Chapter 11 May: Existential Psychology 343idea that psychotherapy should reduce anxiety and ease feelings of guilt. Instead,
he suggested that psychotherapy should make people more human: that is, help
them expand their consciousness so that they will be in a better position to make
choices (M. H. Hall, 1967). These choices, then, lead to the simultaneous growth
of freedom and responsibility.
May believed that the purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free. He
argued that therapists who concentrate on a patient’s symptoms are missing the
more important picture. Neurotic symptoms are simply ways of running away from
freedom and an indication that patients’ inner possibilities are not being used.
When patients become more free, more human, their neurotic symptoms usually
disappear, their neurotic anxiety gives way to normal anxiety, and their neurotic
guilt is replaced by normal guilt. But these gains are secondary and not the central
purpose of therapy. May insisted that psychotherapy must be concerned with help-
ing people experience their existence, and that relieving symptoms is merely a
by-product of that experience.
How does a therapist help patients become free, responsible human beings?
May did not offer many specific directions for therapists to follow. Existential
therapists have no special set of techniques or methods that can be applied to all
patients. Instead, they have only themselves, their own humanity to offer. They
must establish a one-to-one relationship (Mitwelt) that enables patients to become
more aware of themselves and to live more fully in their own world (Eigenwelt).
This approach may mean challenging patients to confront their destiny, to experi-
ence despair, anxiety, and guilt. But it also means establishing an I-thou encounter
in which both therapist and patient are viewed as subjects rather than objects. In
an I-thou relationship, the therapist has empathy for the patient’s experience and
is open to the patient’s subjective world.
May (1991) also described therapy as partly religion, partly science, and
partly friendship. The friendship, however, is not an ordinary social relationship; rather,
it calls for the therapist to be confronting and to challenge the patient. May believed
that the relationship itself is therapeutic, and its transforming effects are independent
of anything therapists might say or any theoretical orientation they might have.
Our task is to be guide, friend, and interpreter to persons on their journeys
through their private hells and purgatories. Specifically our task is to help
patients get to the point where they can decide whether they wish to remain
victims... or whether they choose to leave this victim-state and venture
through purgatory with the hope of achieving some sense of paradise. Our
patients often, toward the end, are understandably frightened by the possibility
of freely deciding for themselves whether to take their chances by completing
the quest they have bravely begun. (May, 1991, p. 165)
Philosophically, May held many of the same beliefs as Carl Rogers (see
Chapter 10). Basic to both approaches is the notion of therapy as a human encoun-
ter: that is, an I-thou relationship with the potential to facilitate growth within both
the therapist and the patient. In practice, however, May was much more likely to
ask questions, to delve into a patient’s early childhood, and to suggest possible
meanings of current behavior.
For example, he explained to Philip that his relationship with Nicole was an
attempt to hold on to his mother. Rogers would have rejected such a technique