Rollo May

Rollo Reece May (April 21, 1909 – October 22, 1994) was an American existential psychologist and author whose work joined clinical psychology with questions about anxiety, freedom, love, creativity, and human existence. He is often associated with humanistic psychology and existentialist philosophy, and, alongside Viktor Frankl, was a major proponent of existential psychotherapy. His best-known book, Love and Will (1969), helped define the concerns for which he is most remembered.

May was born in Ada, Ohio, to Matie Boughton and Earl Tittle May, a Men’s Christian Associations field secretary. He was the first son and the second eldest of six children. His childhood was difficult: his parents divorced, his oldest sister struggled with mental health and was hospitalized often, and May carried much of the burden at home. He first studied English at Michigan State University, but was expelled after involvement with a radical student magazine. He then attended Oberlin College, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in English.

After college, May spent three years teaching in Greece at Anatolia College. During that period he studied with Alfred Adler, whose work shared later theoretical similarities with May’s own. Back in the United States, May was ordained as a minister, then left the ministry after several years to study psychology. He attended Union Theological Seminary for a BD in 1938 and Teachers College, Columbia University for a PhD in clinical psychology in 1949. In 1942 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and spent 18 months in a sanatorium, an interruption that also shaped the direction and urgency of his writing.

His early books began with practical concerns. The Art of Counseling (1939) drew on his counseling experience and addressed empathy, religion, personality problems, and mental health. The Springs of Creative Living (1940) presented a theory of personality while critiquing figures including Freud and Adler. The Meaning of Anxiety (1950, revised 1977) explored anxiety and its effect on mental health, including May’s view that anxiety, handled well, could aid development. In Man’s Search for Himself (1953), he wrote about loneliness, emptiness, the need for value, and the anxiety his patients often shared.

May’s later work broadened these themes. Existence (1958) examined the roots and importance of existential psychology. Psychology and the Human Dilemma (1967) returned to anxiety and feelings of insignificance. In Love and Will, he discussed love, sex, the daimonic, depression, and creativity. Power and Innocence (1972) considered power, violence, goodness, evil, and rebellion. The Courage to Create (1975), named after Paul Tillich’s The Courage to Be, focused on creative courage and facing fear. Tillich, a close friend, was one of May’s strongest influences, and May later recalled him in Paulus: Reminiscence of a Friendship (1973).

May was also a founder and faculty member of Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center in San Francisco. He spent his final years in Tiburon on San Francisco Bay and died of congestive heart failure at 85, attended by his wife, Georgia, and friends. His words continue to matter because they stay close to ordinary human pressure: fear, choice, loneliness, love, and the wish to create a life with meaning.