Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionIII. Humanistic/Existential
Theories- May: Existential
Psychology
(^350) © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2009
344 Part III Humanistic/Existential Theories
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 behavior
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 minis-
ter 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 ex-
istential theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich, then a recent refugee from Ger-
many 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 (see Chapter 8), president and cofounder of the William Alan-
son White Institute. May was impressed with Sullivan’s notion that the therapist 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 7), 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 fac-
ulty 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 con-
tinued to serve as assistant professor of psychiatry at the William Alanson White In-
stitute until 1974.
Prior to receiving his doctorate, May underwent the most profound experience
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 attitude.
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 to sur-
vive. “Not until I developed some ‘fight,’ some sense of personal responsibility for