342 Part III Humanistic/Existential Theories
of Oedipus’s life—birth, exile and separation, identity, incest and patricide, repres-
sion of guilt, and finally, conscious meditation and death—touch everyone and
make this myth a potentially powerful healing force in people’s lives.
May’s concept of myths is comparable to Carl Jung’s idea of a collective
un conscious in that myths are archetypal patterns in the human experience; they are
avenues to universal images that lie beyond individual experience (see Chapter 4).
And like archetypes, myths can contribute to psychological growth if people will
embrace them and allow them to open up a new reality. Tragically, many people
deny their universal myths and thus risk alienation, apathy, and emptiness—the
principal ingredients of psychopathology.Psychopathology
According to May, apathy and emptiness—not anxiety and guilt—are the malaise
of modern times. When people deny their destiny or abandon their myths, they
lose their purpose for being; they become directionless. Without some goal or
destination, people become sick and engage in a variety of self-defeating and self-
destructive behaviors.
Many people in modern Western societies feel alienated from the world
(Umwelt), from others (Mitwelt), and especially from themselves (Eigenwelt). They
feel helpless to prevent natural disasters, to reverse industrialization, or to make
contact with another human being. They feel insignificant in a world that increas-
ingly dehumanizes the individual. This sense of insignificance leads to apathy and
to a state of diminished consciousness (May, 1967).
May saw psychopathology as lack of communication—the inability to know
others and to share oneself with them. Psychologically disturbed individuals deny
their destiny and thus lose their freedom. They erect a variety of neurotic symp-
toms, not to regain their freedom, but to renounce it. Symptoms narrow the per-
son’s phenomenological world to the size that makes coping easier. The compulsive
person adopts a rigid routine, thereby making new choices unnecessary.
Symptoms may be temporary, as when stress produces a headache, or they may
be relatively permanent, as when early childhood experiences produce apathy and
emptiness. Philip’s psychopathology was tied to his early environment with a dis-
turbed mother and a schizophrenic sister. These experiences did not cause his pathol-
ogy in the sense that they alone produced it. However, they did set up Philip to learn
to adjust to his world by suppressing his anger, by developing a sense of apathy, and
by trying to be a “good little boy.” Neurotic symptoms, therefore, do not represent a
failure of adjustment, but rather a proper and necessary adjustment by which one’s
Dasein can be preserved. Philip’s behavior toward his two wives and Nicole represents
a denial of his freedom and a self-defeating attempt to escape from his destiny.Psychotherapy
Unlike Freud, Adler, Rogers, and other clinically oriented personality theorists,
May did not establish a school of psychotherapy with avid followers and identifi-
able techniques. Nevertheless, he wrote extensively on the subject, rejecting the