Rollo May is an American existential psychologist who authored the influential book "Love and Will". May is often associated with humanistic psychology, but unlike other humanists like Maslow May differs because he constructed his principles around the notion of existentialist philosophy. May was also close friends with the theologian Paul Tillich. May was influenced by American humanism and had ambition to reconcile existential psychology with other approaches in psychology and in regards to this May was especially interested in Freud's approach. May had felt that Otto Rank helped influence the most important beginning of existential therapy. "May applied some traditional existential terms in a slightly different way then others and he liked to create new words for traditional existentialist concepts". May developed a type of system to help further understand development, which consists of some of the following:
"Innocence – the pre-egoic, pre-self-conscious stage of the infant. The innocent is only doing what he or she must do. However, an innocent does have a degree of will in the sense of a drive to fulfill needs.
"Rebellion – the rebellious person wants freedom, but has yet no full understanding of the responsibility that goes with it".
"Decision – The person is in a transition stage in their life where they need to break away from their parents and settle into the ordinary stage". In this stage they must decide what path their life will take, along with fulfilling rebellious needs from the rebellious stage".
"Ordinary – the normal adult ego learned responsibility, but finds it too demanding, and so seeks refuge in conformity and traditional values.
Creative – the authentic adult, the existential stage, beyond ego and self-actualizing. This is the person who, accepting destiny, faces anxiety with courage".
In his career May also looked at the sexual revolution of the 1960 and 70's and thought that the increase of sex and pornography in society was influencing people in believing that love and sex are no longer directly associated with each other. May also believed emotion had become disconnected from reason, making it socially acceptable to look for sexual relationships and to ignore the natural drive to relate to another individual and begin new life. So May thought the awakening of sexual freedoms can influence modern society to avoid awakenings at greater levels. May thought the only means of turning around cynical ideas that are part of our generation would be to rediscover the significance of caring for each other or also as May would refer to it, apathy. Mays first book, "The Meaning of Anxiety" was based on his doctoral dissertation which was also based on his understanding of philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. May's defining of anxiety would consist of the following: "the apprehension cued off by a threat to some value which the individual holds essential to his existence as a self" (1967, p. 72). In 1956, May edited the book "Existence" with the help of Ernest Angel and Henri Ellenberger and this book had helped to introduce existential psychology to the US. May was definitely an interesting man in my view and I am curious to learn more about existential psychology since studying psychology in school I have focused more on humanistic psychology and psychoanalysis.