326 Part III Humanistic/Existential Theories
to continue my teaching. I had learned enough psychology at college to know
that these symptoms meant that something was wrong with my whole way of
life. I had to find some new goals and purposes for my living and to relinquish
my moralistic, somewhat rigid way of existence. (May, 1985, p. 8)
From that point on, May began to listen to his inner voice, the one that spoke to
him of beauty. “It seems it had taken a collapse of my whole former way of life
for this voice to make itself heard” (p. 13).
A second experience in Europe also left a lasting impression on him, namely,
his attendance at Alfred Adler’s 1932 summer seminars at a resort in the mountains
above Vienna. May greatly admired Adler and learned much about human behav-
ior and about himself during that time (Rabinowitz et al., 1989).
After May returned to the United States in 1933, he enrolled at Union Theo-
logical Seminary in New York, the same seminary Carl Rogers had attended 10
years earlier. Unlike Rogers, however, May did not enter the seminary to become
a minister but rather to ask the ultimate questions concerning the nature of human
beings (Harris, 1969). While at the Union Theological Seminary, he met the
renowned existential theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich, then a recent refugee
from Germany and a faculty member at the seminary. May learned much of his
philosophy from Tillich, and the two men remained friends for more than 30 years.
Although May had not gone to the seminary to be a preacher, he was ordained
as a Congregational minister in 1938 after receiving a Master of Divinity degree.
He then served as a pastor for 2 years, but finding parish work meaningless, he
quit to pursue his interest in psychology. He studied psychoanalysis at the William
Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology while
working as a counselor to male students at City College of New York. At about
this time, he met Harry Stack Sullivan, president and cofounder of the William
Alanson White Institute. May was impressed with Sullivan’s notion that the thera-
pist is a participant observer and that therapy is a human adventure capable of
enhancing the life of both patient and therapist. He also met and was influenced
by Erich Fromm (see Chapter 8), who at that time was a faculty member at the
William Alanson White Institute.
In 1946, May opened his own private practice and, 2 years later, joined the
faculty of the William Alanson White Institute. In 1949, at the relatively advanced
age of 40, he earned a PhD in clinical psychology from Columbia University. He
continued to serve as assistant professor of psychiatry at the William Alanson
White Institute until 1974.
Prior to receiving his doctorate, May underwent the most profound experi-
ence of his life. While still in his early thirties, he contracted tuberculosis and spent
3 years at the Saranac Sanitarium in upstate New York. At that time, no medication
for tuberculosis was available, and for a year and a half, May did not know
whether he would live or die. He felt helpless and had little to do except wait for
the monthly X-ray that would tell whether the cavity in his lung was getting larger
or smaller (May, 1972).
At that point, he began to develop some insight into the nature of his illness.
He realized that the disease was taking advantage of his helpless and passive atti-
tude. He saw that the patients around him who accepted their illness were the very
ones who tended to die, whereas those who fought against their condition tended