Chapter 11 May: Existential Psychology 327to survive. “Not until I developed some ‘fight,’ some sense of personal responsibil-
ity for the fact that it was I who had the tuberculosis, an assertion of my own will
to live, did I make lasting progress” (May, 1972, p. 14).
As May learned to listen to his body, he discovered that healing is an active,
not a passive, process. The person who is sick, be it physiologically or psycho-
logically, must be an active participant in the therapeutic process. May realized
this truth for himself as he recovered from tuberculosis, but it was only later that
he was able to see that his psychotherapy patients also had to fight against their
disturbance in order to get better (May, 1972).
During his illness and recovery, May was writing a book on anxiety. To
better understand the subject, he read both Freud and Søren Kierkegaard, the great
Danish existential philosopher and theologian. May admired Freud, but he was
more deeply moved by Kierkegaard’s view of anxiety as a struggle against nonbe-
ing, that is, loss of consciousness (May, 1969a).
After May recovered from his illness, he wrote his dissertation on the subject
of anxiety and the next year published it under the title The Meaning of Anxiety
(May, 1950). Three years later, he wrote Man’s Search for Himself (May, 1953),
the book that gained him some recognition not only in professional circles but
among other educated people as well. In 1958, he collaborated with Ernest Angel
and Henri Ellenberger to publish Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and
Psychology. This book introduced American psychotherapists to the concepts of
existential therapy and continued the popularity of the existential movement. May’s
best-known work, Love and Will (1969b), became a national best-seller and won
the 1970 Ralph Waldo Emerson Award for humane scholarship. In 1971, May won
the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Contribution to the Sci-
ence and Profession of Clinical Psychology Award. In 1972, the New York Soci-
ety of Clinical Psychologists presented him with the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Award for his book Power and Innocence (1972), and in 1987, May received the
American Psychological Foundation Gold Medal Award for Lifetime Contributions
to Professional Psychology.
During his career, May was a visiting professor at both Harvard and Prince-
ton and lectured at such institutions as Yale, Dartmouth, Columbia, Vassar, Oberlin,
and the New School for Social Research. In addition, he was an adjunct professor
at New York University, chairman for the Council for the Association of Existen-
tial Psychology and Psychiatry, president of the New York Psychological Asso-
ciation, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the American Foundation for
Mental Health.
In 1969, May and his first wife, Florence DeFrees, were divorced after
30 years of marriage. He later married Ingrid Kepler Scholl, but that marriage too
ended in divorce. On October 22, 1994, after 2 years of declining health, May died
in Tiburon, California, where he had made his home since 1975. He was survived
by his third wife, Georgia Lee Miller Johnson (a Jungian analyst whom he married
in 1988); son, Robert; and twin daughters, Allegra and Carolyn.
Through his books, articles, and lectures, May was the best-known American
representative of the existential movement. Nevertheless, he spoke out against the
tendency of some existentialists to slip into an antiscientific or even anti-intellectual
posture (May, 1962). He was critical of any attempt to dilute existential psychology