Rollo May theory( 1909-1994), Slides of Personality Psychology

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Rollo May

Has technology enhanced and/or

impaired our ability to experience others,

ourselves, and the world around us?

What would your life be like if you were

unplugged from the world?

http://withoutmedia.wordpress.com/

http://www.icmpa.umd.edu/index.html

Theory

• Basic ideas of existentialism
  • Existence takes precedent over essence
    • Existence
      • To emerge or become
      • Is a process and is associated with growth and change
    • Essence
      • Is static and suggests a product
      • Signifies stagnation and finality, the product instead of the process
  • People search for truth and meaning in their lives
    • People are both thinking and active beings and must search for truth and meaning by living active and authentic lives

Theory

• Basic ideas of existentialism
  • Each of us is responsible for who we are and what we

become

• People have an equal degree of freedom (possibility of changing) and responsibility
• Authentic experience takes precedent over artificial

explanations

• Theories dehumanize people
• Authenticity
• Retaining our own individuality against pressure to do otherwise

Theory

• Alienation is the “illness of our time” and occurs on three levels: - Umwelt: - One’s relationship with the natural world or environment around us - Includes things that would exist without our awareness (natural law of our world) - Biological drives, needs, and instincts (hunger) - Natural phenomena (birth and death) - Must learn to live in and adjust to changes to the world - Throwness

Theory

• Mitwelt:
  • Our relationship with other people and the meanings

given to those relationships

• Need to treat people as people not things

The Role of Nonbeing or Nothingness

• Being in the world necessitates an awareness of self as a living, emerging being.
• This awareness, in turn, leads to the dread of not being ( nonbeing or nothingness )
• The awareness of death enhances one’s sense of living.
  • “Forfeiting one’s identity is a descent into non-being – the death of the meanings important to the self. To grasp what it means to exist, one needs to grasp the fact that one might not exist”
• Life becomes real, vivid, and flavorful only when one confronts the possibility of nothingness. - To not confront leads to unhealthy behaviors i.e. addictions, promiscuity, conformity to societal standards, etc.

Anxiety

• “Anxiety is the state of the person in the struggle against what

would destroy his or her sense of meaningful being”

• Much of human behavior is motivated by an underlying sense of

dread and anxiety

• People experience anxiety when:
  • they are aware of the possibility of their nonbeing
  • they are aware that they are free to make choices

Guilt

• Guilt arises when people:
  • deny their potentialities
  • fail to accurately perceive the needs of fellow humans
  • remain oblivious to their dependence on the natural world

Types of Guilt

• Normal guilt
  • I see myself as one who can choose or fail to choose
• Neurotic guilt
  • Results from neurotic anxiety, not taking risks
  • To deliberately fail to fulfill our possibilities to preserve

security

Levels of Neurotic Guilt

• Alienation from others
  • Associated with Mitwelt
  • Failure to understand fully our fellow man and meet others

needs

• “We do violence to their true identity”
• We only see people through our eyes not theirs and can

never perfectly judge their needs

Levels of Neurotic Guilt

• Alienation from self
  • Denial of our potentialities or our failure to fulfill them

Types of Love

• Sex / Lust
  • Physiological need and biological function that can be satisfied through sexual intercourse or some other release of sexual tension
  • Has become a mechanized, depersonalized sexual activity that is devoid of caring, love, passion, relatedness and joy
  • For many, centered around:
    • Trying to prove one’s identity and/or competence
    • The need to overcome isolation, loneliness, and feelings of emptiness

Types of Love

• Eros
  • The psychological desire to establish a lasting union and delight with our partner (sex is often confused as this)
  • Based on care and tenderness
  • Regarded by some as the salvation of sex
  • Has a dark side (Daimonic)
    • We open ourselves up to the possibility of grief, sorrow, disappointment, and loss
    • We also face the possibility of losing ourselves (the possibility of death and nonbeing)