Quotes from Rollo May

But they do not talk long before they make it clear that they expect the marriage partner, real or hoped-for, to fill some lack, some vacancy within themselves; and they are anxious and angry because he or she doesn't.

it soon becomes evident that their underlying problem is that they have no definite experience of their own desires or wants. Thus they feel swayed this way and that, with painful feelings of powerlessness, because they feel vacuous, empty.

This book is not a substitute for psychotherapy. Nor is it a self-help book in the sense that it promises cheap and easy cures overnight. But in another worthy and profound sense every good book is a self-help book—it helps the reader, through seeing himself and his own experiences reflected in the book, to gain new light on his own problems of personal integration.

Our aim is to discover ways in which we can stand against the insecurity of our time, to find a center of strength within ourselves, and as far as we can, to point the way toward achieving values and goals which can be depended upon in a day when very little is secure.

namely that man does not grow automatically like a tree, but fulfills his potentialities only as he in his own consciousness plans and chooses.

Compassion gives us fresh perspective on what it means to be human, and helps us judge less harshly ourselves as well as the persons who impinge upon us.

in psychology I do not believe "stress" encompasses the rich meaning of anxiety.

But it is well to remind ourselves that anxiety signifies a conflict, and so long as a conflict is going on, a constructive solution is possible.

the reaction is disproportionate to the objective danger because some intrapsychic conflict is involved. Thus the reaction is never disproportionate to the subjective threat.

Myths are like the beams in a house: not exposed to outside view, they are the structure which holds the house together so people can live in it.

What manner of encounter releases the vitality? What particular relation to landscape or inner vision or idea heightens the consciousness, brings forth the intensity?

Dac? vrem s? cunoa?tem pe cineva, trebuie s? avem cel pu?in disponibilitatea de a iubi acea persoan?

In human beings courage is necessary to make being and becoming possible.

the insight comes at a moment of transition between work and relaxation.

Sisyphus,' is an interpretation of the unavoidable limits to which everyone who is human is condemned. The constructive way of dealing with anxiety in this sense consists of learning to live with it, accepting it as a 'teacher,' to borrow Kirkegaard's phrase, to school us in confronting our human destiny.

what an individual seeks to become determines what he remembers of his has been. In this sense the future determines the past.

It was true through the early and growing stages of modern industrialism and capitalism that for you or me to strive to become rich by increasing our trade or building a bigger factory would eventually mean the production of more material goods for the community. The pursuit of competitive enterprise was a magnificent and courageous idea in its heyday. But in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries considerable changes occurred.

the fear of fertility

the person with neurotic anxiety endeavors to run away from some elements within herself or himself. This can be accomplished only by dissociating these elements, which sets up inner contradictions.

There are very few groups left who, like doctors and psychotherapists and some farmers, still have the luxury of being their own economic bosses—and even they are subject to the rise and fall of prices and the fluctuating market like everyone else.

The novel is a haunting and subtly terrifying picture of the modern man who is truly a "stranger" to himself.

Anxiety is the state of man…when he confronts his freedom…Whenever possibility is visualized by an individual, anxiety is potentially present in the same experience…Such possibilities, like roads ahead which cannot be known since one has not yet traversed and experienced them, involve anxiety…To Kierkegaard, the more possibility…an individual has, the more potential anxiety he has at the same time.

people grasp at political authoritarianism in the desperate need to be relieved of anxiety.

In fear we know what threatens us, we are energized by the situation, our perceptions are sharper, and we take steps to run or in the other appropriate ways to overcome the danger. In anxiety, however, we are threatened without knowing what steps to take to meet the danger.