Chapter 11 May: Existential Psychology 325condition made him a popular writer among laypeople as well as professional
psychologists.
Many people, May believed, lack the courage to face their destiny, and in
the process of fleeing from it, they give up much of their freedom. Having negated
their freedom, they likewise run away from their responsibility. Not being willing
to make choices, they lose sight of who they are and develop a sense of insig-
nificance and alienation. In contrast, healthy people challenge their destiny, cherish
their freedom, and live authentically with other people and with themselves. They
recognize the inevitability of death and have the courage to live life in the present.
Biography of Rollo May
Rollo Reese May was born April 21, 1909, in Ada, Ohio, the first son of the six
children born to Earl Tittle May and Matie Boughton May. Neither parent was
very well educated, and May’s early intellectual climate was virtually nonexistent.
In fact, when his older sister had a psychotic breakdown some years later, May’s
father attributed it to too much education (Bilmes, 1978)!
At an early age, May moved with his family to Marine City, Michigan, where
he spent most of his childhood. As a young boy, May was not particularly close
to either of his parents, who frequently argued with each other and eventually
separated. May’s father, a secretary for the Young Men’s Christian Association,
moved frequently during May’s youth. May’s mother often left the children to care
for themselves and, according to May’s description, was a “bitch-kitty on wheels”
(Rabinowitz, Good, & Cozad, 1989, p. 437). May attributed his own two failed
marriages to his mother’s unpredictable behavior and to his older sister’s psychotic
episode.
During his childhood, May found solitude and relief from family strife by
playing on the shores of the St. Clair River. The river became his friend, a serene
place to swim during the summer and to ice skate during the winter. He claimed
to have learned more from the river than from the school he attended in Marine
City (Rabinowitz et al., 1989). As a youth, he acquired an interest in art and lit-
erature, interests that never left him. He first attended college at Michigan State
University, where he majored in English. However, he was asked to leave school
soon after he became editor of a radical student magazine. May then transferred
to Oberlin College in Ohio, from which he received a bachelor’s degree in 1930.
For the next 3 years, May followed a course very similar to the one traveled
by Erik Erikson some 10 years earlier (see Chapter 7). He roamed throughout eastern
and southern Europe as an artist, painting pictures and studying native art (Harris,
1969). Actually, the nominal purpose for May’s trip was to tutor English at Anatolia
College in Saloniki, Greece. This job provided him time to work as an itinerant artist
in Turkey, Poland, Austria, and other countries. However, by his second year, May
was beginning to become lonely. As a consequence, he poured himself into his work
as a teacher, but the harder he worked, the less effective he became.
Finally in the spring of that second year I had what is called, euphemistically, a
nervous breakdown. Which meant simply that the rules, principles, values, by
which I used to work and live simply did not suffice anymore. I got so
completely fatigued that I had to go to bed for two weeks to get enough energy