Abstract
Rollo May was a towering figure in American psychology and psychotherapy. Over a career spanning more than 50 years, he originated both existential psychology and existential psychotherapy in the United States and is generally ranked alongside Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers as cofounder of humanistic psychology (Compton & Hoffman, 2020; Ryckman, 2014). At the time of May’s death in 1994, he was among the most well-known psychological thinkers in the world and certainly merited a penetrating biography. By the late 1990s, most scholars in humanistic psychology were aware that historian Robert Abzug was at work on this project—and, full disclosure, I shared with him at that time my 3-hour recorded interview with May relating to my biography of Maslow (Hoffman, 1999). Like many others, I waited patiently for years, and then decades, for May’s life story to be published, and it has now been done. As it is unlikely that a second biography will appear in the near future, the strengths and limitations of Abzug’s book seem important for analysis.
First, the good news: overall, Psyche and Soul in America provides a detailed, scholarly examination of May’s career, beginning with his formative intellectual influences in college and continuing through his ministerial and psychoanalytic training, his political activism on behalf of clinical psychology as a profession independent of psychiatry, his growing fame as an author of books such as The Meaning of Anxiety, Existential Psychology, Love and Will, and The Courage to Create, and lastly his years as a venerated public intellectual, still prolific author, sought-after therapist, and supervising clinician in the San Francisco Bay area.
May never wrote a memoir (he apparently abandoned the effort in its early stage), and so this book reveals a variety of significant, fascinating particulars. These include Alfred Adler’s personal and enduring impact, the long friendship between May and the Austrian émigré artist Joseph Binder, May’s major bout with tuberculosis as a life-changing event, Erich Fromm’s ineffectiveness as May’s psychotherapist, May’s original work on anxiety, and the catalyzing effect of his engagement with European existentialism to forge a more hopeful, “American” version. In some of Abzug’s most compelling writing, he delineates how during the period immediately after May’s seminal anthology Existence was published in 1958, it prompted innovators such as Allport, Maslow, and Rogers to incorporate existential notions into their conceptions of human personality, and particularly, of individual growth and therapeutic change. Thus, in explicating how May’s outlook differed from that of most European existentialists, Abzug observed, (May) made no apologies for what he admitted was an American bias toward `our concern with helping anyone who suffers, quixotic though that may seem at times.’ In addition, he doubted one could develop an existential psychology without dealing with real people in crisis. (p. 214)
That is, May objected to the tendency of European existentialists to embrace lofty theories rather than seek to apply these notions to help people in their everyday lives. It is intriguing that Maslow also rejected aspects of mainstream European existentialism at the same time, though for different reasons: specifically, its scientific naïveté in ignoring innate biological factors such as temperament that influence and constrain human personality (Hoffman, 1999) as well as what he vividly called its “high-IQ whimpering on a cosmic scale” (Maslow, 1961, p. 57).
Psyche and Soul in America also well chronicles May’s unstinting rejection by the mid-1960s of what he perceived as the tendency of such humanistically oriented theorists as Fromm to minimize life’s intrinsic disappointments and pain. In this regard, May was strongly influenced by his mentor-friend theologian Paul Tillich in arguing that we all share the same human condition and that the goal of psychotherapy is not to make problems disappear, but to help us grapple with life’s challenges as fully and meaningfully as possible. As the decades progressed into the 1980s, May increasingly saw Rogers as likewise naïve for advancing a view of human personality and society that either ignored or trivialized our inborn capacity for evil. The two exchanged an influential series of open letters, published in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, focusing on precisely this issue (May, 1982; Rogers, 1982). Abzug also recounts clearly how and why May as a former minister rejected the budding field of transpersonal psychology as a scientific discipline, to the extent that he wrote an open letter in the American Psychological Association (APA) Monitor in 1986 opposing a petition that had asked the APA to grant it divisional status. This letter shocked many of his friends and admirers, and their backlash caused May to muse in his diary, “I was not upset objectively, but (felt) sadness that I had hurt them—they sought religion under a different heading” (p. 326). May (1989, p. 244) later stated succinctly, “My objection to transpersonal psychology is that it blurs the distinction between (religion and psychology).”
Another virtue of the book is the clarity with which it presents May’s vision on the liberating power of art and music to bring joy, even transcendence, into our everyday lives. May was a talented painter, and though Binder reportedly talked him out of pursuing a career as a professional artist, May’s writings on creativity have been among his most influential and inspiring. For example, the contemporary artist Paul Palnik recalled, In the late 1970s, I was a young artist trying to gain the courage to stand on my own. Browsing in a local bookstore here in Columbus, Ohio, I found Rollo May’s book The Courage to Create. Every page fed my soul. In his lovely graceful style, May’s gentle words of encouragement changed my life. (Palnik, March 4, 2021, personal communication)
As for its shortcomings in chronicling May’s career, Psyche and Soul in America has an important omission: failing to mention his final book, a collaboration with the young Kirk Schneider. Titled The Psychology of Existence, it was an anthology of classic and contemporary essays on existential thought combined with clinical guidelines and case studies illustrating what the authors called “existential-integrative therapy.” Schneider, who later served as editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology for 8 years, recalled, Rollo (who had been one of my dissertation advisors and with whom I had a close collegial relationship) invited me in the fall of 1991 to co-author a volume on existential psychology to reach the emerging generation of clinicians and counselors. Following that spectacular offer, I spent the next 2 and a half years working on it with Rollo. Originally, he was to be the lead author of the work, which was commissioned by McGraw-Hill, but after suffering a moderate stroke, Rollo felt he could no longer serve in this capacity and requested that I take over as lead author. . . . The Psychology of Existence was a pivotal book in the course and development of American existential psychology, bringing Rollo’s legacy to a new generation of scholars and practitioners. (Schneider, March 3, 2021, personal communication)
As Adler’s biographer (Hoffman, 1994), I found another omission to be puzzling: why young May, who had been so inspired by Adler in Vienna, apparently never maintained their relationship when both were residing in New York City during the mid-to-late 1930s. Especially as May’s first two books were replete with reference to Adlerian theory, this break in their personal involvement seems odd. Did the two men have a falling out, as later occurred with Adler and the young Maslow? Alas, Abzug offers no clues. Oddly, too, he devotes only two sentences to May’s most autobiographic book, My Quest for Beauty, published in 1985. And, although May was actively training clinical psychologists during the 1980s, this dimension of his professional life in the San Francisco Bay area is omitted.
Psyche and Soul in America relates important aspects of May’s personal life that undoubtedly influenced his evolving psychological outlook. Born in 1909, he was the oldest son in a dysfunctional Midwestern family of six children, and often felt lonely and alienated in his small-town conservative Protestant milieu. His parents fought constantly and eventually divorced in an era when it was rare and socially taboo. Even after May’s book Love and Will became a bestseller, catapulting him to permanent celebrity status in American culture (he was interviewed for People magazine in 1976), he never shook off a sense of inadequacy stemming from his humble and troubled origins. Making use of unfettered access that May allotted to his personal diaries, Abzug is also convincing in portraying how May’s lifelong difficulties with romantic love and intimacy originated in family-of-origin problems with his emotionally unstable mother and older sister.
Unfortunately, Psyche and Soul falls down in presenting a full portrait of May’s life apart from his influential career and strained romantic relationships. Although providing many pages of detailed descriptions about May’s turbulent 30-year first marriage and sexual liaisons, there is virtually nothing about what he was like as a father of three children. This omission seems especially egregious in that May asserted that he had stayed in his long, contentious marriage for the sake of his children (Rabinowitz et al., 1989), a very common attitude among May’s generation. True enough, Abzug noted at the outset that May’s grown children declined to be interviewed for the book. Nevertheless, it strains credulity that virtually nothing in May’s diaries existed with regard to his experience of fatherhood from young adulthood through old age. For example, what gave him parental joy or anguish? As a former minister as well as an existential psychologist, what did he most seek to impart in values and life-lessons to his children? Was he self-disclosing or guarded in recounting his troubled Midwestern family upbringing? Certainly, this biographical dimension would be relevant to clinicians, educators, and others today interested in May’s life.
To a lesser extent, the same biographical void exists with regard to May’s involvement with friends, colleagues, and students. What was he like as a longtime though intermittent college professor? Or as a mentor? Aloof, amiable, critical, demanding, moody, or inspiring? How about as an intellectual collaborator? On these questions, meager information is provided. As both a biographer (Hoffman, 1994, 1999) and an avid reader of biographies (which, to me, lie at the fascinating nexus of personality, culture, and history), I wanted to know: What made Rollo May smile or laugh? What kind of jokes did he tell? What were his tender moods like? We know that he loved to paint and view beauty in art and nature, but how about contemporary literature, film, or music? May’s daughter Allegra recounted to me that her father played the trombone in college, a fact which suggests a musical personality different, say, from that of an amateur classical violinist like Einstein. She also related that because her father was “an artist by hobby,” he encouraged his daughters in art (Allegra May, September 28, 2020, personal communication). Such facts are absent from this book.
Ultimately, I wonder if Abzug was not overly reliant on May’s personal diaries in seeking to elucidate his life. Psychologist William Compton has observed that a diary can yield valuable insight into an individual’s inner struggles, anxieties, hopes, and disappointments, but it cannot give a comprehensive picture. Why? Because none of us can see ourselves as others see us, as May would surely have agreed. It has also long been my clinical experience that most people write in their diary during times of solitude, when feelings of loneliness or sadness rather than contentment or joy are likely to be manifested. After reading Soul and Psyche in America, I am convinced that this mindset was also true for Rollo May.
Two years before May’s death at the age of 85, he wrote in a psychology journal, “In the deepest levels of the human adventure, the sense of awe and wonder are present” (May, 1992, p. 4). It was a hard-won insight. For the countless persons inspired by May’s intellectual, literary, and therapeutic achievements, the presentation of his life as a spiritual adventure filled with awe and wonder still awaits.
Footnotes
Author Biography