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Rollo May Biography

Rollo Reese May (April 21, 1909 – October 22, 1994) was an American existential psychologist and author of the influential book Love and Will (1969). He is often associated with humanistic psychology, existentialist philosophy and, alongside Viktor Frankl, was a major proponent of existential psychotherapy. The philosopher and theologian Paul Tillich was a close friend who had a significant influence on his work.

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Rollo May Quotes

Now, I believe in life, and I believe in the joy of human existence, but these things cannot be experienced except as we also face the despair, also face the anxiety that every human being has to face if he lives with any creativity at all.

Anxiety, Believe, Creativity, Despair, Existence, Joy

A historical perspective can also help free us from the ever-present danger -- especially at danger in the social sciences -- of absolutizing a theory or method which is actually relative to the fact that we live at a given moment in time in the development of our particular culture.

Facts, Given, Historical, Moment, Particular, Perspective

What if imagination and art are not frosting at all, but the fountainhead of human experience?

Art, Fountainhead, Human, Imagination, What If

Forge in the smithy of your soul.

Soul, Your Soul, Forge, Smithy

Joy is the zest that you get out of using your talents, your understanding, the totality of your being, for great aims. . . That's the kind of feeling that goes with creativity. That's why I say the courage to create. Creation does not come out of simply what you're born with. That must be united with your courage, both of which cause anxiety, but also great joy.

Anxiety, Born, Courage, Creativity, Simply, Using Your Talents

Science, Nietzsche had warned, is becoming a factory, and the result will be ethical nihilism.

Becoming, Existential, Factory, Nihilism, Result, Science

It is dangerous to know, but it is more dangerous not to know.

Dangerous, Know, Knows

They pursue meaninglessness until they force it to mean.

Force, Mean, Meaninglessness, Purpose, Pursue

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.

Doe, Experience, Remain, Spiritual, Technology

Power is required for communication. To stand before an indifferent or hostile group and have one's say, or to speak honestly to a friend truths that go deep and hurt these require self-affirmation, self-assertion, and even at times aggression. . . . My experience in psychotherapy convinces me that the act which requires the most courage is the simple communication, unpropelled by rage or anger, of one's deepest thoughts to another.

Communication, Experience, Friend, Honestly, Hurt, Simple

Unconscious insights or answers to problems that come in reverie do not come hit or miss. . . they pertain to those areas in which the person consciously has worked laboriously and with dedication.

Answers, Areas, Dedication, Missing, Problems

Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable.

Intimacy, Requires, Risk, Self Actualization

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.

Beckoning, Finds, Image, Machines, Men, Sides

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.

Courage, Hero, Moving, Play, Stand, Task

Creativity is the encounter of the intensively conscious human being with his world.

Creating, Creativity, Encounter, Encounters, Human, World

Creativity is not merely the innocent spontaneity of our youth and childhood; it must also be married to the passion of the adult human being, which is a passion to live beyond one's death.

Passion, Creativity, Childhood, Youth, Human, Spontaneity

I learned that healing and cure are active processes in which I myself needed to participate.

Active, Cure, Cures, Healing, Process

What Kierkegaard said about love is also true of creativity: every person must start at the beginning.

Creativity, Kierkegaard, Love Is, Person, Said

It is interesting to note how many of the great scientific discoveries begin as myths.

Discovery, Existentialism, Interesting, Myths, Note

Everyone has a need for significance; and if we can't make that possible, or even probable, in our society, then it will be obtained in destructive ways.

Needs, Our Society, Way, Society, Make, Probable

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