RolloMay, undoubtedly, can be called one of the key figures not only in American, but also in world psychology. Until his death in 1994, he was one of the leading existential psychologists in the United States. Over the past half century, this has been a trend whose roots go back to the philosophy of Seren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre and other major European thinkers of the second half of the 19th and first half of the 20th century, spread widely throughout the world. Existential psychology takes the view that people bear a significant amount of responsibility for who they are. Existence is given precedence over essence, growth and change are considered more important than stable and immobile characteristics, process takes precedence over results.

During his years as a psychotherapist, May developed new concept person. His approach relied more on clinical experimentation than on armchair theory. A person, from May’s point of view, lives in the present; for him, what is important is, first of all, what is happening Here And Now.In this one true reality, man shapes himself and is responsible for who he ultimately becomes. May's insightful insights into the nature of human existence, which were convincingly confirmed by further analysis, contributed to May's popularity not only among professional psychologists, but also among the general public. And it's not just that. May's works are distinguished by the simplicity and depth of their basic principles, cultivating healthy pragmatism and rationality in the behavior of a particular individual.

Thinking about the fundamental differences between a mentally healthy, healthy person and a sick person, May came to the following conclusions. Many people, he believed, lack the courage to face their fate. Attempts to avoid such a collision lead to the fact that they sacrifice most of their freedom and try to evade responsibility by declaring the original unfreedom of their actions. Without wanting to make a choice, they lose the ability to see themselves as they really are, and become imbued with a sense of their own insignificance and alienation from the world. Healthy people, on the other hand, challenge their fate, value and protect their freedom, and live authentic lives that are honest with themselves and others. They are aware of the inevitability of death, but they have the courage to live in the present.

Biographical excursion.

Rollo Reese May was born April 21, 1909 in Ada, Ohio. He was the eldest of six children of Earl Title May and Maty Boughton oMay. None of the parents had a good education and did not care about providing their children with favorable conditions for intellectual development. Quite the opposite. For example, when, a few years after Rollo was born, his older sister began to suffer from psychosis, his father attributed it to the fact that she studied too much, in his opinion.

IN early age Rollo moved with his family to Marine City, Michigan, where he spent most of his childhood. It cannot be said that the boy had a warm relationship with his parents, who often quarreled and eventually separated. May's father, being the secretary of the YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association), constantly moved with his family from place to place. The mother, in turn, cared little about the children, paying more attention to her personal life: in her later memoirs, May calls her “a cat with no brakes.” Both theirs unsuccessful marriage May is inclined to consider it a consequence of his mother’s unpredictable behavior and his sister’s mental illness.

Little Rollo repeatedly managed to experience a feeling of unity with living nature. As a child, he often retired and took a break from family quarrels by playing on the banks of the St. Clair River. The river became his friend, a quiet, serene corner where he could swim in the summer and skate in the winter. The scientist later claimed that playing on the riverbank gave him much more knowledge than his schoolwork in Marine City. Even in his youth, May became interested in literature and art, and since then this interest has never left him. He entered one of the colleges at the University of Michigan, where he specialized in English. Soon after May took charge of the radical student magazine, he was asked to leave the institution. May transferred to Oberlin College in Ohio and received his bachelor's degree there in 1930.

Over the next three years, May traveled through eastern and southern Europe, painting and studying folk art. The formal reason for the trip to Europe was an invitation to become an English teacher at Anatolia College, located in Thessaloniki, Greece. This work left May enough time to paint, and he managed to visit Turkey, Poland, Austria and other countries as a free artist. However, during the second year of traveling, May suddenly felt very lonely. Trying to get rid of this feeling, he plunged headlong into teaching, but this did not help much: the further he went, the more intense and less effective the work he did became.

“Eventually in the spring of that second year I had a figurative breakdown. This meant that the rules, principles, and values ​​that usually guided me in my work and life simply no longer applied. I felt so tired that I had to lie in bed for two weeks to regain my strength so that I could continue working as a teacher. I had gained enough psychological knowledge in college to know that these symptoms meant that there was something wrong with my whole way of living. I should have found some new goals and objectives in life and reconsidered the strict, moralistic principles of my existence” (May, 1985, p. 8).

From that moment, May began to listen to his inner voice, which, as it turned out, spoke about the unusual - about soul and beauty. “It was as if this voice had to destroy my entire previous way of life in order to be heard” (May, 1985, p. 13).

Along with the nervous crisis, another important event contributed to the revision of life attitudes, namely, participation in 1932 in the summer seminar of Alfred Adler, held in a mountain resort town near Vienna. May was delighted with Adler and managed to learn a lot about human nature and himself during the seminar.

Returning to the United States in 1933, May entered the seminary of the Theological Society, not to become a priest, but to find answers to fundamental questions about nature and man, questions in which religion plays an important role. While studying at the Theological Society seminary, May met the famous theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich, who fled Nazi Germany and continued his academic career in America. May learned a lot from Tillich, they became friends and remained so for more than thirty years.

Although May did not initially seek to devote himself to the clergy, in 1938, after receiving a Master of Divinity degree, he was ordained as a minister of the Congregational Church. For two years, May served as a pastor, but very quickly became disillusioned and, considering this path a dead end, left the church and began to look for answers to the questions that tormented him in science. May studied psychoanalysis at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology while working at New York City College as a consulting psychologist. It was then that he met Harry Stack Sullivan, president and one of the founders of the William Alanson White Institute. Sullivan's view of the therapist as a participant observer and of the therapeutic process as an exciting adventure capable of enriching both patient and therapist made a deep impression on May. Another important event that determined May’s development as a psychologist was his acquaintance with Erich Fromm, who by that time had already firmly established himself in the United States.

In 1946, May opened his own private practice; and two years later he became a member of the faculty of the William Alanson White Institute. In 1949, a mature forty-year-old, he received his first doctorate in clinical psychology from Columbia University and continued to teach psychiatry at the William Alanson White Institute until 1974.

Perhaps May would have remained one of thousands of unknown psychotherapists, but the same life-changing existential event that Jean Paul Sartre wrote about happened to him. Even before receiving his doctorate, May experienced the deepest shock of his life. When he was only in his thirties, he suffered from tuberculosis and spent three years in a sanatorium in Saranac, in upstate New York. There were no effective treatments for tuberculosis at that time, and for a year and a half May did not know whether he was destined to survive. The consciousness of the complete impossibility of resisting a serious illness, the fear of death, the agonizing wait for a monthly x-ray examination, each time meaning either a verdict or an extension of the wait - all this slowly undermined the will, lulled the instinct of the fight for existence. Realizing that all these seemingly completely natural mental reactions harm the body no less than physical torment, May began to develop a view of illness as part of his being in life. this period time. He realized that a helpless and passive position contributed to the development of the disease. Looking around, May saw that patients who had come to terms with their situation were fading away before their eyes, while those who were struggling usually recovered. It is on the basis of her own experience in dealing with the disease that May concludes that it is necessary for the individual to actively intervene in the “order of things” and his own destiny.

“Until I developed within myself some kind of ‘fight’, some sense of personal responsibility for being the person who has tuberculosis, I could not make any lasting progress” (May, 1972, p. 14) .

At the same time, he made another important discovery, which May then successfully used in psychotherapy. When he learned to listen to his body, he discovered that healing is not a passive, but an active process. A person affected by a physical or mental illness must be an active participant in the healing process. May finally became firmly established in this opinion after his recovery, and after some time he began to introduce this principle into his clinical practice, cultivating in patients the ability to analyze themselves and correct the doctor’s actions.

Having become interested in the phenomena of fear and anxiety during his illness, May began to study the works of the classics - Freud and at the same time Kierkegaard, the great Danish philosopher and theologian, the direct predecessor of existentialism of the 20th century. May highly valued Freud, but Kierkegaard's concept of anxiety as a struggle against consciousness hidden from consciousness nothingness touched him more deeply.

Soon after returning from the sanatorium, May compiled his thoughts on anxiety into a doctoral dissertation and published it under the title “The Meaning of Anxiety” ( The Meaning of Anxiety,May, 1950). Three years later he wrote the book "Man in Search of Self" ( Man's Search for Himself,May, 1953), which brought him fame both in professional circles and simply among educated people. In 1958, he co-authored with Ernest Angel and Henry Ellenberger the book Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology ( Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology This book introduced American psychotherapists to the basic concepts of existential therapy, and after its appearance the existentialism movement became even more popular. May's most famous work is Love and Will ( Love and Will, 1969 b) became a national bestseller and received the 1970 Ralph Waldo Emerson Award for Scholarship in the Human Sciences. In 1971, May received the American Psychological Association Award "for distinguished contributions to the theory and practice of clinical psychology." In 1972, the New York Society of Clinical Psychologists awarded him the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Award. for the book “Power and Innocence” ( Power and Innocence, 1972), and in 1987 he received the Gold Medal of the Association of American Psychologists "for distinguished work in the field of professional psychology during his lifetime."

May lectured at Harvard and Princeton, and at various times taught at Yale and Columbia universities, at Dartmouth, Vassar and Oberlin colleges, and at the New School for Social Research. He was an adjunct professor at New York University, Chairman of the Council of the Association for Existential Psychology, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the American Mental Health Foundation. In 1969, May divorced his first wife, Florence De Vries, with whom he had lived together for 30 years. His marriage to his second wife, Ingrid Kepler Scholl, also ended in divorce, after which in 1988 he connected his life with Georgia Lee Miller, a Jungian analyst. On October 22, 1994, after a long illness, May died in Tiburon, California, where he had lived since 1975.

For many years, May was a recognized leader of American existential psychology, advocating its popularization, but sharply opposing the desire of some colleagues for anti-scientific, overly simplified constructions. He criticized any attempt to present existential psychology as teaching accessible methods of individual self-realization. A healthy and full-fledged personality is the result of intense internal work aimed at identifying the unconscious basis of existence and its mechanisms. By placing the process of self-knowledge at the forefront, May, in her own way, continues the tradition of Platonic philosophy.

Fundamentals of existentialism.

Existential psychology originates in the works of Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), a Danish philosopher and theologian. Kierkegaard was extremely concerned about the growing tendency before his eyes towards the dehumanization of man. He strongly disagreed with the idea that people could be perceived and described as objects, thereby reducing them to the level of things. At the same time, he was far from assigning to subjective perception the property of the only reality accessible to man. For Kierkegaard, there was no rigid boundary between subject and object, as well as between a person’s internal experiences and the one who experiences them, because at any given moment in time a person involuntarily identifies himself with his experiences. Kierkegaard sought to understand people as they live within their reality, that is, as thinking, acting, willful beings. As May wrote: “Kierkegaard tried to bridge the gap between reason and feeling by drawing people's attention to the reality of immediate experience, which lies at the basis of both objective and subjective realities” (1967, p. 67).

Kierkegaard, like later existentialist philosophers, emphasized balance freedom and responsibility.People gain agency through increased self-awareness and subsequent acceptance of responsibility for their actions. However, a person pays for his freedom and responsibility with a feeling of anxiety. Once he finally recognizes anxiety as inevitable, he becomes the master of his destiny, bears the burden of freedom and experiences the pain of responsibility.

The views of Kierkegaard, who died in obscurity at the age of 42, significantly influenced two German philosophers - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and Martin Heidegger (1899-1976), the first of whom outlined the main directions in the philosophy of the 20th century, and the second actually outlined the boundaries her competence. The importance of these thinkers for modern humanitarian thought can hardly be overestimated. Among other merits, they own the copyright for the formation and development of existential philosophy precisely in the form in which it entered the circle of the main directions of modern intellectual history. In the narrower field of psychology, Heidegger's work greatly influenced the views of the Swiss psychiatrists Ludwig Binswanger and Medard Boss. Along with Karl Jaspers and Viktor Frankl, they made unsuccessful attempts to adapt the principles of existential psychology to clinical psychotherapy.

Existentialism penetrated into modern artistic practice thanks to the works of influential French writers and essayists - Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, with whose names the movement in question is often primarily associated. Existentialism has made a large and varied contribution to modern theology and religious philosophy: the works of Martin Buber, Paul Tillich and others are already among the most influential in this field. Finally, the art world was also partly influenced by the existentialist complex of ideas, reflected in the work of Cézanne, Matisse and Picasso, who abandoned the constraining standards of the realistic style and tried to express the freedom of being in the language of their bizarre non-objectivity.

The first existentialists among psychologists and psychotherapists also began to appear in Europe. Among the most large figures belong to Ludwig Binswanger, Medard Boss, Victor Francl.

After World War II, European existentialism, in all its diversity of forms, spread to the United States and became an even more vague concept, as it was raised on the shield by a very motley, semi-philosophical public, consisting of writers and artists, college professors and students, playwrights and clergymen, even journalists and secularists. wits. The number of followers, each of whom had their own understanding of the essence of the teaching, reached such a level that it began to threaten the existence of existentialism as such. Recently, existentialism has lost its former popularity, which clearly benefited it, paradoxically strengthening its position both in philosophy and in related fields.

Principles of existentialism.

Despite the continued abundance of various interpretations of the concept of “existentialism,” among them it is possible to identify some common features inherent in all representatives of this direction, without exception.

Firstly, there is the idea that existence(existence)preceded essence(essence).Existence means appearance and formation, while essence implies static matter, incapable of changing on its own. Existence implies a process, essence refers to the final product. Existence is associated with growth and change; essence marks staticity and exhaustion. Western civilization, underpinned by the authority of science, has traditionally valued essence over existence. She tried to explain the world around him, including man, from the standpoint of his unchangeable essence. Existentialists, on the other hand, argue that the essence of people lies in their ability to constantly redefine themselves through the choices they make.

Secondly, existentialism does not recognize the gap between subject and object. May defined existentialism as “a persistent attempt to understand man, expanding the field of his study beyond the line along which the crack runs between subject and object”(1958 b, p. 11). We have already mentioned that Kierkegaard was skeptical about considering the individual solely as a thinking subject. Quoting Kierkegaard, May wrote: “The only truth that really exists for man is that which he himself produces by his actions.” In other words, it is useless to seek the truth while sitting at a desk; it can only be known by honestly accepting all the diversity of true life. At the same time, Kierkegaard did not support those who sought to make people only faceless objects, like machines. Each person is unique, and one cannot see in him only a cog in the mechanism of industrial society.

Thirdly, people are looking for meaning in their lives. They ask themselves (although not always consciously) the most important questions concerning existence. Who am I? Is life worth living? Does it make sense? How can I fulfill my human calling? The tendency, if not to systematically think about this topic, then at least to experience such problems is one of the universal properties of human nature.

Fourthly, existentialists adhere to the point of view that each of us is primarily responsible for what he is and what he becomes. We cannot blame parents, teachers, bosses, God or circumstances. As Sartre said, “man is nothing other than what he makes of himself. This is the first principle of existentialism." Although we have the ability to connect with our own kind, connect with each other, and build productive and healthy relationships, ultimately each of us remains alone at our core. We cannot freely choose our destiny, having a chance only to bring together the abstract “I can” with the concrete “I want.” At the same time, even refusing responsibility and trying to avoid choice ultimately turns out to be our own choice. We cannot escape responsibility for our “I”, just as we cannot escape ourselves.

Fifthly, existentialists generally reject the principle explanations phenomena that underlies all theoretical knowledge. In their opinion, all theories dehumanize people, portray them as mechanical objects, and dismember the unity of personality. Existentialists believe that direct experience always has an advantage over any artificial explanations. When experiences are melted into some kind of supra-existential theoretical models, they are separated from the one who originally experienced them, and, therefore, lose their authenticity.

Before moving on to the presentation of Rollo May's psychological views, we will briefly consider two basic concepts that create the ideological framework of existentialism, namely - being-in-the-world And nothingness.

Being-in-the-world.

To explain human nature, existentialists adhere to the so-called phenomenological approach. In their view, we live in a world that can best be understood from our own point of view. When dogmatic scientists consider people from an “external” position using a system of abstract constructions, they forcibly adjust the living, changing principle and its existential world into a convenient and, if possible, unambiguous theoretical framework. The basic concept of the unity of personality and environment is expressed by the German term Dasein, which means “to exist there” and which became widespread with the beginning of the widespread fame of its author, Martin Heidegger. Literally Dasein can mean "to exist in the world" and is usually translated as being-in-the-world The hyphens in this term indicate the unity of subject and object, personality and world.

Many people suffer from anxiety and despair caused by self-alienation and indifference to their inner world. They do not have a clear idea of ​​themselves and feel separated from the world, which seems distant and alien to them; the category of Dasein as awareness of their existence in the world remains inaccessible to them. Striving for power over nature, man loses connection with it: the original unity turns into conflict, a state of endless war with himself. When a person blindly relies on the products of the industrial revolution, he forgets about earth and sky, that is, about the only real context of his existence. Loss of orientation in living space and the automatism of existence lead to gradual alienation from own body. Learning new details about himself as an object of scientific analysis, a person loses the ability to control such a complex mechanism and begins to rely on outside help - be it technology, medicine or psychiatry. The body finds itself in the power of those who have information about its structure and functions, while the owner of the body himself is deprived of the right to manage his life. There is a surrender of oneself to the power of someone else’s consciousness, which leads first to spiritual and then to physical death. Let us remember that Rollo May began to recover from tuberculosis only after he realized that the patient was he and no one else and that the only way to survive was to return to himself, interrupting the lethargic serenity of self-alienation.

Not only pathologically restless individuals suffer from a feeling of isolation and self-alienation, but almost all inhabitants of modern Western-style society. Alienation is a disease of our time, which has at least three pronounced signs: 1) separation from nature; 2) lack of significant interpersonal relationships; 3) alienation from one’s true self. In other words, the world in which existence takes place is divided into three coexisting hypostases. The first one is Umwelt,or environment, the second is Mitwelt(literally: “together with the world”), or the structure of relationships with other people, and the third is Eigenwelt, or the structure of a person’s internal relationship with himself.

Umwelt - this is a world of objects and things that exist independently of us. This is the world of nature and its laws, it includes our biological urges, such as hunger or the desire to sleep, and such natural phenomena like birth and death. We cannot completely isolate ourselves from this world and must learn to live in it and adapt to its changing structure. Umwelt - this is the invisible integrity that classical psychoanalysis, in particular, dealt with, working with the instinctive, unconscious level of reactions. However, as is known, most of these unconscious reactions are a consequence of the hidden work of consciousness, carried out against the will of the individual, but having a distinctly cultural rather than natural origin. This is where the sector of mutual intersection of spheres is formed Umwelt And Mitwelt, between which it is sometimes difficult and completely pointless to draw a strict boundary. However, if our relationships with others do not differ qualitatively from our relationship to things, we find ourselves locked in our Umwelt, which in this case turns into a field of exclusion. We must treat other people as people and not as things. If we treat people as inanimate objects, then we live exclusively in Umwelt. Significant differences between Umwelt And Mitwelt are discovered when comparing sex and love. The use of another as an instrument of sexual satisfaction or reproduction is opposed by responsibility and respect for the other person, readiness to accept and forgive him. At the same time, not every interaction in the world Mitwelt necessarily implies love. A more general condition is respect for Dasein another person. The theories of Sullivan and Rogers especially emphasize the importance of communication between people and deal mainly with Mitwelt.

A person's relationship with himself is Eigenwelt.Many areas of personality theory do not pay due attention to this world. Meanwhile live in Eigenwelt- means to realize oneself as a human being and understand what “I” is in relation to the world of things and people, that is, to raise one of the key questions discussed by psychological science.

Healthy people live in Umwelt,Mitwelt And Eigenwelt simultaneously. They are able to adapt to the natural world, interact with others as others, and clearly understand the value of their own experiences.

Nothingness.

Being-in-the-world necessarily evokes an understanding of oneself as a living being who has appeared in the world. On the other hand, such an understanding leads to the fear of non-existence or non-existence. May wrote about this:

“To grasp the meaning of his existence, man must first grasp the fact that he may not exist, that every second he is on the verge of possible extinction and cannot ignore the inevitability of death, the occurrence of which cannot be programmed into the future” (1958a, pp. 47-48 ).

May said of death that it is "the only thing not relative, but absolute fact our life, and my consciousness of this fact gives to my existence and to everything I do hourly a quality of absoluteness” (1958a, p. 49). Death is not only the road along which non-existence enters our lives, it is also the most obvious thing. Life becomes more important, more significant in the face of possible death.

If we are not ready to boldly face non-existence by calmly thinking about death, it manifests itself in many other ways. This includes alcohol and drug abuse, promiscuity and other types of forced behavior. Non-existence can also be expressed in blind adherence to the expectations of our environment, and in the general hostility that permeates our relationships with people.

Rollo May said: “We are afraid of non-existence and therefore we crumple our existence.” The fear of death often forces us to live in such a way that we constantly defend ourselves against it, thereby getting less from life than we could get by calmly accepting the outcome of our non-existence. We avoid active choice because it is based on thinking about who we are and what we want. We try to escape the fear of non-existence by clouding our self-awareness and denying our individuality, but this choice leaves us with a feeling of despair and emptiness. Thus, we avoid the threat of non-existence at the cost of narrowing the scope of our existence in the world. A healthier alternative is to face the inevitability of death with courage and realize that non-existence is an inseparable part of existence.

Anxiety.

Before May published The Meaning of Anxiety in 1950, most theories held that high levels of anxiety indicated the presence of neurosis or other form of psychopathology. Directly during the writing of the book, May personally experienced constant anxiety about his future fate. Unsure of his recovery, he was also constantly burdened by his disability, as well as the knowledge that his wife and little son were left without a livelihood. In the book “The Meaning of Anxiety,” May argued that the driving force behind human behavior in many cases is a feeling of fear or anxiety, which appears in him whenever the feeling of uncertainty, insecurity, and precariousness of his existence increases. The inability to acknowledge death helps to temporarily relieve anxiety or the fear of non-existence. But this deliverance cannot be permanent. Death is an unconditional component of our lives, and, sooner or later, everyone will have to face it.

May defined anxiety as “the subjective state of a person realizing that his existence may be destroyed, that he may become ‘nothing’” (1958a, p. 50). We experience anxiety when we realize that our existence or some values ​​identified with it may be destroyed. In later work, he put forward a different definition of anxiety - as a feeling of threat aimed at values ​​that are important to a person. Anxiety, May wrote, is “the apprehension caused by a threat to some values ​​that a person considers important to his existence as an individual” (1967, p. 72).

So, anxiety can come both from the awareness of the possibility of our non-existence, and from the threat to certain vital important values. It also arises when we encounter obstacles on the way to realizing our plans and opportunities. This resistance can cause stagnation and decline, but it can also stimulate change and growth.

Freedom cannot exist without anxiety, just as anxiety cannot exist without awareness of the possibility of freedom. Becoming more free, a person inevitably experiences anxiety. May quoted Kierkegaard, who said that "anxiety is the dizziness of freedom." Anxiety, like dizziness, can be both pleasant and painful, constructive and destructive. It can give us energy and zest for life, but it can also paralyze us and drive us into panic. Moreover, anxiety can be like normal, so neurotic.

Normal anxiety

We live in an age of anxiety. None of us can escape its influence. To grow and reconsider your values ​​is to experience normal or constructive anxiety. May defined normal anxiety as “proportional to a non-repressive threat that can be constructively countered at the conscious level” (1967, p. 80).

As an individual grows and develops from infancy to old age, his values ​​change, and each time he rises to a new level, he experiences normal anxiety. “All growth consists of a renunciation of previous values, which generates anxiety” (May, 1967, p. 80). Normal anxiety also comes at moments when an artist, scientist, or philosopher suddenly achieves insight, the euphoria from which is accompanied by awe at the changes that are opening up in the future. Thus, scientists who witnessed the first atomic bomb test in Alamogordo, New Mexico, experienced normal anxiety, realizing that from that moment the world had changed irreversibly.

Normal anxiety experienced during periods of growth or unpredictable change is common to everyone. It can be constructive as long as it remains proportionate to the threat. Otherwise, anxiety turns into painful, neurotic.

Neurotic anxiety

May determined neurotic anxiety(neurotic anxiety)as “a reaction disproportionate to the threat, causing repression and other forms of intrapsychic conflict and controlled by various forms of blocking-off of action and understanding” (1967, p. 80).

If normal anxiety is always felt when values ​​are threatened, then neurotic anxiety visits us if the values ​​questioned are in fact dogmas, the rejection of which would deprive our existence of meaning. The need to realize one's absolute rightness limits the personality so much that its needs ultimately come down to regular confirmation of the inviolability of the existing order. Whatever this order may be, it gives us a sense of illusory security, “acquired at the cost of the renunciation of free knowledge and new growth” (May, 1967, p. 80).

Guilt

We have already said that the feeling of anxiety increases when we are faced with the problem of realizing our capabilities. When we deny our own possibilities, when we fail to correctly recognize the needs of those close to us, or when we neglect our dependence on the world around us, a feeling of guilt (guilt) increases (May, 1958a). The term “guilt,” like the term “anxiety,” was used by May to describe being-in-the-world. In this sense, the concepts described by these terms can be considered concepts ontological, that is, related to the nature of being, and not to feelings that arise in special situations or as a result of some actions.

In the most general form, May identified three types of ontological guilt, each of which corresponds to one of the images of being-in-the-world: Umwelt,Mitwelt And Eigenwelt.Type of guilt corresponding Umwelt, is rooted in our lack of awareness of our being-in-the-world. The further civilization moves along the path of scientific and technological progress, the further we move away from nature, that is, from Umwelt. This alienation leads to the first type of ontological guilt that predominates in “advanced” societies, where people live in temperature-controlled homes, use mechanical transport for transportation, and eat food with

Rollo May (1909-1994)

To develop a general idea of ​​existential psychology, we will consider its representative in the United States. Rollo May, like Viktor Frankl, is considered both a humanistic and existential movement in psychology. But, in the context of the topic of the course, we will consider his existential views.

Rollo May, like many psychologists, considers Kierkegaard to be the founder of existentialism. But he sees that existential philosophy is not so alien to American society, because the wonderful American psychologist William James expressed something similar.

"The existential approach is very close, for example, to the thinking of William James. Take, for example, his emphasis on the immediacy of experience and the unity of thought and action, emphases that were as important for James as for Kierkegaard. "For the individual, only that is true which he personally embodied in action" - these words proclaimed by Kierkegaard are well known to many of us brought up in the spirit of American pragmatism."

In practice, May does not seek to separate existential psychology from the techniques of other schools, explaining her position as follows: “I doubt whether it makes sense to speak of an “existential psychologist or psychotherapist” as opposed to other schools; it is not a system of therapy, but an attitude towards therapy; not a set of new techniques, but an interest in understanding the structure human existence and his experiences, which must precede all techniques."

He sees the essence of the approach as follows: “The only difference is “whether to consider personality in terms of a mechanism” or “mechanism in terms of personality.” The existential approach firmly chooses the latter. And is of the opinion that the former can be included in the latter.”

As a practicing psychotherapist, May has seen from his own experience that the phenomenological approach has its undeniable advantages:

“We, of necessity, have to deal directly with the existence of a person who suffers, struggles, experiences various conflicts. This “direct experience” becomes our natural environment, and gives us both the reason and the data for our research. We have to be truly realistic and "practical" in the sense that we are dealing with patients whose worries and sufferings will not be cured by theories, no matter how brilliant, or by any all-encompassing abstract laws. But through interaction in the process of psychotherapy we receive such information and we achieve an understanding of human existence that could not be achieved in any other way; no one will be revealed to the deep levels of his being, hiding his fears and hopes, except through a painful process of exploring his conflicts, through which he has some hope of overcoming barriers and relief of suffering."

And again: “It is here that phenomenology - the first stage in the existential-psychological movement - will be a useful breakthrough for many of us. Phenomenology attempts to take a phenomenon as given. It is a disciplinary attempt to clear thoughts of assumptions that so often cause us to perceive in the patient only own theories and dogmas of one's own systems, an attempt instead to experience the phenomenon in its real integrity. This is an attitude of openness and willingness to listen - aspects of the art of listening in psychotherapy, which is usually taken for granted and seems very simple, but is extremely complex."

May argues that the range of relevance classical psychoanalysis sharply narrowed in his time, starting from the 60s, the time of the so-called “sexual revolution”, people stopped suffering from suppressed libido, but there were no fewer neuroses, they only acquired new causes. “In my psychotherapeutic practice there is more and more evidence that anxiety today arises not so much from a fear of a lack of libidinal satisfaction or security, but from the patient’s fear of his own strengths and the conflicts arising from this fear. This may be a distinguishing feature.” neurotic personality of our time" - a neurotic stereotype of a modern "externally controlled" public person"

He sees the cause of neurosis in the fact that responsibility has been taken away from a person, thereby making him passive and weak: “It became a kind of all-encompassing tendency, almost a disease in the middle of the 20th century, to see oneself as passive, to consider oneself a product of crushing influence economic forces(as Marx demonstrated parallel to Freud with his brilliant analysis at the socio-economic level). IN last years this tendency has been reinforced in the form of man's belief that he is the helpless victim of science in the form of the atomic bomb, about the use of which the ordinary man feels unable to do anything. The main essence of the “neurosis” of modern man is that he does not feel fully responsible, in the depletion of his will and determination. And this lack of will is more than just an ethical problem: modern man is convinced that even if he really exerts his “will”, it will not change anything.

Weak will leads to problems of choice and decision-making: “But now, when most patients are “possessed” in one form or another, when everyone knows about the Oedipus complex, when our patients talk about sex so freely that it would shock any Freudian patient (namely, talking about sex is probably the easiest way to avoid real decision-making in love and sexual relations), the problem of undermining the authority of the will and decision-making cannot be further avoided. "Compulsion", a problem that has always remained unconquered and unresolved in the context of classical psychoanalysis, in my opinion, is closely related to the dilemma of will and decision-making."

Such people are extremely easy to control, through the stimulus-response mechanism; they are ideal consumers and ideal wage-earners. May believes that spontaneity is always present in a healthy personality, in contrast to a neurotic person, whose actions are quite predictable. "But although a healthy person is "predictable" in the sense that her behavior is holistic and the actions she performs depend on character, she always demonstrates new aspects in her behavior. Her activities are fresh, spontaneous, interesting, and in this sense her behavior is opposed to the neurotic with his predictability. This is the essence of creativity"

So, in this paragraph we examined the ideas of Rollo May, an American existentialist psychologist who, as a practicing psychotherapist, was convinced that new times have created a new type of neurotic personality, a person with a paralyzed will, who is aware of himself as passive, feels neither freedom nor responsibility. In such a situation, existential psychotherapy comes to the rescue with its phenomenological approach, which examines in detail the personality in its value system and helps to find a way out of what V. Frankl called the “existential vacuum.” Such psychology returns a person to himself and gives him a chance for a more conscious and fulfilling life.

Rollo May (May; b. 1909) is a famous American psychologist and psychotherapist, a reformer of psychoanalysis who introduced existential ideas into it, one of the most famous psychiatrists in the world. May's views were shaped by a range of intellectual traditions. May was educated in the 1930s in Europe, where he studied psychoanalysis and Adlerian individual psychology. Returning to her homeland, May graduates from the Faculty of Theology. At this time he met the Protestant theologian Paul, who emigrated from Germany. Tillich (Tillich; 1886 - 1965), with whom he established the most friendly relations and under the influence of which he turns to the works of existentialist philosophers 223. To some extent, we can talk about the opposite influence, since Tillich has repeatedly stated that his work "Courage to Be" written as a response to May's The Meaning of Anxiety. Having received a theological education, May began to combine psychotherapeutic work with pastoral activities. He devoted his first book to exploring the therapeutic potential of Christianity. May's work "The Art of Psychological Counseling" was the first to be published on existential psychotherapy in the United States.

In the 40s, May, together with Fromm and Sullivan, worked at the New York Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology, the main American center of neo-Freudianism. Therefore, although he subsequently brought an existential-phenomenological basis to his psychotherapeutic concept, many of the provisions of Sullivan and Fromm, in slightly modified formulations, were included in his existential psychology. Teaching activities May was associated with Harvard, Princeton and other leading universities in America. May has been awarded the American Psychological Association's Gold Medal, recognizing the "grace, wit and style" of his books, which have repeatedly appeared on bestseller lists. He owns such works as “Love and Will”, “The Meaning of Anxiety”, "Man in search of himself""Courage to Create" "Freedom and justice" ba", "Opening life and I".

", May is the author of an interesting “personal portrait” of Tillich, containing information about Tillich’s life in the USA, the perception of his ideas by the American audience, etc. (May R. Paulus: Reminiscences of a Freindship - NY. - 1973).

Psychotheology - Rollo May

May is considered one of the most ardent proponents of existentialism in America. His introductory chapters to the book "Existence"(1958) 224, as well as his book "Existential Psychology" were the main source of information about existentialism for American psychologists. In American literature, there is often an opinion that it was after the publication of the book “Existence” - an anthology of works by European (mainly Swiss and German) representatives of phenomenological psychiatry and existential analysis, to which May wrote an extensive theoretical introduction, that the rapid spread of existential psychology and psychotherapy in the USA began . According to Spiegelberg, May is "the most influential American exponent of existential phenomenology, preparing the climate for a new approach to phenomenological psychology" 225 .

The most characteristic feature of May's teaching is the desire to combine Freud's reformed psychoanalysis with the ideas of Kierkegaard, read "ontologically", that is, through Heidegger's Being and Time, Binswanger's existential analysis, Tillich's theology. The publication of the anthology “Existenza” in 1958 marks the watershed of two stages of May’s work. At the first stage, his works were dominated by themes common to all neo-Freudians, although even then he relied heavily on the ideas of existentialist philosophers. At the second stage, he becomes the most prominent American proponent of reforming psychology and psychiatry based on existential phenomenology and Binswanger’s existential analysis. May, therefore, did not immediately come to existentialism, but already from his early works it is clear that his meeting with this philosophical movement was natural.

Throughout his entire work, May acts as an opponent of orthodox Freudianism and notes the inapplicability of its central concepts in psychotherapeutic practice, which was faced with a number of new phenomena in the middle of the century. Freud considered the cause of neuroses to be the suppression of instinctive drives that “work” according to the “principle of pleasure” and come into conflict with social norms, the representative of which in the individual’s psyche is the “Super-I”.

""" Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology/ Ed. by R. May, E. Angel and

H. Ellenberger.-N.Y.: Basic books.- 1958.

225 Spiegelberg H. Phenomenology in Psychology and Psychiatry.- Evanston.- 1972- P. 158.

Yu.V. Tikhonravov

Softening the harsh moral standards of the Victorian era, he believed, would rid people of neuroses.

But even before the “sexual revolution,” May drew attention to the fact that softening moral standards and lifting prohibitions did not lead to a decrease in the number of mental disorders. On the contrary, greater freedom of self-expression in the sphere of sexual relations, instead of the increase in vitality predicted by Freud, caused only quantities of these disorders. At the same time, May notes, patients turn to a psychoanalyst about difficulties that are of a completely different nature than those observed by Freud at the beginning of the century. Loneliness, boredom, dissatisfaction, loss of the meaning of existence, spiritual atrophy - these are characteristic symptoms modern mental disorders. May came to the conclusion that the cause of neuroses is not poorly repressed childhood impressions, not fixations of libido, in a word, not the patient’s past, but those problems that he cannot solve at the present moment, which leads to the loss of spontaneity, focus on the future, creativity existence. A mentally normal person, according to May, is able to find constructive ways for self-expression. It is characterized by a gap between what it is and what it wants to be, a gap that creates theoretical tension. Formation, the free choice of personality, already in May’s first work are accepted as criteria for mental health.

May recognizes that freedom is not arbitrariness. Otherwise it would be difficult to talk about the “constructiveness” of the patient’s choice, which must correspond to what May calls the “necessary structure” that ensures the harmony of man and society, individual and universal. In his first book "The Art of Consulting" May, firstly, finds this necessary structure in Jung’s archetypes of the collective unconscious, and secondly, considers the most universal principles to be the norms of individual behavior established by Christian religion. He sees the reason for the egocentrism and selfishness of man in modern society in the fall and separation of man from God. May considers following the Christian faith an imperative for personal health. However, in this case, not only all atheists, but also the majority of people on Earth turn out to be not completely mentally healthy. True, May distinguishes “true religion”, which gives meaning to human existence (and accordingly

Psychotheology - Rollo May

responsibility and health), from “dogmatic religion”, which takes away from him freedom and responsibility for his own actions. But it is extremely difficult to understand what, according to May, this “true religion” is, as well as how it can sanctify the ideas expressed by him that human self-affirmation, various manifestations of spontaneous creativity should be considered as an expression of mental health. On the one hand, it affirms the eternal and absolute “divine principles”, and on the other, the complete freedom of the individual creating himself.

In 1940, May released work 226, in which religious motives are strengthened. Christ is interpreted as the “therapist of humanity.” However, in subsequent years, May moved away from such constructions; religious reflections themselves disappeared from his books and articles, and he forbade reprinting his early works. May comes to the idea of ​​an eternal conflict between ethics and religion as it exists historically and socially: “there is brutal war between ethically sensitive people and religious institutions" 227. The heroic self-affirmation of man, the "Promethean" struggle against any forms of organization and institutions become for some time the main points of his works. The myth of Prometheus, according to May, expresses the eternal struggle of an independent and responsible individual with authorities and traditional norms. He describes a person’s life from childhood as a struggle for self-affirmation, as “a continuum of differentiation from the “mass” towards individual freedom.”228 May is ready to talk about the neuroticism of almost any form of power, even in parental authority he sees a threat mental health of the child.

It cannot be said that May completely ignores the social causes of neurotic disorders. His research "The Meaning of Anxiety" is of interest not only in the sense that it was the first to attempt to give a psychological interpretation of the existentialist doctrine of anxiety, but also because its author turns to criticism of modern society and comes to the conclusion about the need for social change. May tried in his work to show that neurotic fears are generated by a society of "struggle-

2 - to May R. The Springs of Creative Living: A Study on Human Nature and God.-N.Y.- 1940. 2:7 May R. Man's Search For Himself.- N.Y.-1953.- P. 164. ~* MayR. Man "s Search for Himself-P. 164.

Yu.V. Tizhonravov

"all against all", social inequality, the threat of unemployment and similar reasons. However, May subsequently omits consideration of issues of psychotherapy in a broad social context, discussions about "adequate forms of community", overcoming a "neurotic society" and individualism. His teaching on anxiety becomes a preparation transition to existential analysis and phenomenological psychology.

Anxiety was defined by May as the awareness of a threat to “any value that the individual considers essential to his existence as a person” 229. A person can be threatened physical death or suffering, loss of certain social benefits, values ​​or symbols. But May’s main attention is paid to the threat of losing the meaning of existence, since a person experiences fear, not anxiety, about the threat of losing any specific things, benefits, or circumstances. That is, he is able to clearly formulate a threat, fight it or run away from something terrible. The scary does not threaten the core of the personality, while anxiety strikes at the very foundation of its psychological structure, on which the understanding of oneself and the world is built. In anxiety, a person experiences fear about his own existence, fears “becoming nothing.”

Fear of death is a normal form of anxiety, but it is not, May believes, its source. It is caused by the fear of emptiness, meaninglessness, nothingness. This is anxiety, which is necessarily inherent in human existence; it is inseparable from the existence of the individual. Without anxiety, positive personality development is impossible; it is a necessary element in the structure of the human psyche. It is not the anxiety itself that is not neurotic, but the attempts to avoid it. The neurotic runs away from “basic anxiety,” but as a result begins to experience anxiety where a normal person (that is, aware of his finitude and the constant threat of nothing) experiences only fear, realizing the specific dangerous circumstances of his existence and finding the strength to resist them.

From here the basic principles of May's psychotherapy are derived: the individual is freed from neurotic fears through awareness of “basic anxiety,” since “there is an inverse relationship between awareness and

MayR. Meaning of Anxiety.- N.Y.- I977.-P.239.

Psychotheology - Rollo May

knowledge of anxiety and the presence of symptoms" 230. Anxiety, as fear for the very being of existence, should "dissolve" all neurotic phobias: "conscious anxiety may be more painful, but it can also be used for the integration of the "I" 231. Psychotherapy, therefore, is a kind of education of the patient in the spirit existentialist philosophy: he must understand the inauthenticity of his own existence and his fears, realize his own finitude and choose himself in the face of nothingness. Many of the patients, as May himself noted, come to the analyst, from a medical point of view, completely healthy. They are worried about the emptiness, the meaninglessness of their own existence, and the psychotherapist points out to them the need to choose themselves, calls for “the courage to create” and not to be afraid of anything but death, realizing their own freedom.

Psychotherapeutic persuasion is, of course, an extremely important treatment tool. It affects not only ideas, but also the emotions, intellect, and personality of the patient as a whole. The doctor can point out the inadequacy of the patient’s assessment of his situation and the people around him, and can to some extent change the patient’s established attitudes and norms of behavior. In May, this moment of psychotherapy dominates: the psychotherapist convinces his patients that everything is in their hands, depends on their free choice. If we are talking about practically healthy people who are worried about the purposelessness of their own existence, this kind of belief is undoubtedly useful, but under certain conditions it can also bring harm to a truly sick person if he tries to overcome the disease with the sole effort of freed will. The failure of such attempts can lead to an increase in neurotic symptoms.

In order to help the patient find meaning in life, it is necessary to understand his inner world. In this case, May believes, it is necessary to start from the general foundation that makes both normal and mentally abnormal existence possible, that is, it is necessary to reveal its being-in-the-world, the structure of its meaningfulness.

1 "May R. Meaning of Anxiety.- P.371. May repeats here what Heidegger wrote about the relationship between fear and anxiety: “Fear is anxiety that has fallen into the “world,” inauthentic and hidden from itself” (Heidegger M.SeinundZeit. -S.I89.) 231 May R. Meaning of Anxiety.-P.371.

Yu.V. Tikhonravov

ny experiences, intentions. Concrete sciences give us, in his opinion, knowledge about certain mechanisms of thinking and behavior, but not about this basis. In order to be able to understand the existence of each individual person, an ontology is needed. “The distinctive feature of existential analysis is, therefore, that it deals with ontology, with the existence of this concrete being that is before the psychotherapist” 232. The structure of such existence, according to May, is called upon to be revealed by existential phenomenology. Only after comprehending this integral structure can the study of various mechanisms of the psyche be of any benefit: “Cure from symptoms, undoubtedly desirable ... is not the main goal of therapy. The most important thing is the discovery by the individual of his being, his Dasein” 233. The essence of the therapy process is to assist “the patient in realizing and experiencing his existence” 234.

May denies the possibility of rational and objective knowledge of human existence. Science, he repeats after other existentialists, speaks the language of Cartesian dualism, separates subject and object, and is an expression of modern civilization, in which mutual alienation and depersonalization reign. However, man and the world are inextricably linked with each other, these are two poles of a single structural whole, being-in-the-world. The world of personality cannot be understood through a description of all kinds of factors external environment, which is only one of the modes of this being-in-the-world. According to May, there are many surrounding worlds - as many as there are individuals. “The world is a structure of semantic relations in which a person exists and in the image of which he participates” 235. The world includes past events, but they exist for the individual not on their own, not “objectively”, but depending on his attitude towards them, on the meaning that they have for him. The world also includes the capabilities of the individual, including those given by society and culture. Man is constantly building up his world.

2J - Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology.- P.37. -" Existence, -P.27.

114 Existence- P.77.

115 Existence.- P.59.

Psychotheology - Rollo May

Following Binswanger, May speaks of three main modes of the world. In the first of them - the surrounding world, the habitat - a person encounters all the diversity of natural forces and adapts to them. In the second world - the universe of "co-existence" - a person meets other people. Here we are no longer talking about adaptation, but about coexistence, which presupposes mutual recognition as individuals. The world around us is comprehended by modern biological and psychological theories; May considers Freudian teaching to be an important component of a correct description of this dimension of human existence. The world of “co-existence” is considered in various sociocultural theories, among which May singles out Sullivan’s neo-Freudian concept as the most correct.

However, May believes that a person’s own world cannot be reduced to these modes. This world, unique to everyone, presupposes self-awareness and should be the basis for seeing all human problems, since only here the world of inner meanings is revealed. Only by turning to this dimension can one understand what the objects around him mean for any individual, what meaning, say, a flower, an ocean, another person, etc. have for him.

Freud's teaching, according to May, correctly describes biopsychic determinants, the neo-Freudians supplemented it with social teaching, and May himself adds the top floor to this building - the doctrine of the inner world of each person. At the same time, he writes about the mutual penetration of all three modes, about the simultaneous existence of man in all three dimensions. In fact, the existence of nature and society is reduced by May to the existence of the individual. They are given only as elements of being-in-the-world; if the perceiving person disappears, the world disappears 236. In fact, if we are talking about my subjective picture of the world, then it is impossible without me and will disappear along with my disappearance. The meaning that I, unlike all other people, can give to a flower or another person is also my meaning. May goes further and adheres to the point of view that there are as many space-time continuums as there are individuals, and that it is impossible to talk about an objective existence independent of people’s consciousness. Being for May is being-in-the-world, then

sh See: Rutkevich A.M. From Freud to Heidegger: A Critical Essay on the Existential

psychoanalysis-M: Politizdat, I985.-C. 115.

Yu.V. Tikhonravov

is a set of semantic relations between two poles: a person and his world. In this case, it is impossible to talk about nature and society in themselves: this is nature and society as they are given to the subject. The only world we can talk about is our own world.

May devoted several works to discussing the question of the existential foundation of psychotherapy 237 . He considers the following structures of being-in-the-world as ontological conditions of human existence: centeredness, self-affirmation, participation, awareness, self-awareness, anxiety. Centeredness is the basis of a separate existence, different from others. It's about the uniqueness of each individual. Centeredness is not predetermined in a person. He must have the courage to see himself as a separate and independent center of everything around him, and to assert himself in this capacity. This is the meaning of existential "self-affirmation" a person must realize himself in his choice. If centrality indicates the uniqueness of each individual, then complicity reveals his necessary correlation with other people. Neurotic symptoms appear when either complicity or centrality is dominant. Isolation from everyone or complete absorption then takes the place of the interrelationship of autonomous existences. The subjective side of centrality is, according to May, awareness(or “awareness” -awareness). Every living being is endowed with the experience of itself, its desires, and needs. This experience exists even before clear consciousness and purposeful action. May considers self-awareness to be uniquely human. Finally, in the ontological sense anxiety the possibility of non-existence opens up to man.

May's system of existentials can be seen as an attempt to bring Heidegger's analytics closer to what is sometimes called "American common sense"May writes not about some kind of “being-with-in-the-world-existence,” but about self-affirmation, self-awareness, anxiety, which are familiar to one degree or another to every person. But as a result of such a grounding of Heidegger’s ontology, a complete confusion of philosophical (ontological) ) and concrete scientific (ontic) categories. When May was not yet a follower of Heidegger, he to some extent adhered to the socio-historical

Especially in detail in the book: Existential Psychology /Ed. R.May.-N.Y.- 1961

Psychotheology - Rollo May

approach and wrote in “The Meaning of Anxiety” that fear, anxiety, and guilt are experiences of people characteristic of certain socio-cultural entities at certain stages of their development. Having become an ontologist, he transferred into the realm of existentials those feelings experienced by his contemporaries, in particular his patients.

The concept outlined in May's most widely known book is of a similar nature. "Love and Will"(1969), which became a “national bestseller” in the United States. It contains an analysis of love and will as fundamental dimensions of human existence in their historical perspective and current phenomenology. The author demonstrates the position according to which expansion of the horizons of consciousness is achievable only on the path of reviving the unity of love and will, in which new sources of the meaning of existence in the schizoid world can be found. Love and will are recognized in this book as necessary conditions for human existence. May quotes Tillich: "Love is an ontological concept. Its emotional element is a consequence of its ontological nature." However, what kind of ontology are we talking about in this case? Modern psychology, on behalf of which May speaks, cannot, in the spirit of Empedocle, consider love and hate as forces governing the entire world. Christian teaching about merciful love also cannot serve as a basis for the sciences of man, since this would presuppose an uncritical acceptance of the dogmas of the Christian religion.

May's teaching on love is intended as a sublation of two concepts: Freud's theory of libido and Plato's doctrine of Eros. May wants to prove "that they are not only compatible, but that they are two halves, each of which is necessary for psychological development person" 238. Freud paid main attention to the biological prerequisites of love, described the influence of the past on the emotions of the individual. But "regression" to the biological prehistory of love does not explain it itself. Plato's teaching, in contrast to Freud's, May believes, gives a "progression": Eros is directed into the future. May would like to combine the physical (regressive) and spiritual (progressive)

MayR. Love and WilL-N.Y-l969.-P.88.

Yu.V. Tikhonravov

sive) beginnings of love, pointing out their common basis, which he considers the intentionality of human existence.

Eros, the “creative vitality,” according to May, is the deepest impulse of human existence. This “desire to establish unity, complete interrelationship” 239 is the center of human creative abilities, the “demonic feeling” that lies at the basis of existence. The concept of “demonic” is interpreted by May in the ancient sense: “the demonic can be both creative and destructive, being in the normal case both” 240. Demonic Eros turns out to be the unity of what May previously called self-affirmation and complicity. This is both the spontaneous vitality of an individual asserting himself and the basis of interpersonal relationships.

May names will as another fundamental property of human existence. It permeates all being-in-the-world, since a person becomes identical to himself only in the act of choice. The themes of possibility, freedom, determination, anxiety, guilt are now considered by May in connection with will as “the basic intentionality of existence.” His reflections bring to mind Nietzsche’s “will to power,” although May is far from thinking that power over others is a sign of authentic existence. But many themes of the “philosophy of life” come to the fore in this work of May, since both love and will become features of a certain primordial vitality that goes beyond its own limits. In the interaction of desire and will he sees the essence of human existence. Will is seen as an organizing principle that requires reflection, a conscious decision in the realization of desires. True, here May comes into conflict with his own idea about the identity of the will with the sphere of intentionality as a whole. Then any desire is already a manifestation of the will and there is no need for a special organizing principle of desire.

In intentionality, the direction of existence, its going beyond its own limits, May sees the foundation of human existence. Intentional acts form the semantic contents with which a person deals. This is “our way of understanding reality,” understanding the world and ourselves. The structure of intentional acts determines the mode of existence, being-in-the-world of each person.

Psychotheology - Rollo May

As for the goal of psychotherapy, May now sees it as identifying the patient’s basic intentional structure, which must be brought to his consciousness and helped to rebuild. The process of therapy consists, in his words, of “connecting three dimensions with each other - desire, will and decision” 241. The patient must first be taught to experience his own desires, then bring them to consciousness and accept himself as an autonomous person and, finally, make an appropriate decision, with full responsibility to assert himself in the world, thereby changing the structure of intentionality. Man is presented as a free existence that defines itself in the act of choice.

One of latest books Maya got its name for a reason "Courage to create" - to this he calls both his patients and all of humanity. Of course, creativity has been and remains the ideal of human activity. However, when May writes that each individual creates his own world, he does not only mean that human activity is capable of transforming the world in accordance with the needs of people. The world, according to May, changes with the transformation of the individual's own point of view.

This situation is also reflected in the understanding of psychotherapy: it should help the patient become able to recreate his goals, orientations, and attitudes. The model for May, as for Binswanger, is the life of the artist. To cure neurosis means to teach how to create, to make a person “an artist of his own life.” But, firstly, if mental health and artistic creativity are identical, then most people will have to be considered neurotic. Secondly, creativity is only in in rare cases may prove to be a cure for those who are truly ill. Neither willpower nor creative impulses will help most neurotics. Finally, human creativity itself becomes for May some kind of demonic, magical force, capable, at the will of a person, of changing not only his goals and attitudes, but also the entire surrounding reality. If you accept May's prescriptions, you can become like Don Quixote and live in a fantasy world that may be beautiful, but does not correspond to reality at all.

Yu.V. Tikhonravov

It turns out that May's Patients can only in imagination freely and responsibly choose themselves as great artists 242.

May doesn't stop there. Like many other representatives of humanistic and existential psychology, he calls for a “transformation of consciousness.” The Courage to Create also became a bestseller, and for obvious reasons. The time of its release - the mid-70s - was a time of widespread counterculture, whose adherents paid great attention to Eastern religions, meditation, and psychedelic drugs such as LSD. Although May, unlike some other existential analysts, is quite cautious in assessing such means of transforming consciousness, he is talking about the same thing. For example, he writes: "Ecstasy is a well-deserved ancient method of transcending our ordinary consciousness, helping us to achieve insights otherwise inaccessible. The element of ecstasy... is part and premise of every true symbol and myth: for if we truly participate in the symbol or myth , we are temporarily “withdrawn” and are “outside” ourselves” 243. Such complicity becomes for May the main characteristic of the authenticity of human existence. The rejection of positivist psychology thus leads May to mysticism: hidden behind calls to “create courageously” is a technique of ecstasy, participation in myth and ritual.

May became one of the most consistent supporters of the rejection of positivist approaches in psychology. Without going beyond the humanistic movement as a whole, May dissociated himself from the eclecticism of his colleagues. He believed that positivist methods play a very insignificant role in understanding the ontological characteristics of human existence.

People turn to psychology, May wrote, in search of solutions to their most pressing problems: love, hope, despair and anxiety related to the meaning of their lives 244. Psychologists, however, avoid confronting these purely human dilemmas. They explain love as sexual attraction; turn the alarm into

42 See: Rutkevich A.M. From Freud to Heidegger: A Critical Essay on the Existential

psychoanalysis.- M.: Politizdat, 1985.-P. 120..

""May R. The Courage to Create- N.Y.- 1978- P. 130.

will- N. Y.: W. W. Norton, 1969.- P. 18.

Psychotheology - Rollo May

physical stress; claim that our hope is just an illusion; identify despair with depression; reduce passion to the satisfaction of biological needs and turn pleasant relaxation into a simple release of tension. When, finally, in utter desperation, people act boldly and passionately to influence their destiny, they call it nothing more than a reaction to a stimulus.

Modern psychology, May emphasized, not only silences, but also simplifies the essential aspects of human experience itself 245. Hiding behind the indisputability of one or another methodological procedure, it avoids meeting the essential aspects of human existence, which are somehow “cut off” by the reductionist tendencies of objective measurement. If psychology cannot deal with the full range of a person's immediate experience and dilemmas, May argued, then the idea of ​​it as a science is mistaken.

In his own program of humanistic psychology, May argues that psychologists should abandon all claims to control and predict behavior and stop ignoring human subjectivity simply because it has no analogues in the animal kingdom 246 . A science that avoids giving that does not correspond to its methods is a defensive science. Any psychological study involving humans must focus on the whole person with all his life problems, and not just on animals, machines, behavior or diagnostic categories. The science of human nature should follow the humanistic model and study the unique properties of people - what he called "ontological characteristics of human existence" 247. These characteristics might include the ability of people to treat themselves as both subjects and objects, to choose and perform ethical actions, to think, to create symbols, and to participate in the historical development of their society.

Psychology, according to May, should adopt a phenomenological approach and study people in the immediate reality, as they really are, and not as projections of the psyche.

2. Rollo May. THE CONTRIBUTION OF EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOTHERAPY

The fundamental contribution of existential therapy is its understanding of man as being. She does not deny the value of dynamism and the study of specific behavioral patterns in appropriate places. But she argues that drives or driving forces, whatever they are called, can only be understood in the context of the structure of existence of the person with whom we are dealing. A distinctive feature of existential analysis is the consideration, together with ontology, the science of being, together with Dasein, the existence of this particular individual sitting opposite the psychotherapist.

Before we get to the definition of being and the terminology associated with it, let's start in an existential spirit - remind ourselves that what we are talking about must be experienced by the sensitivity therapist countless times a day. This is the experience of an instant meeting with another person who appears to us as a completely different being compared to what we knew about him. The term "instant" does not refer to real time, but to the quality of the experience. We may know a great deal about a patient from his case notes, and we may hold certain opinions because of how other interviewers have described him. But when the patient himself enters, we often have an unexpected, sometimes very strong, impression of “this is a stranger.” Usually this impression carries with it an element of surprise, not in the sense of confusion or bewilderment, but in the etymological sense of being taken by surprise. This does not at all mean criticism of the messages of our colleagues, since we have such experiences of meeting even with our long-time acquaintances or work colleagues. The data we learn about a patient can be quite accurate and worth knowing. But the point is rather to grasp the existence of another person, which occurred on a completely different level, different from concrete knowledge about him. Obviously, knowledge of the drives and mechanisms of another person is useful; familiarity with the stereotypes of his interpersonal relationships may be directly related to the problem under study; information about his social environment, the meaning of specific gestures and symbolic actions, etc. etc. are undoubtedly also relevant. But all this manifests itself on a completely different level when we meet the most real fact, overlapping everything else, namely, directly with the living person himself. When we find that all our enormous knowledge about a person suddenly turns into a new form, we should not conclude that this knowledge was incorrect. This transformation means that this knowledge receives meaning, form and meaning from the reality of a particular person, of which these individual moments are an expression. Nothing said here is meant to discount the collection and serious study of all the specific data that can be obtained about a particular person. This is just a general perception. But no one should close their eyes to the experimental fact that these data form a configuration that manifests itself when meeting the person himself. This also illustrates a fairly common feeling that everyone who interviews people has. We can say that we do not feel the other person and are forced to continue the interview until the data breaks into our consciousness in its own form. We especially cannot feel another person when we ourselves are hostile or resist the relationship. Thus, we keep the person at a distance, and it does not matter how reasonable we are at the moment. This is the classic difference between acquaintance and knowledge about. When we want to know a person, then knowledge about him must be subordinated to the fact of his actual existence.

In ancient Greek and Hebrew, the verb "to know" also meant "to have sexual intercourse." We find confirmation of this again and again in the King James translation of the Bible: “Abraaham knew his wife, and she conceived...”, etc. Thus, the etymological connection between “to know” and “to love” is very close. Although we cannot deal with this complex issue now, we can at least say that to know another person, as well as to love him, implies a union, a dialectical participation in the other. Binswanger calls this the dual mode. To be able to understand another, a person must at least be ready to love him.

Encountering the existence of another person has a power that can greatly shake a person and cause an explosion of anxiety in him. But it can also be a source of joy. In any case, it has the power to capture the essence of a person and make changes in him. It is understandable that, for the sake of his own comfort, the therapist may be tempted to withdraw from the encounter, thinking of the other person only as a patient or concentrating only on certain mechanisms. But if in a relationship with another person a mainly technical position is used, then it is obvious that, by defending against anxiety, the therapist not only isolates himself from the other, but also greatly distorts reality. In this case, he does not actually see the other person. This does not at all diminish the importance of technology, but demonstrates that technology, like data, must be subject to the fact of the reality of two people in the room.

Sartre showed this point superbly in a slightly different direction. If we consider man, he writes, "as one who can be analyzed and reduced to primary data, his motives (or desires) determined, his subject as the property of an object," then we may indeed end up developing an impressive system of substances , which we can later call mechanisms, dynamisms or stereotypes. But we are faced with a dilemma. Our human existence has become "a kind of formless clay, which can receive (desires) passively, or can be reduced to a simple bundle of all these irresistible attractions or tendencies. In either case, the person disappears. We can no longer find the one with whom it happened or other experience."

3.17. ELEMENTS OF MANIPULATIVE PSYCHOTHERAPY IN TRADITIONAL METHODS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY. MANIPULATIONS IN HYPNOTHERAPY It is known that the most effective methods of hypnotization are based on an element of delusion. We have already talked about binding in hypnotherapy above. In order for this