Rollo May was an influential existential psychologist who developed an existential-psychodynamic theory. Some key aspects of his theory include: viewing existence as preceding essence; that people experience alienation from themselves, others, and the natural world; and that anxiety, guilt, and a sense of meaninglessness can result from this alienation. May believed psychotherapy should help people experience existence more fully and regain a sense of freedom. He outlined stages of personality development centered around independence from parents. May's theory emphasizes concepts like authenticity, freedom, and responsibility for oneself.

1. ROLLO REESE MAY:
EXISTENTIAL-
PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY

2. EXISTENTIALISM
• Concerned with the struggle to work through life‟s
experiences and to grow toward becoming more
fully human

3. Common elements found in
Existential Thinkers:
1. Existence takes precedence over essence
2. Existentialism opposes the split between subject
and object
3. People search for some meaning into their lives
4. Existentialists hold that ultimately each of us is
responsible for who we are and what we become
5. Existentialists are basically antitheoretical

4. BASIC CONCEPTS
• Being in the world
• Nonbeing

5. BEING-IN-THE-WORLD
• Expressed in the German word “Dasein”
• “Dasein”-to exist in the world
• Hyphens in the term imply a oneness of subject and
object
• Many people suffer from anxiety and despair brought on
by their alienation from themselves or from their world
• Feelings of isolation and alienation of self from the world
is suffered not only by pathologically disturbed individuals
but also by most individuals in modern societies.

6. Manifestations of Alienation:
1. Separation from nature
2. Lack of meaningful interpersonal relations
3. Alienation from one‟s authentic self

7. Simultaneous modes of
being in people’s world
1. Umwelt
2. Mitwelt
3. Eigenwelt

8. Simultaneous modes of being in
people‟s world
Umwelt
environment around us
Mitwelt
relations with other people
Eigenwelt
relationship with our self
• Healthy people live in Umwelt, Mitwelt, and Eigenwelt
simultaneously

9. Healthy people live in Umwelt, Mitwelt,
and Eigenwelt simultaneously
Eigenwelt
Umwelt Mitwelt

10. NON-BEING
• Also nothingness
• Dread of not being
• Death is not the only avenue of nonbeing
• Provokes us to live defensively and receive less
from life than if we would confront the issue of our
nonexistence

11. Dread of nonbeing can take the form of:
• Isolation
• Alienation

12. STRUCTURE
Narra, Julie Anne

13. CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF
• unique mark of the human person
• enables us to distinguish between
ourselves and the world
SELFHOOD is not automatic but is born in
a social context and grows in interpersonal
relations.

14. ONTOLOGICAL ASSUMPTIONS
1. All living organisms are potentially
centered in themselves and seek to
preserve that center
2. Human beings have the need and the
possibility of going out from their
centeredness to participate with other
people

15. 3. Sickness is a method whereby an
individual seeks to preserve his or her
being
4. Human beings can participate in a level
of self-consciousness that permits them
to transcend the immediate situation
and to consider and actualize a wider
range of possibilities

16. UNCONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE
• Self-deception and experiences that an
individual cannot actualize

17. DYNAMICS
Narra, Julie Anne

18. ANXIETY
• the subjective state of the individual‟s becoming
aware that his or her existence can be destroyed,
that he can become „nothing‟
• it exists when one confronts the issue of fulfilling
one‟s potentials

19. FORMS OF ANXIETY
NORMAL ANXIETY
• “which is proportionate to the threat, does not
involve repression, and can be confronted
constructively on the conscious level

20. FORMS OF ANXIETY
NEUROTIC ANXIETY
• “a reaction which is disproportionate to the threat,
involves repression and other forms of intrapsychic
conflict, and is managed by various kinds of
blocking-off of activity and awareness

21. GUILT
• When people deny their potentialities, fail to
accurately perceive the needs of fellow humans or
remain oblivious to their dependence on the nature
1. UMWELT
2. MITWELT
3. EIGENWELT

22. INTENTIONALITY
• the structure of meaning which makes it possible
for us to see and understand the outside world
• sometimes unconscious

23. CARE, LOVE & WILL
Mazo, Stephanie

24. CARE, LOVE & WILL
• Care
- to recognize a person as a fellow human being, to
identify with that person‟s joy, guilt or pity
- is an active process; it is a state where something
does matter
- is the source of love and will

25. • Love
- to have an active regard for a person‟s
development
- a delight in the presence of the other person
- affirming of a person‟s value and development as
much as one‟s own

26. • Will
- capacity to organize one‟s self so that movement
in a toward a certain goal may take place

27. • UNION of LOVE and WILL
- Modern society suffers from an unhealthy
division of love and will. Love is seen as
sensual sex, whereas will is seen as dogged
determination or will power.

28. - Biological reasons why love and will are
separated:
- When children come into the world, are at one
with the universe, their mother, and themselves.
- As will begins to develop, it manifests itself as
opposition. The “no ”, unfortunately, is seen by the
parents negatively.
- Child learns to dissociate will from the
blissful love.

29. - Our task is to unite love and will.
- For the mature person, both love and will
mean a reaching out toward another person.
Both involve care, both necessitate a choice
both imply action and both require
responsibility.

30. FORMS OF LOVE
• Sex
- a biological function that can be satisfied through
sexual intercourse or some other release of sexual
tension
- the source at once of the human being‟s most
intense pleasure and his most pervasive anxiety

31. • Eros
- a psychological desire that seeks procreation or
creation through an enduring union with a loved
one; making love; wish to establish a lasting union
- built on care and tenderness
- salvation of sex

32. • Philia
- intimate nonsexual friendship between two people
- cannot be rushed; it takes time to groow and
develop
- necessary requisite for healthy erotic relationships
during early and late adolescence

33. • Agape
- concern for the other‟s welfare beyond any gain
that one can get out of it
- altruistic love

34. FREEDOM AND DESTINY
Ong, Ivy Camille

35. FREEDOM
• Comes from an understanding of our destiny
• Possibility of changing, although we may not know
what those changes might be
• Increases anxiety

36. FORMS OF FREEDOM
• Existential Freedom
– freedom of doing
– freedom to pursue tangible goals
• Essential Freedom
– freedom of being
– freedom to think, to plan, to hope

37. DESTINY
• Biological, psychological, and cultural factors
• Terminus, goal
– Death
As we challenge our destiny, we gain freedom, and as
we achieve freedom, we push at the boundaries of
destiny

38. MYTHS
• Conscious and unconscious belief systems that
provide explanations for personal and social
problems
• Oedipus story
• Birth
• Exile and separation
• Identity
• Incest and patricide
• Repression of guilt
• Conscious meditation and death

39. GROWTH and DEVELOPMENT
Martin, Mc Bain

40. May divided personality
development into 4 stages.
 Centers on the physical and psychological ties
between us and our parents and parental
substitutes
 “the conflict is between every human being‟s
need to struggle toward enlarged self-
awareness, maturity, freedom and responsibility.
And his tendency to remain a child and cling to
the protection of parents or parental substitutes”
 Dependency struggle

41. STAGE OF INNOCENCE
• Stage before consciousness of self is born
• Characteristic of the infant

42. STAGE OF REBELLION
 Takes place at age 2 or 3 and again during
adolescence
 Individual seeks to establish some inner
strength
 may involve defiance and hostility

43. STAGE OF REBELLION
 Rebellion is defiance, an active rejection of
parental and societal rules. Behavior is
automatic rigid and reflexive.
 True freedom- involves openness, a
readiness to grow: it means being flexible,
ready to change for the sake of greater
human values.

44. ORDINARY CONSCIOUSNESS
OF SELF
 Healthy personality
 able
to learn from one‟s mistakes and live
responsibly
 capable of understanding some of his errors
and of recognizing some of his prejudices

45. CREATIVE CONSCIOUSNESS
OF SELF
 Signifies maturity
 Abilityto see something outside one‟s usual
limited viewpoint and gain a glimpse of
ultimate truth as it exists in reality
 Cuts through the dichotomy between
subjectivity and objectivity
 Achieved only rarely

46. “Consciousness of self gives us the power to
stand outside the rigid chain of stimulus and
response, to pause, and by this pause to
throw some weight on either side, to cast
some decision about what the response will
be”

47. PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
Orquia, Patricia Denise Z.

48. • People have become alienated from:
- the natural world (Umwelt)
- other people (Mitwelt)
- themselves (Eigenwelt)
• * Feeling of insignificance = apathy and
emptiness

49. APATHY AND EMPTINESS
- malaise of modern times
- chief existential disorders

50. Deny their
destiny/ Become sick and
engage in self-
Abandon their DIRECTIONLESS defeating and self-
myths destructive
(Thus, one loses his behaviors
freedom)

51. NEUROTIC SYMPTOMS
• a way to renounce freedom
• narrows the person‟s phenomenological
world to a size that makes coping easier

52. NEUROTIC SYMPTOMS
• represent a proper and necessary
adjustment by which one‟s Dasein can be
preserved

53. PSYCHOTHERAPY
Orquia, Patricia Denise Z.

54. EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOTHERAPY
• should make people more human
• set people free
• must be concerned with helping
people experience their existence

55. EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOTHERAPY
- an encounter between the patient and
therapist coming together and sharing
their experience
- I-thou encounter
- EMPATHY for the client – key
ingredient
- partly religion, partly science and
partly friendship
- PHILOSOPHICAL

56. CRITIQUE
Orquia, Patricia Denise Z.

57. • Low in generating a scientific research
• Low in falsifiability
• Moderate in organizing data
• Low in guiding action
• Low in internal consistency
• Moderate in parsimony

58. CONCEPT OF HUMANITY
Orquia, Patricia Denise Z.

59. • Free Choice over Determinism
• Optimism over Pessimism
• Teleology over Causality
• Conscious and Unconscious
• Social and Biological Influences
• Uniqueness over Similarities