Rollo May — Quote from Love and Will
“Depression is the inability to construct a future.”
Love and Will (1969)
Concepts: alienation, meaning, loneliness
Resonant Quotes
- “The biggest danger, that of losing oneself, can pass off in the world as quie...” — Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death May's clinical insight reveals the psychological mechanism of Kierkegaard's self-loss—when we lose our authentic self...
- “I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I...” — Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali May's clinical insight illuminates Tagore's endless preparation as a depressive symptom—the inability to move from po...
- “The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meanin...” — Václav Havel, Letters to Olga Both diagnose modern malaise as a loss of meaningful orientation toward existence—Havel's spiritual numbness and May'...
- “I am a sick man... I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver h...” — Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground Both quotes capture the phenomenology of psychological suffering as a fundamental disorientation, with Dostoevsky's u...
- “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.” — Albert Camus, Return to Tipasa May's clinical insight about depression as temporal paralysis finds its antithesis in Camus's discovery of an endurin...
- “I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happeni...” — Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis Both capture the existential paralysis of consciousness trapped within itself—Kafka's inability to communicate his in...
- “Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.” — Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving May's insight about depression as future-lessness illuminates why Fromm's love might be essential—love inherently inv...
- “If I am what I have and if what I have is lost, who then am I?” — Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be? Fromm's possessive identity crisis leads directly to May's depression—when we are only what we have, loss destroys no...