Rollo May Quotes

Our powerful hunger for myth is a hunger for community. The person without a myth is a person without a home ... To be a member of one's community is to share in its myths ...

In this type of anxiety neurosis the anxious attitude is so intimately a part of the individual's method of evaluating stimuli, of orienting herself or himself to every experience, that he or she cannot separate him-or herself enough from anxiety to comprehend the goal of avoidance of, or freedom from, anxiety. What Nancy sought was to be able to step cautiously from rock to rock without falling; the idea or possibility of not being on a precipice at all did not occur to her.

We receive love roughly in proportion to our capacity to love.

Professors will lecture with more inspiration if they occasionally alternate the classroom with the beach: authors will write better when, as Macaulay used to do, they write for two hours, then pitch quoits, and then go back to their writing. But certainly more than the mere mechanical alternation is involved.

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.

Creativity occurs as an act of encounter, and is to be understood with this encounter at the center.

But there comes a point (and this is the challenge facing modern technological Western man) when the cult of technique destroys feeling, undermines passion, and blots out individual identity. The technologically efficient lover ... has lost the power to be carried away; he knows only too well what he is doing. At this point, technology diminishes consciousness and demolishes eros. Tools are no longer an enlargement of consciousness but a substitute for it and, indeed, tend to repress and truncate it.

Fear ordinarily does not lead to illness if the organism can flee successfully . If the individual cannot flee, but is forced to remain in a conflict situation which cannot be resolved, fear may turn into anxiety and psychosomatic changes may then accompany e anxiety.

Courage is required not only in a person's occasional crucial decision for his own freedom, but in the little hour-to-hour decisions which place the bricks in the structure of his building of himself into a person who acts with freedom and responsibility.

Artists love to immerse themselves in chaos in order to put it into form, just as God created form out of chaos in Genesis. Forever unsatisfied with the mundane, the apathetic, the conventional, they always push on to newer worlds.

Every act of genuine creativity means achieving a higher level of self-awareness and personal freedom.

Good art wounds as well as delights. It must, because our defenses against the truth are wound so tightly around us. But as art chips away at our defenses, it also opens us to healing potentialities that transcend intellectual games and ego-preserving strategies.

One central need in life is to fulfill its own potential.

Opposites though they are, both solitude and solidarity are essential if the artist is to produce works that are not only significant to his or her age, but that will also speak to future generations.

It is important to note that the acquisition of wealth, as the accepted standard of succes, does not refer to increasing material goods for sustenance purposes, or even for the purpose of increasing enjoyment. It refers rather to wealth as a sign of individual power, a proof of achievement and self-worth.
Modern economic individualism, though based on belief in the free individual, has resulted in the phenomenon that increasingly large numbers of people have to work on the property (capital) of a few powerful owners. It is not surprising that such a situation should lead to widespread insecurity, for not only is the individual faced with a criterion of succes over which he has only partial control but also his opportunities for a job are in considerable measure out of his control.

Mass communication
wonder as it may be technologically and something to be appreciated and valued
presents us wit a serious daner, the danger of conformism, due to the fact that we all view the same things at the same time in all the cities of the country. (p. 73)

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.

Recall how often in human history the saint and the rebel have be the same person. (p. 35)

Myth safeguards and enforces morality, as Malinowski proclaimed, and if there are no myths there will be no morality.

When people feel threatened and anxious they become more rigid, and when in doubt they tend to become dogmatic; and then they lose their own vitality. They use the remnants of traditional values to build a protective encasement and then shrink behind it; or they make an outright panicky retreat into the past. But

One longs for the presence of a leader like Lincoln, who openly admitted his doubts and as openly preserved his commitment.

It is infinitely safer to know that the man at the top has his doubts, as you and I have ours, yet has the courage to move ahead in spite of these doubts.

In anxiety, however, we are threatened without knowing what steps to take to meet the danger. Anxiety is the feeling of being "caught," "overwhelmed"; and instead of becoming sharper, our perceptions generally become blurred or vague.

If the person did not have anxiety, he or she would also not have freedom. Anxiety demonstrates that values, no matter how beclouded, do exist in the person. Without values there would be only barren despair.

To say a person is a coward has no more meaning than to say he is lazy: It simply tells us that some vital potentiality is unrealized or blocked.

Something is born, comes into being, something which did not exist before - which is as good a definition of creativity as we can get.

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.

The amazing thing about love is that it is the best way to get to know ourselves.

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.

Whether we are 'Freudians' or not, as I am not, we are surely all post-Freudian. He set the tone for vast changes in our culture

Freedom is man's capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.

The essence of being human is that, in the brief moment we exist on this spinning planet, we can love some persons and some things, in spite of the fact that time and death will ultimately claim us all.

The turtle only makes progress when it's neck is stuck out.

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

In other words, the most common problem now is not social taboos on sexual activity or guilt feeling about sex in itself, but the fact that sex for so many people is an empty, mechanical and vacuous experience.

Whatever sphere we may be in, there is a profound joy in the realization that we are helping to form the structure of the new world. This is creative courage, however minor or fortuitous our creations may be.

No one can separate themselves from one's social group and remain healthy, because the very structure of personality is dependent on the community.

The function of the rebel is to shake the fixated mores of the rigid order of civilization; and this shaking, though painful, is necessary if the society is to be saved from boredom and apathy. Obviously I do not refer to everyone who calls himself a rebel, but only to the authentic rebel. Civilization gets its first flower from the rebel.

Whereas moral courage is the righting of wrongs, creative courage, in contrast, is the discovering of new forms, new symbols, new patterns on which a new society can be built.

Where there is 'freedom from' without corresponding interrelationship, there is the anxiety of the defiant and isolated individual. Where there is dependence without freedom, there is the anxiety of the clinging person who cannot live outside a symbiosis.

It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when they have lost their way.

Life is not a matter for simple optimism
for there is evil; nor for mere pessimism
for there is good. The possibility for good in the face of evil is what gives life tragic meaning.

A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence.

Since the values of the market were the highest criteria, persons also became valued as commodities which could be bought and sold. A person's worth is then his salable market value, whether it is skill or 'personality' that is up for sale. [...]
The market value, then, becomes the individual's valuation of himself, so that self-confidence and 'self-feeling' (ones experience of identity with one's self) are largely reflections of what others think of one, in this case the 'others' being those who represent the market. Thus contemporary economic processes have contributed not only to an alienation of man from man, but likewise to 'self-alienation' - an alienation of the individual from himself. As Fromm very well summarizes the point:

Since modern man experiences himself both as the seller and as the commodity to be sold on the market, his self-esteem depends on conditions beyond his control. If he is 'successful,' he is valuable; if he is not, he is worthless. The degree of insecurity which results from this orientation can hardly be overestimated. If one feels that one's own value is not constituted primarily by the human qualities one possesses, but by one's succes on a competitive market with ever-changing conditions, one's self-esteem is bound to be shaky and in constant need of confirmation by others. [Erich Fromm, Man for himself]

In such a situation one is driven to strive relentlessly for 'succes'; this is the chief way to validate ones self

We must always base our commitment in the center of our own being, or else no commitment will be ultimately authentic.

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.

This exile is a fascinating symbolic act from our modern psychoanalytic viewpoint, for we have held in earlier chapters that the greatest threat and greatest cause of anxiety for an American near the end of the twentieth century is not castration but ostracism, the terrible fate of being exiled by one's group. Many a contemporary man castrates himself or permits himself to be castrated because of fear of being exiled if he doesn't. He renounces his power and conforms under the great threat and peril of ostracism.
- Rollo May, "The Tragedy of Truth About Oneself" (The Psycology of Existence: An Integrative, Clinical Perspective by Kirk Schneider and Rollo May), pp. 14-15

I became a psychotherapist because that's where people will unburden themselves, where they will show what is in their hearts.

Much self-condemnation is a cloak for arrogance. Those who think they overcome pride by condemning themselves could well ponder Spinoza's remark "One who despises himself is the nearest to a proud man.

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.

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.

Creativity is the result of a struggle between vitality and form. As anyone who has tried to write a sonnet or scan poetry, is aware, the form ideally do not take away from the creativity but may add to it.

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.

The receptivity of the artist must never be confused with passivity.

If we admit our depression openly and freely, those around us get from it an experience of freedom rather than the depression itself.

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.

Suppose the apprehension of beauty is itself a way to truth? Suppose that "elegance" - as the word is used by physicists to describe their discoveries - is a key to ultimate reality?

The "stuffed men" are bound to become more lonely no matter how much they "lean together"; for hollow people do not have a base from which to learn to love.

It would seem that the affects, biological needs, and forms of behavior most repressed in a given culture are the ones most likely to give rise to symptoms . [ ... ]
in our culture it is considered much more acceptable to have an organic illness than an emotional or mental disorder; this would influence the fact that anxiety and other emotional stresses in our culture so often take a somatic form. In short, the culture conditions the way a person tries to resolve his anxiety, and specifically what symptoms he may employ.

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.

Artistic symbols and myths speak out of the primordial, preconscious realm of the mind which is powerful and chaotic. Both symbol and myth are ways of bringing order and form into this chaos.

Poets may be delightful creatures in the meadow or the garret, but they are menaces on the assembly line.

Another example of how the sense of the self has been disintegrating in our day can be seen when we consider humor and laughter. It is not generally realized how closely one's sense of humor is connected with one's sense of selfhood. Humor normally should have the function of preserving the sense of self. It is an expression of our uniquely human capacity to experience ourselves as subjects who are not swallowed up in the objective situation. It is the healthy way of feeling a "distance" between one's self and the problem, a way of standing off and looking at one's problem with perspective. One cannot laugh when in an anxiety panic, for then one is swallowed up, one has lost the distinction between himself as subject and the objective world around him.

Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don't find themselves at all.

Creative people, as I see them, are distinguished by the fact that they can live with anxiety, even though a high price may be paid in terms of insecurity, sensitivity, and defenselessness for the gift of the "divine madness," to borrow the term used by the classical Greeks. They do not run away from non-being, but by encountering and wrestling with it, force it to produce being. They knock on silence for an answering music; they pursue meaninglessness until they can force it to mean.

Creativity is neither the product of neurosis nor simple talent, but an intense courageous encounter with the Gods.

Neurotic anxiety, therefore, is that which occurs when the incapacity for coping adequately with threats is not objective but subjective - I.e., is due not to objective weakness but to inner psychological patterns and conflicts which prevent the individual from using his powers.

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

The threat, thus, in anxiety is not necessarily more intense than fear. Rather, it attacks us on a deeper level. The threat must be to something in the 'core' or 'essence' of the personality. My self-esteem, my experience of myself as a person, my feeling of being of worth - all of these are imperfect descriptions of what is threatened.

Joy is the effect which comes when we use our powers.

The ultimate error is the refusal to look evil in the face.

Indeed, compulsive and rigid moralism arises in given persons precisely as the result of a lack of sense of being. Rigid moralism is a compensatory mechanism by which the individual persuades himself to take over the external sanctions because he has no fundamental assurance that his own choices have any sanction of their own

These poets and other creative persons are the ones who express being itself, he held. As I would put it, these are the ones who enlarge human consciousness. Their creativity is the most basic manifestation of a man or woman fulfilling his or her own being in the world.

Artists do not run away from non-being, but by encountering and wrestling with it, force it to produce being.

There is no authentic inner freedom that does not, sooner or later, also affect and change human history.

Bertrand Russell writes that the painful thing about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.

What is significant about rejection, as a source of neurotic anxiety, is how it is interpreted by the child. In impact upon the child, there is radical difference between rejection as an objective experience (which does not necessarily result in subjective conflict for the child), and rejection as a subjective experience. The important question psychologically is whether the child felt himself or herself rejected.

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.

By the creative act, however, we are able to reach beyond our own death. This is why creativity is so important and why we need to confront the problem of the relationship between creativity and death.

Goldstein's central thesis is that anxiety is the subjective experience of the organism in a catastrophic condition . An organism is thrown into a catastrophic condition when it cannot cope with the demands of its environment and, therefore, feels a threat to its existence or to values it holds essential for its existence.

What genuine painters do is to reveal the underlying psychological and spiritual conditions of their relationship to their world; thus in the works of a great painter we have a reflection of the emotional and spiritual condition of human beings in that period of history. If you wish to understand the psychological and spiritual temper of any historical period, you can do no better than to look long and searchingly at its art. For in the art the underlying spiritual meaning of the period is expressed directly in symbols. This is not because artists are didactic or set out to teach or to make propaganda; to the extend that they do, their power of expression is broken; their direct relations to the inarticulate, or, if you will, 'unconscious' levels of the culture is destroyed. They have the power to reveal the underlying meaning of any period precisely because the essence of art is the powerful and alive encounter between the artist and his or her world. (pg 52)

When you two go out walking, do you like to have the people on the street say, 'Look at these nice twins'?" Immediately the little girl exclaimed, "No, I want them to say, 'Look at these two different people!'" This spontaneous exclamation, obviously revealing something very important to the little girl, cannot be explained by saying that the child wanted attention; for she would have gotten more attention if she had dressed as a twin. It shows, rather, her demand to be a person in her own right, to have personal identity - a need which was more important to her even than attention or prestige.

Symbols are specific acts or figures, while myths develop and elaborate these symbols into a story which contains characters and several episodes. The myth is thus more inclusive. But both symbol and myth have the same function psychologically; they are man's way of expressing the quintessence of his experience - his way of seeing his life, his self-image and his relations to the world of his fellow men and of nature - in a total figure which at the same moment carries the vital meaning of this experience.

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.

Tom was anxious about whether he could keep his job at the hospital or would have to go on relief, he exclaimed, "If I could not support my family, I'd as soon jump off the dock." That is, if the value of being a self-respecting wage-earner were threatened, Tom, like the salesman Willie Loman and countless other men in our society, would feel he no longer existed as a self, and might as well be dead.

They pursue meaninglessness until they force it to mean.

But attempts to evade anxiety are not only doomed to failure. In running from anxiety you lose your most precious opportunities for the emergence of yourself, and for your education as s human being.

What is important is not what is said, but that some talk be continually going on. Silence is the great crime, for silence is lonely and frightening. One shouldn't feel much, nor put much meaning into what one says: what you say seems to have more effect if you don't try to understand. One has the strange impression that these people are all afraid of something - what is it? It is as if the "yatata" were a primitive tribal ceremony, a witch dance calculated to appease some god. There is a god, or rather a demon, they are trying to appease: it is the specter of loneliness which hovers outside like the fog drifting in from the sea. One will have to meet this specter's leering terror for the first half-hour one is awake in the morning anyway, so let one do everything possible to keep it away now.

In the individual who is characterized by independence without corresponding relatedness, there will develop hostility toward those whom he believes to be the occasion of his isolation. In the individual who is symbiotically dependent there will develop hostility toward those whom he regards as instrumental in the suppression of his capacities and freedom.

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.

Courage is necessary to make being and becoming possible.

Some psychologists and philosophers are distrustful of the concept of self. They argue against it because they do not like separating man from the continuum with animals, and they believe the concept of the self gets in the way of scientific experimentation. But rejecting the concept of "self" as "unscientific" because it cannot be reduced to mathematical equations is roughly the same as the argument two and three decades ago that Freud's theories and the concept of "unconscious" motivation were "unscientific." It is a defensive and dogmatic science - and therefore not true science - which uses a particular scientific method as a Procrustean bed and rejects all forms of human experience which don't fit.

Along with the loss of the sense of self has gone a loss of our language for communicating deeply personal meanings to each other.

Tenderness emerges from the fact that the two persons, longing, as all individuals do, to overcome the separateness and isolation to which we are all heir because we are individuals, can participate in a relationship that, for the moment, is not of two isolated selves but a union

Apathy adds up, in the long run, to cowardice.

The acorn becomes an oak by means of automatic growth; no commitment is necessary. The kitten similarly becomes a cat on the basis of instinct. Nature and being are identical in creatures like them. But a man or woman becomes fully human only by his or her choices and his or her commitment to them. People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day by day. These decisions require courage.

Dogmatism of all kinds
scientific, economic, moral, as well as political
are threatened by the creative freedom of the artist. This is necessarily and inevitably so. We cannot escape our anxiety over the fact that the artists together with creative persons of all sorts, are the possible destroyer of our nicely ordered systems. (p. 76)

Thus it may be said that the symptoms are often ways of containing the anxiety; they are the anxiety in structuralized form. Freud rightly remarks about psychological symptoms: "The symptom is bound anxiety," or, in other words, anxiety which has been crystallized into an ulcer or heart palpitations or some other symptom.

In religion, it is not the sycophants or those who cling most faithfully to the status quo who are ultimately praised. It is the insurgents.

It is highly significant and indeed almost a rule, that moral courage has its source in such identification through one's own sensitivity with suffering of one's fellow human beings. (p. 16-17)