May, Rollo Reece

(b. 21 April 1909 in Ada, Ohio; d. 22 October 1994 in Tiburon, California), innovative philosopher, psychotherapist, and writer regarded as a founder of American existentialist psychotherapy.

May was the second of six children and the eldest son of Earl Tuttle, a Young Men’s Christian Associations field secretary, and Matie Boughton May, a homemaker. May grew up in Michigan in a family that had “more than its share of troubles.” May said that he felt closer to his father (who traveled often) than to his mother. She had named him after “Little Rollo,” a hero in nineteenth-century children’s books. In a New York Post interview in 1972, May stated that he hated his “sissy” name and felt that his mother did not find him “acceptable.” He later described his parents as “austere disciplinarians and anti-intellectuals” and portrayed their relationship as “discordant” and the precursor for his interest in psychology and counseling. His oldest sister was frequently psychotic and spent time in mental hospitals. Because his family moved often during his childhood, May repeatedly had to make new friends and viewed himself as a loner. He enjoyed athletics, especially swimming, and this ability helped him to be accepted by other kids. Throughout his life, surroundings were very important to his sense of well being.

From 1926 to 1928 May attended Michigan State College of Agriculture and Applied Science (now Michigan State University). He was more interested in literature than agriculture, so he started a magazine devoted to this subject. He then transferred to Oberlin College in Ohio, where the liberal arts were the college’s primary focus. May earned an A.B. degree in English from Oberlin in 1930, minoring in Greek history and literature. He also developed a strong interest in art. From 1930 to 1933 he taught English at Anatoluia College in Salonika, Greece. During vacations, he visited and took seminars from Alfred Adler, whom he grew to admire greatly, toured Eastern Europe, and took painting lessons with Joseph Binder.

In 1933 May returned to the United States and became a student adviser and counselor at Oberlin from 1934 to 1936. He then enrolled at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City in 1936. He studied with and was heavily influenced by Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr. He earned a B.D. degree cum laude in 1938 and was married on 5 June 1938 to Florence DeFrees. They had three children and divorced in 1968. He married again in 1971, to Ingrid Schoell, whom he divorced in 1975. In 1988 he married Georgia Lee Miller Johnson. May pointed to his parents’ problems as a partial answer for his failed marriages.

May was a Congregationalist minister from 1938 to 1940 in New Jersey. His lectures on counseling and personality adjustment were published as his first book, The Art of Counseling: How to Gain and Give Mental Health (1939), which was well regarded. May decided he would better serve people as a psychologist and resigned to study psychology at Columbia University in New York City. While working on his dissertation in 1942 and still counseling, May was diagnosed with tuberculosis. His personal struggle against death solidified his views on existentialism. While recuperating in upstate New York for almost two years, May wrote The Meaning of Anxiety (1950), which he considered the “watershed” event of his career. He stressed that anxiety can be a positive, motivating force for social and personal development, and that people can use their inner resources for life choices. Upon his own recovery, he graduated summa cum laude with a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, the first ever bestowed by Columbia, in 1949. For the next thirty years he lectured widely and was a visiting professor at Harvard, Yale, Brooklyn College, New York University, and the University of California at Santa Cruz.

From 1943 to 1944 he worked as a counselor at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology in New York City; he became a faculty member in 1948 and a fellow in 1952. In 1946 he started a private practice. He also taught at the New School for Social Research in New York City from 1955 to 1975. In 1953 May published his second book, Man’s Search for Himself. Written in laymen’s terms, it was a popular and critical success and established May as a leader of American existentialism. In 1969 May published another best-seller, Love and Will, which portrayed his personal struggle with love and relationships. The theme was Western society’s struggle with new questions about sex, marriage, and morality. He continued to popularize self-realization, the idea that within certain limits individuals have freedom of choice.

By the early 1960s May had become a leader in challenging behaviorism and psychoanalysis. He “defected” from biological determinism by stressing unique conscious elements in individual psychology. After moving to California in 1975, he resumed his private practice as a therapist. He also served in various capacities at the Saybrook Institute of the California School of Professional Psychology. More books and ideas followed: Power and Innocence: A Search for the Sources of Violence (1972), The Courage to Create (1975), My Quest for Beauty (1985), and The Cry for Myth (1991). May was a prolific writer and thinker who wrote more than fifteen books, many of which are directly related to his personal life and growth as a person. He was the recipient of the American Psychological Association’s Gold Medal for his distinguished career in psychology, Phi Beta Kappa’s Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, and the Whole Life Humanitarian Award. He died of congestive heart failure at the age of eighty-five in Tiburon, California. His remains were cremated and his ashes were scattered on the East and West Coasts.

May’s faith in humans to solve their problems, “his treatment of anxiety as a positive challenge,” and his focus on self-fulfillment contributed to and popularized these ideas. His work helped link the fields of psychology and religion and concerned itself with ways in which people can grow.

Many of May’s books contain information about his life and career. Critical studies of his work include Clement Reeves, The Psychology of Rollo May (1977) and F. Rabinowitz, G. Good, and L. Cozad, “Rollo May: A Man of Meaning and Myth,” Journal of Counseling and Development 67 (Apr. 1989): 436-441. For posthumous summaries of his work, see J. F. T. Bugenthal, “Rollo May (1909–1994),” American Psychologist 51 (Apr. 1996): 418-419; R. H. Abzug, “Rollo May as Friend to Man,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 36 (spring 1996): 17—22; R. J. De Carvalho, “Rollo R. May (1909–1994): A Biographical Sketch,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 36 (spring 1996): 8—16; and J. F. T. Bugenthal, “Aristophanes, William James, Rollo May, and Our Dog Dickens,” Humanistic Psychologist 24 (1996): 221-230. See also the conversation between May and Carl Rogers in Carl Rogers: Dialogues (1989). Obituaries are in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times (both 24 Oct. 1994), the Washington Post (25 Oct. 1994), and the Chicago Tribune (6 Nov. 1994).

Gwyneth H. Crowley