Rollo May In Ten Minutes

Rollo may in ten minutes although existentialism was an overwhelmingly European phenomenon there's probably been no greater advocate for integrating existential philosophy into psychology than the American psychologist Rollo May first let's characterize Rollo Mays work in general terms in seeking to formulate an existential psychology Rollo made draws from the broad palette of existential thought he's particularly influenced by Soren Kierkegaard Friedrich Nietzsche Martin Heidegger and Paul Tillich and to a lesser extent by jean-paul Sartre Albert Camus and numerous others in addition like many of the early existentially oriented psychologists Rollo May is also greatly influenced by his contact with psychoanalytic thought and the unconscious remains a recurrent motif in his work Rollo mais work also finds confluence with the movement of humanistic psychology so much so that he's often regarded as a humanistic psychologist proper however his work always retains a distinctly existential flavor in terms of its concrete content much of Rollo Mays work crystallizes in the form of an existential informed social critique however he's also greatly interested in evolving existential forms of psychotherapy so what is existential psychotherapy like existential philosophy existential psychotherapy has to do with seeking change in our lives in relation to the reality of our existence or being in fact from Rollo Mays point of view any sort of change that lacks a felt connection to the reality of our existence is trivial at best this contention of course already forms the contours of a critique of much of psychotherapy as we know it especially the kinds of psychotherapy that would content themselves with simply modifying people's problematic behaviors or rearranging people's cognitions or affective reactions for Rollo may psychotherapy must seek change at the level of our relation to existence itself at the level of our relation to life consequently existential psychotherapy seeks change in the entire whole allistic pattern or Gestalt of our lives rather than in only one part but how do we change at the level of our relation to being for Rallo may this kind of change requires that we actually experience the reality of our existence he calls this kind of experience and I am experienced and it forms the basis of any kind of substantive psychotherapeutic change of course the I M experience can take many forms some of them filled with anxiety dread anguish and the other difficult sensations the existentialist explorer however perhaps an easier way of getting a sense for the I M experience would be to think of times when you're really relaxing when you're sitting on a porch swing on a bright breezy day for instance and as you let your normal cares begin to drift away you might begin to notice things that we're always there but that you'd overlooked before the smell of the breeze for instance or the way the Sun feels on your skin and as you settle down even more you might have an extraordinary moment or you're just dumbstruck by the reality of existence itself that you exist or that anything exists for that matter for rollo may these kinds of experiences are extremely important how we relate to the reality of our lives so existential psychotherapy attempts to honor and foster them however existential psychotherapy also aims at helping us move toward taking a decisive concrete stance in life toward committing to a way of being here Rollo Mays work reflects the Danish philosopher søren kierkegaard insistence on the primacy of passion and commitment on living with a sense of existential decisiveness rather than just going through the motions and of all the ways that we can commit to a way of being existential psychotherapy places particularly off entick existence here Rollo may follows the German philosopher Martin Heidegger 'he's analysis which indicates that while most of the time we simply defer to what they say we also have the opportunity of glimpsing and living out our own most potentiality for being in other words living out our deepest possibilities as the distinct human beings we are however the reality of our existence is that these sorts of things don't simply happen in any systematic way they don't come about simply because we're following some recipe or formula consequently existential psychotherapy doesn't offer many specific psycho therapeutic techniques and procedures to bring them about instead existential psychotherapy offers a particular attitude toward techniques rather than a body of techniques per se in theory just about any psycho therapeutic technique could be used in an existential way even techniques such as behavior modification however in practice it's probably much more common to use a technique such as Rogerian psychotherapy with its reflective punctuation of the subtle intimations of being contained in the clients speech of course as we noted earlier another big theme that emerges in Rollo Mae's work is a kind of social critique in this regard Rollo Mae's work follows the larger trajectory of existential thought which often contains an implicit critique of our mechanized way of life and the values that undergird it in particular Rollo Mae examines the alienating effects of Industry and technology on our lives for Rollo may we live in times that foster a kind of ontological repression in our frenetic efforts to be good producers and consumers on one hand and to be entertained and avoid boredom on the other we tend to lose the sense for the real depth of our lives we lose the sense for being participants in the grand mystery of being along with the kind of empowerment that can come with that realization in essence we tend to place too much emphasis on doing so that we forget about being a kind of systematic imbalance that runs throughout much of our modern world Rollo may similarly speaks of a kind of epistemological loneliness that runs through our times our epistemological loneliness is that at the end of the day much of what we know isn't terribly relevant to our existence as such in reality most of it doesn't actually benefit us where we live and breathe for in think of the fraction of things you learned in all your years of school that really moved you at the level of who and what you are for most of us it's probably a small ratio or consider the mass of information you know about commercial products or old Seinfeld episodes or how to operate computers and then wonder about how much of it really matters to your soul but perhaps a more trenchant part of rolla may social critique has to do with the meaning of freedom and responsibility according to his analysis we typically distort the meanings of freedom and responsibility in one of two primary ways he calls one of these highly prevalent distortions distrust of freedom and has to do with our world's tendency to assume that we're incapable of handling adult freedoms and responsibilities for instance consider our culture's prohibition of drug use isn't the underlying assumption here that without the mechanisms of law enforcement we would be incapable of deciding for ourselves whether to become say heroin addicts but isn't the obvious reality that those of us who are bent on becoming heroin addicts do so every day quite irrespective of the law and those of us who have no interest in it aren't about to do it regardless of its legality so then what is the war on drugs really about following Rollo Mays analysis of the distrust of freedom perhaps the war on drugs is really a war on our sense of personal liberty and our responsibility for our own well-being or consider the ongoing proliferation of kindly warning labels designed to protect us from ourselves again could it be that what's really going on here is an attempt to undercut our sense of personal agency and responsibility for ourselves mostly by insinuating that we really need that kind of advice for Rollo may all of these are instances of a pervasive pattern of distrust of freedom that runs through our cultural terrain however the other principle distortion of freedom runs in the exact opposite direction and Rollo may calls it the full freedom assumption basically the full freedom assumption is the the idea that we are or at least should be free in an absolute sense with no real connection to the people around us or to the limitations imposed on us by the larger world one place to glimpse this is in the relatively recent spate of advertisements that plays on people's investment in this kind of absolute vision of freedom for Rollo Mae this represents an infantile distortion of freedom one that's fundamentally at odds with the existential reality we inhabit in essence our culture embodies and propagates a fundamental distortion of the meaning of freedom by preferring us a vision that oscillates between polar extremes of distrusting freedom on one hand and pining for a dishonest infantile vision of it on the other what's missing in this of course is the reality of freedom and responsibility as we experience them all in all Rollo Mae's work represents a powerful exhortation for us to reassume our relation to existence as one of the primary dynamics of our lives this is true both within the domain of psychology and psychotherapy as well as in the area of our culture more generally in this regard Rollo Mae's work presents us with an exciting personal and cultural challenge to rebalance our lives by giving up some measure of our perennial preoccupations and distractions and to begin to live a deep and abiding relation to the reality of existence itself and that's Rollo Mae in ten minutes

Channel: Eric Dodson

Views: 89,197

Keywords: Rollo May, existentialism, Existentialism (Literary Movement), existential psychotherapy, Humanistic Psychology (Literature Subject), existential psychology, psychology, Psychology (Medical Specialty), dodson, eric dodson

Id: wms_RXEta5c

Length: 10min 16sec (616 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 26 2014