Quotes from Rollo May

Hence Kierkegaard and Nietszche and Camus and Sartre have proclaimed that courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.

But no values are effective, in a person or a society, except as there exists in the person the prior capacity to do the valuing, that is, the capacity actively to choose and affirm the values by which he lives. This the individual must do, and in this way he will help lay the groundwork for the new constructive society which will eventually come out of this disturbed time, as the Renaissance came out of the disintegration of the Middle Ages.

so many people judge the value of their actions not on the basis of the action itself, but on the basis of how the action is accepted. It is as though one had always to postpone his judgment until he looked at his audience. The person who is passive, to whom or for whom the act is done, has the power to make the act effective or ineffective, rather than the one who is doing it. Thus we tend to be performers in life rather than persons who live and act as selves.

On the contrary, as Miller also notes, "Tragedy implies more optimism in its author than does comedy, and . . . its final result ought to be the reinforcement of the onlooker's brightest opinions of the human animal." For the tragic view indicates that we take seriously man's freedom and his need to realize himself; it demonstrates our belief in the "indestructible will of man to achieve his humanity.

where rejection is present with neurotic anxiety, we found a certain constellation always present: The rejection was never accepted as an objective fact, but was held in juxtaposition with idealized expectations about the parent. The young woman was unable to appraise the parent realistically, but always confused the reality situation with expectations of what the parent should have been or might yet become.

Terapinin amac? uyumdur demek, teraistin, toplumun psi?ik polisi olmas? demektir; bu role mesela ben ?iddetle kar?? ç?k?yorum

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.

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.

It takes a strong self—that is, a strong sense of personal identity—to relate fully to nature without being swallowed up.

But, as is obvious to any observer, many people are thrown into anxiety by situations which are not objectively threatening either in kind or degree. The person may very often state himself that the occasion of his anxiety is a relatively minor event, that his apprehension is 'silly,' and he may be angry with himself for letting such a minor thing bother him; but he still feels it.

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.

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

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.

The significant question is whether the activity pursued permits the release of tension without resolving the underlying conflict. If so, the conflict still remains, and hence the activity must be engaged in repeatedly. We then may have the beginning of compulsion neurosis.

conscious anxiety is more painful but it is available also to use in the service of integration of the self.

The cultural past is rigidly deterministic to the extent that the individual is unaware of it. An analogy, of course, is found in any psychoanalytic treatment: the patient is rigidly determined by past experiences and previously developed patterns to the extent that he is unaware of these experiences and patterns.

It is easier in our society to be naked physically than to be naked psychologically or spiritually—easier to share our body than to share our fantasies, hopes, fears, and aspirations, which are felt to be more personal and the sharing of which is experienced as making us more vulnerable

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.

When Spinoza in the seventeenth century used the word reason, he meant an attitude toward life in which the mind united the emotions with the ethical goals and other aspects of the "whole man." When people today use the term they almost

People who claim to be absolutely convinced that their stand is the only right one are dangerous. Such conviction is the essence not only of dogmatism, but of its more destructive cousin, fanaticism. It blocks off the user from learning new truth, and it is a dead giveaway of unconscious doubt. The person then has to double his or her protests in order to quiet not only the opposition but his or her own unconscious doubts as well.

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

Yaln?zl?k bir ba?lamda dürüstlüktür. Dürüstlükle kendinizi genel kitleden ay?r?r, konformizmden kurtulursunuz.

The human being has reason. This enables him to conceive of truth- yet what he says or writes in learned books is always but a thrust in the direction of truth, it ever falls short of truth itself.

When in a person's development courage begins to emerge—that is, when the person begins to break out from the pattern of devoting his life to getting others to admire him—an intermediate step generally occurs.