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Rollo May

114 quotes

“Anxiety is an even better teacher than reality, for one can temporarily evade reality by avoiding the distasteful situation; but anxiety is a source of education always present because one carries it within.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) first seen 1950 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Meaning of Anxiety (1950)
“We are more apt to feel depressed by the perpetually smiling individual than the one who is honestly sad. If we admit our depression openly and freely, those around us get from it an experience of freedom rather than the depression itself.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Paulus : Reminiscences of a Friendship (1973)
“Therapy isn't curing somebody of something; it is a means of helping a person explore himself, his life, his consciousness. My purpose as a therapist is to find out what it means to be human. Every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture, where he says, "This is me and the world be damned!" Leaders have always been the ones to stand against the society — Socrates, Christ, Freud, all the way down the line.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) first seen 1977 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Marriage Today : Problems, Issues, and Alternatives (1977) by James E. De Burger, p. 444
“One does not become fully human painlessly.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) first seen 1978 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Foreword to Existential-Phenomenological Alternatives for Psychology (1978) by Ronald S. Valle and Mark King
“True religion, namely a fundamental affirmation of the meaning of life, is something without which no human being can be healthy in personality. . . . What happens to mental health when this meaning which religion gives is absent? In other words, what is the effect of atheism on personality? . . . I have been startled by the fact that practically every genuine atheist with whom I have dealt has exhibited unmistakable neurotic tendencies.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Ultimate Source of Meaning, Awake! magazine (22 October 1980)
“Many people feel they are powerless to do anything effective with their lives. It takes courage to break out of the settled mold, but most find conformity more comfortable. This is why the opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it's conformity.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) first seen 1991 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Think and Grow Rich : A Black Choice (1991) by Dennis Kimbro and Napoleon Hill, p. 104
“It may sound surprising when I say, on the basis of my own clinical practice as well as that of my psychological and psychiatric colleagues, that the chief problem of people in the middle decade of the twentieth century is emptiness.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The human being cannot live in a condition of emptiness for very long: if he is not growing toward something, he does not merely stagnate; the pent-up potentialities turn into morbidity and despair, and eventually into destructive activities.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Finding the center of strength within ourselves is in the long run the best contribution we can make to our fellow men. … One person with indigenous inner strength exercises a great calming effect on panic among people around him. This is what our society needs — not new ideas and inventions; important as these are, and not geniuses and supermen, but persons who can be, that is, persons who have a center of strength within themselves.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Along with the loss of the sense of self has gone a loss of our language for communicating deeply personal meanings to each other. This is one important side of the loneliness now experienced by people in the Western world.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Joy, rather than happiness, is the goal of life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings. It is based on the experience of one's identity as a being of worth and dignity, who is able to affirm his being, if need be, against all other beings and the whole inorganic world.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Freedom is man's capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man is the "ethical animal" — ethical in potentiality even if, unfortunately, not in actuality. His capacity for ethical judgment — like freedom, reason and the other unique characteristics of the human being — is based upon his consciousness of himself.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In any discussion of religion and personality integration the question is not whether religion itself makes for health or neurosis, but what kind of religion and how is it used? Freud was in error when he held that religion is per se a compulsion neurosis. Some religion is and some is not.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It requires greater courage to preserve inner freedom, to move on in one's inward journey into new realms, than to stand defiantly for outer freedom. It is often easier to play the martyr, as it is to be rash in battle. Strange as it sounds, steady, patient growth in freedom is probably the most difficult task of all, requiring the greatest courage. Thus if the term "hero" is used in this discussion at all, it must refer not to the special acts of outstanding persons, but to the heroic element potentially in every man.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Vanity and narcissism — the compulsive need to be admired and praised — undermine one's courage, for one then fights on someone else's conviction rather than one's own.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We define religion as the assumption that life has meaning. Religion, or lack of it, is shown not in some intellectual or verbal formulations but in one's total orientation to life. Religion is whatever the individual takes to be his ultimate concern. One's religious attitude is to be found at that point where he has a conviction that there are values in human existence worth living and dying for.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In any age courage is the simple virtue needed for a human being to traverse the rocky road from infancy to maturity of personality. But in an age of anxiety, an age of her morality and personal isolation, courage is a sine qua non. In periods when the mores of the society were more consistent guides, the individual was more firmly cushioned in his crises of development; but in times of transition like ours, the individual is thrown on his own at an earlier age and for a longer period.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Courage is the capacity to meet the anxiety which arises as one achieves freedom. It is the willingness to differentiate, to move from the protecting realms of parental dependence to new levels of freedom and integration.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The ancient Greeks, as Plato reports, believed that we discover truth through "reminiscence," that is by "remembering," by intuitively searching into our own experience.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Memory is not just the imprint of the past time upon us; it is the keeper of what is meaningful for our deepest hopes and fears.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The practical implicati´on is that one's goal is to live each moment with freedom, honesty and responsibility.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The crucial question which confronts us in psychology and other aspects of the science of man is precisely this chasm between what is abstractly true and what is existentially real for the given living person.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 13; also published in The Discovery of Being : Writings in Existential Psychology (1983), Part II : The Cultural Background, Ch. 5 : Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Freud, p. 52
“Existential psychotherapy is the movement which, although standing on one side on the scientific analysis owed chiefly to the genius of Freud, also brings back into the picture the understanding of man on the deeper and broader level — man as the being who is human. It is based on the assumption that it is possible to have a science of man which does not fragmentize man and destroy his humanity at the same moment as it studies him. It unites science and ontology.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 36; also published in The Discovery of Being : Writings in Existential Psychology (1983), Part II : The Cultural Background, Ch. 5 : Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Freud, p. 87
“It is interesting that the term mystic is used in this derogatory sense to mean anything we cannot segmentize and count. The odd belief prevails in our culture that a thing or experience is not real if we cannot make it mathematical, and that somehow it must be real if we can reduce it to numbers. But this means making an abstraction out of it … Modern Western man thus finds himself in the strange situation, after reducing something to an abstraction, of having then to persuade himself it is real. … the only experience we let ourselves believe in as real, is that which precisely is not.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Existence (1956) p. 39; also published in The Discovery of Being : Writings in Existential Psychology (1983), Part III : Contributions to Therapy, Ch. 6 : To Be and Not to Be, p. 94
“Lacking positive myths to guide him, many a sensitive contemporary man finds only the model of the machine beckoning him from every side to make himself over into its image.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When people feel their insignificance as individual persons, they also suffer an undermining of their sense of human responsibility.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Increasingly in our time — this is an inevitable result of collectivization — it is the organization man who succeeds. And he is characterized by the fact that he has significance only if he gives up his significance.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A person can meet anxiety to the extent that his values are stronger than the threat.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is an old and ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way; and we grasp more fiercely at research, statistics, and technical aids in sex when we have lost the values and meaning of love.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now it is no longer a matter of deciding what to do, but of deciding how to decide.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The schizoid man is the natural product of the technological man. It is one way to live and is increasingly utilized — and it may explode into violence.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our patients are the ones who express and live out the subconscious and unconscious tendencies in the culture. The neurotic, or person suffering from what we now call character disorder, is characterized by the fact that the usual defenses of the culture do not work for him — a generally painful situation of which he is more or less aware...”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Both artist and neurotic speak and live from the subconscious and unconscious depths of their society. The artist does this positively, communicating what he experiences to his fellow men. The neurotic does this negatively.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hate is not the opposite of love; apathy is.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When inward life dries up, when feeling decreases and apathy increases, when one cannot affect or even genuinely touch another person, violence flares up as a daimonic necessity for contact, a mad drive forcing touch in the most direct way possible.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The constructive schizoid person stands against the spiritual emptiness of encroaching technology and does not let himself be emptied by it. He lives and works with the machine without becoming a machine. He finds it necessary to remain detached enough to get meaning from the experience, but in doing so, to protect his own inner life from impoverishment.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I fall in love, I feel more valuable and I treat myself with more care. We have all observed the hesitant adolescent, uncertain of himself, who, when he or she falls in love, suddenly walks with a certain inner assuredness and confidence, a mien which seems to say, "You are looking at somebody now." … this inner sense of worth that comes with being in love does not seem to depend essentially on whether the love is returned or not.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To love means to open ourselves to the negative as well as the positive — to grief, sorrow, and disappointment as well as to joy, fulfillment, and an intensity of consciousness we did not know was possible before.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When we "fall" in love, as the expressive verb puts it, the world shakes and changes around us, not only in the way it looks but in our whole experience of what we are doing in the world. Generally, the shaking is consciously felt in its positive aspects … Love is the answer, we sing. … our Western culture seems to be engaged in a romantic — albeit desperate — conspiracy to enforce the illusion that that is all there is to eros.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The daimonic is any natural function which has the power to take over the whole person. Sex and eros, anger and rage, and the craving for power are examples. The daimonic can be either creative or destructive and is normally both.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The daimonic refers to the power of nature rather than the superego, and is beyond good and evil. Nor is it man's 'recall to himself' as Heidegger and later Fromm have argued, for its source lies in those realms where the self is rooted in natural forces which go beyond the self and are felt as the grasp of fate upon us. The daimonic arises from the ground of being rather than the self as such.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We must rediscover the daimonic in a new form which will be adequate to our own predicament and fructifying for our own day. And this will not be a rediscovery alone but a recreation of the reality of the daimonic. The daimonic needs to be directed and channeled. Here is where human consciousness becomes so important. We initially experience the daimonic as a blind push. It is impersonal in the sense that it makes us nature's tool. … consciousness can integrate the daimonic, make it personal.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Poets often have a conscious awareness that they are struggling with the daimonic, and that the issue is their working something through from the depths which push the self to a new plane.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“While the daimonic cannot be said to be evil in itself, it confronts us with the troublesome dilemma of whether it is to be used with awareness, a sense of responsibility and the significance of life, or blindly and rashly.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Violence is the daimonic gone awry. It is "demon possession" in its starkest form. Our age is one of transition, in which the normal channels for utilizing the daimonic are denied; and such ages tend to be times when the daimonic is expressed in its most destructive form.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he daimonic power does not merely take the individual over as its victim, but works through him psychologically, it clouds his judgment, makes it harder for him to see reality, but still leaves him with the responsibility for the act. This is the age old dilemma of my own personal responsibility even though I am ruled by fate. It is the ultimate statement that truth and reality are psychologized only to a limited extent. Aeschylus is not impersonal but transpersonal, a believer in fate and moral responsibility at the same time.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[D]epression… can be usefully seen, from one point of view, as the inability to see or construct a future.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Stoicism, in our day, is not strength to overcome wishes, but to hide them.…Tendencies have become endemic in our culture for our denial of wishes to be rationalized and accepted with the belief that this denial of the wish will result in its being fulfilled.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Care is a state in which something does matter; care is the opposite of apathy. Care is the necessary source of eros, the source of human tenderness.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source