Artvita › Rollo May

Rollo May (1909–1994)

May studied for the ministry, contracted tuberculosis, spent two years in a sanatorium, and emerged with a conviction that anxiety is not a pathology but a signal. He brought Kierkegaard and Heidegger into the American consulting room and argued that creativity, love, and courage all require the willingness to face uncertainty. Love and Will. The Courage to Create. Man's Search for Himself. His books are written for people who want to understand their own restlessness, not medicate it.

Concepts

agency, alienation, authenticity, conformity, freedom, loneliness, love, meaning, rebellion, solidarity

Quotes (10)

“The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.” — Man's Search for Himself (1953)
“Depression is the inability to construct a future.” — Love and Will (1969)
“Anxiety is not something we have but something we are. It is our state of bei...” — The Meaning of Anxiety (1950)
“Creativity is the process of bringing something new into being. Creativity re...” — The Courage to Create (1975)
“The human dilemma is that which arises out of a man's capacity to experience ...” — The Courage to Create (1975)
“To love means to open ourselves to the negative as well as the positive — to ...” — Love and Will (1969)
“Care is a state in which something does matter; it is the source of human ten...” — Love and Will (1969)
“The purpose of psychotherapy is not to make people adjusted but to set them f...” — Man's Search for Himself (1953)
“Loneliness is such an omnipotent and painful threat to many persons that they...” — Man's Search for Himself (1953)
“Every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture, w...” — Man's Search for Himself (1953)