaves fall from a tree. She wondered to herself that will die
From the book Life is good! How to have time to fully live and work author Kozlov Nikolay IvanovichContribution Earnings is joyful and big money, but if this has not moved you forward in any way, it is only earnings. It's petty. So you can earn all your life and spin all your life, remaining in fact in the same place. Live, feeling like a "squirrel in a wheel",
From the book Psychotherapy: a textbook for universities author Zhidko Maxim EvgenievichMethods and techniques of existential psychotherapy Recall that I. Yalom determined existential psychotherapy as a psychodynamic approach. It should immediately be noted that there are two important differences between existential and analytic psychodynamics.
From the book Psychic Seduction the author Plazo JosephUser Contribution Some customers have modified the basic techniques described in this guide. Testing and user comments have proven the effectiveness of these modifications. The last section discusses these special tactics. Third Eye Method
From the book Peering into the Sun. Life without fear of death by Yalom IrwinRollo May Rollo May is dear to me as a writer, as a psychotherapist and, finally, as a friend. When I first started studying psychiatry, many of the theoretical models were confusing and unsatisfactory to me. It seemed to me that both biological and psychoanalytic
From the book Existential Psychology by May Rollo R1. Rollo May. THE ORIGINS OF EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOLOGY In this introductory essay, I would like to talk about the origins of existential psychology, 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 The Discovery of Being by May Rollo R4. 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 directly opposed to these attempts.
From the book Theory of Personality and personal growth author Frager Robert1. Rollo May. THE ORIGINS OF THE EXISTENTIAL TREND IN PSYCHOLOGY AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE Recently, many psychiatrists and psychologists are increasingly aware that there are serious gaps in our understanding of man. For psychotherapists who face in their
From the book How to Overcome a Personal Tragedy author Badrak Valentin VladimirovichCHAPTER 3 THE ORIGINS AND SIGNIFICANCE OF EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOLOGY In recent years, more and more psychiatrists and psychologists have come to realize that there are serious gaps in our approach to understanding the human being. It is extremely difficult for therapists to overcome these gaps,
From the book How to calmly talk with a child about life, so that later he will let you live in peace author Makhovskaya Olga IvanovnaChapter 29. Rollo May: The existential psychology of Rollo May can undoubtedly 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 book Psychotherapy. Tutorial author Team of authorsRollo May. Mission Affirming Disease Fate cannot be ignored, we cannot simply erase it or replace it with something else. But we can choose how we respond to our destiny, using the abilities bestowed on us. Rollo May Rollo May is rightfully considered one of the
From the book Male Style author Meneghetti AntonioExistential confidence training for children and parents Father replies: Mom: Grandmother replies: SUMMARY? God exists because so many people believe in him. Children should know that every nation and every person has someone who will support and protect him. Even
From the author's bookFundamentals of Existential Psychotherapy Existential psychotherapy is used to assist patients in their confrontation with the basic problems of existence associated with anxiety, despair, death, loneliness, alienation and meaninglessness.
From the author's book2. The central core of the existential human economy
From the author's bookChapter Eleven Woman, Family and Society: Relativism of Leadership Paths in Existential Practice
Foreword
Although the existential trend is the most significant to emerge in European psychology and psychiatry over the past two decades in the United States, it became known only a few years ago. Since then, some of us have been concerned that it might become too popular in some areas, especially in national magazines. But we can console ourselves with the words of Nietzsche: "The first adherents of any movement do not have arguments against it."
We may also console ourselves with the remark that there are two reasons at the present time for the interest in existential psychology and psychiatry in this country. The first is the desire to join a movement that has a chance of success, the desire is always dangerous and practically useless both for knowing the truth and for trying to understand a person and his relationships. Another aspiration is calmer, deeper, expressed in the opinion of many of our colleagues, who believe that the idea of a person that is dominant today in psychology and psychiatry is inadequate and does not give us the basis that we need for the development of applied psychotherapy and various research.
Everything in this book, with the exception of the bibliography and some passages added to the first chapter, was presented at the American Psychological Association Symposium on Existential Psychology in Cincinnati in September 1959. We accepted the offer of Random House to publish these papers not only because of the great interest shown in them at the symposium, but also because of our conviction that further research in this area is absolutely necessary. It is our hope that this book will serve as a stimulus to students interested in the subject and may suggest topics and questions that should be addressed.
Thus, our goal is not to give a systematic view of or characterization of existential psychology - this cannot yet be done. As much as possible, this is done in the first three chapters of the collection "Existence" (17)1,2. Rather, these articles attempt to show how and why some of those who are interested in existential psychology "took this path." Some of these articles are impressionistic, as they were meant to be. Maslow's chapter is refreshingly direct: "Existential psychology - what does it have for us?" Feifel's paper illustrates how this approach enables us to psychological research such a significant area as the attitude towards death; the lack of research into this problem in psychology has long been striking. In the second chapter, I try to present the structural basis of psychotherapy in line with existential psychology. Rogers' article discusses mainly the relation of existential psychology to empirical research, Allport's comments refer to some general conclusions our research. We hope that the bibliography compiled by Lyons will be useful to students who want to read more about the many problems in this area. Rollo May
Rollo May
THE ORIGIN OF EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOLOGY
In this introductory essay, I would like to talk about how existential psychology came into being, especially on the American scene. Then I would like to discuss some of the "eternal" questions that many of us in psychology have asked, questions that seem to appeal specifically to the existential approach, and to outline some of the new emphasis that this approach gives to the central problems of psychology and psychotherapy. Finally, I want to point out some of the difficulties and unresolved problems facing existential psychology today.
To begin with, we note a curious paradox: despite the hostility and apparent mistrust towards existential psychology in this country, at the same time there is a deep similarity between this approach and the American character and thinking, both in psychology and in other fields. The existential approach is very close, for example, to the thinking of William James. Take, for example, his emphasis on the immediacy of experience and the unity of thought and action, emphases that were as important to James as they were to Kierkegaard. "For the individual, only that which he personally put into action is true" - these words, proclaimed by Kierkegaard, are well known to many of us brought up in the spirit of American pragmatism. Another aspect of William James's work, which expresses the same approach to reality as existential psychologists, is the importance of determination and involvement - his conviction that it is impossible to know the truth while sitting in an armchair, and desire and determination are prerequisites for discovering the truth. Further, his humanistic focus and the fullness of his being as a man allowed him to include art and religion in his system of thought without sacrificing scientific integrity - this is another parallel with existential psychology.
But this surprising parallel ceases to seem so unexpected on closer examination, for when William James returned to Europe in the second half of the 19th century, he, like Kierkegaard, who had written three decades earlier, joined in the attack on Hegelian pan-realism, which identified truth with abstract concepts. . Both James and Kierkegaard devoted themselves to rediscovering man as a being full of life, determination and direct experience of being. Paul Tillich wrote:
"Both the American philosophers William James and John Dewey and the existentialist philosophers abandoned the idea of "rational" thinking, which identifies Reality with the object of thought, with relations or "entities", in favor of such a Reality as a person perceives it directly in his actual reality. Therefore, they have taken a place alongside those who consider the direct experience of man as a more complete discovery of the essence and individual features of Reality than the cognitive experience of man "(68).
This explains why those who are interested in therapy are more willing to deal with the existential approach than those of our colleagues who are laboratory research or the creation of theories. Of necessity, we have to deal directly with the being of a person who suffers, struggles, experiences various conflicts. This "direct experience" becomes our natural environment, and gives us both occasion and data for our investigation. We have to be genuinely realistic and "practical" in that we are dealing with patients whose anxieties and sufferings will not be cured by theories, however brilliant, or by any all-encompassing abstract laws. But through interaction in the process of psychotherapy, we obtain such information and achieve such an understanding of human existence that could not be achieved in any other way; no one will discover the deeper levels of his being that hide his fears and hopes, except through the painful process of exploring his conflicts, through which he has some hope of overcoming barriers and alleviating suffering.
Tillich called James and Dewey philosophers, but they are also psychologists, perhaps our greatest and most influential, and in many ways most typical American thinkers. The mutual influence of these two disciplines points to another aspect of the existential approach: it deals with psychological categories - "experience", "anxiety" and so on - but it is interested in understanding these aspects of human life at a deeper level, which Tillich called ontological reality. It would be a mistake to think of existential psychology as a resurrection of the old "philosophical psychology" of the nineteenth century. The existential approach is not a move back to armchair speculation, but an attempt to understand human behavior and experience through fundamental structures, structures that underlie our science and our understanding of man. This is an attempt to understand the nature of those people who experience and those with whom it only happens.
Adrian van Kaam, in a review of the work of the European psychologist Linschoten, described how William James's search for a new image of man as a broader basis for psychology led him directly to the very center of the development of phenomenology. (We will discuss phenomenology as the first stage in the development of existential psychology later.) Van Kaam's summary is so close to our topic that we will quote it verbatim:
"One of the leading European existential phenomenologists Linchoten wrote the book "Toward a Phenomenology" with the subtitle "The Psychology of William James". On the first page was printed a phrase from William James' book "Conversations with Teachers": that our Western common sense will never believe in the existence of a phenomenological world. "In the introduction to this book, Linchoten quoted Husserl's diary, in which the father of European phenomenology noted the influence of James, this great American, on his own views."
This book demonstrates in a well-documented way that James's unexpressed idea was realized in the breakthrough of a new existential cultural consciousness. James was groping his way into a new, vaguely discernible phase in the history of the Western world. Formed as a thinker in an earlier cultural period, he favored psychology as it was practiced, but he continually expressed dissatisfaction with the exclusive one-sidedness of "existence"2 in the world. Linchoten concludes in his final chapter that James was on the path to phenomenological psychology before Buitendieck, Merleau-Ponty, and Strauss, and was already ahead of them in his concept of integrating objectivizing psychology with the structure of descriptive psychology.
The genius of James foresaw the anthropological phase (the problem of defining man) of a new cultural period before his contemporaries were aware of the first two phases. James argued that a mechanistic interpretation of the world can be combined with a teleological interpretation. This is possible because they are different modes of existence in the same "experienced world". Everyone must realize that "the more essential features of reality are found only in perceived experience", that different modes of manifestation in the world must necessarily lead to seeing this phenomenon in different combinations, must lead to different questions to which different answers can be obtained.
The shortcomings of systematization in James's work are based on the notion that the unity of man and the world does not depend on any "rational method", but depends on the unity of the pre-rational world, the world of experiences, the primary source of different orientations of questions that serve as directions for various sciences and various psychological approaches. This basic universal source has two aspects: one is the source of experiences, and the other is experiences as such. Thus, one can choose one of two approaches: one can describe and analyze direct experiences and the body as the main mode of manifestation in the world, as has been done by such researchers as Merleau-Ponty, Straus and Buttendik; others can describe and analyze direct experience and the body in temporal-spatial connection with the experienced "reality", as was done by researchers such as Skinner, Hull, Spence. The first path leads to what is called descriptive psychology, the other to explanatory psychology. As soon as one of them considers their point of view absolute, they will no longer be able to communicate with each other. James tried to keep them complementary. This is possible only on the basis of the theory of man as an integral source of direct experiences, the theory of his special mode of existence, the phenomenology of the experienced world, which was implied by James3.
