Existential Psychology: Rollo May - Research Paper Example

? Michelle Underwood Research Paper: Existential Psychology September 29, Existential psychology has developed largely due to the efforts of Rollo May, who, with the help of Yalom, Adler and other psychologists, developed the theory to its current position. Existential psychology is a sum of many basic principles, but perhaps the most important include the understanding of an individual as a summation of the whole instead of as individual patterns. The concept of being is especially important in understanding a patient, and is therefore the basis of Rollo May’s theory. The principle of anxiety is also described as equally important in understanding the being, since, anxieties shape the destiny of an individual. With these factors also come the principle of guilt and guilt feelings, which, like anxiety, shape the fears and achievements of an individual. The concept of the significance of time is derived from another concept, that of being-in-the-world. This concept describes the three forms of the being in the world; Umwelt, Mitwelt and Eigenwelt, which refer to the biological world, with-world and the own-world of an individual. These concepts are then explained practically, with the need to understand human experiences, the life of Abraham Lincoln, and the treatment of traumatic stress using existentialism. Biography of Rollo May Existential psychology is a theory that is best known due to Rollo May, an American existential psychologist. Existentialism has developed over the years and is currently applied over the world for therapy and other uses. Rollo May was born in 1909 in Ohio, and research indicates that he had a rough background growing up (Schneider, 1999). His parents had constant fights and eventually broke up, and Rollo was left with the responsibility of taking care of his siblings, including a sister who eventually had a nervous breakdown. He started his education in Michigan State University but doe to some radical activities, he was discontinued and had to attend Oberlin College, where he got his first degree in English. Thereafter, he spent the next couple of years as a teacher in Greece, where he met and worked with the renowned psychotherapist, Alfred Adler (Schneider, 1999). He worked as a priest when he came back to the States but later left to start education as a psychologist. After being diagnosed with tuberculosis and sent to a sanatorium for close to two years, he attended a theological college and later studied for a PhD in clinical psychology. In his life, Rollo worked as a counselor, member of the faculty and fellow in different graduate institutions and eventually started his own practice. In the later years of his life, he relocated to California, where he spent his remaining years and did at 85 due to congestive heart failure. He is best known as an author of many books, books that expounded on his theory of existential psychology (Schneider, 1999). Existential Psychology: Basic Principles According to May and Yalom (1967), existential psychology started rising in Europe in the 40s and 50s due to the need to understand human beings in a way more reliable that current ideas and theories. The basic idea behind the theory is the understanding of an individual as a summation of the existing instead of the individual drives, characteristics or conditions. In his career, Rollo May came up with different basic concepts that define existentialism, and these concepts have been developed and summarized as shown below. The main concept of existentialism is the concept of being, where the patient is encouraged to understand the concept of being in therapy (May and Yalom, 2005). Rollo stated that the realization of the individual being can have profound effect on the patient, for example, that one lives and can take one’s own life at any time. Rollo stated that the individual is victimized by the environment until the realization that the individual can chose his or her own being. However, the concept of being cannot be easily defined since the individual usually measures status according to social position or determination by the outside environment. The understanding of the being comes to the understanding of the existence of “I am”, which is the basic embodiment of a person. The moment a patient grasps this concept and lets go of the outside environment, the goals of existentialism are achieved. The other principle of existentialism is the concept of anxiety, which Rollo defined as the threats to an individual’s existence or to the values that define the individual. In existentialist psychology, one of the best ways of ensuring healing is by helping the patient deal with anxiety, which is more basic than fear (Wedding and Corsini, 2010; May and Yalom, 2005). Once anxieties are reduced, the fears that the patient faces can then be reduced or eliminated. Existential psychology focuses on two main forms of anxiety; normal and neurotic anxiety. From existentialism, it can be determined that normal anxiety is proportionate to the situation being faced by the patient, does not require to be repressed, and can be used creatively to develop the patient. If the patient learns to face his or her anxieties, like the agreement that one must die, fears can be overcome. The creative application comes with the identification of the situation from which the anxiety arose and dealing with it. Conversely, neurotic anxiety is never appropriate to situations being faced, for example, a parent might be anxious that a deaf child would be taunted by playmates, so they never let the child out of sight. Neurotic anxiety is also repressed and never let out, which means that it is never constructive to the individual. From these definitions of anxiety, existentialism tries to do away with neurotic anxiety while at the same time using normal anxiety to develop a patient. One other basic concept of existential psychology is guilt and guilt feelings, which, like anxiety, takes both the normal and neurotic forms (Marino, 2004). Neurotic guilt develops from fantasized mistakes and tends to be regressed. Conversely, normal guilt sensitizes the individual to ethical mistakes and can be used to develop the moral standing of an individual. Another form of guilt comes from the failure of a patient or individual to live up to their potential in life. This form of guilt is inborn and is borne to the existence of an individual, the existence that bore the potentials in the first place (Marino, 2004). Existential psychology also takes basis in the significance of time, where psychologists agree that the most important human experiences occur in the dimension of time rather than space (Wedding and Corsini, 2010). Existential psychology agrees that the error of the current human way is the placing of the individual in space rather than in time. Rollo stated that this distortion loses the individual existential relationship with itself, the environment and individuals around the self. However, it should be understood that quantitative time has little to do with existential psychology, for example, the degree of hatred cannot be measured by the time it has been, rather by the inner meaning of the situation. The last important concept of existential psychology is the being-in-the-world, where the therapist must strive to understand the patient’s position in the world in which he lives (Wedding and Corsini, 2010; May and Yalom, 2005). The human world is defined in different forms of relationships with the environment and people, and existential psychology defines three modes of the world. The first form of the world is Umwelt, which defines the world around an individual. Umwelt includes the biological world, which basically refers to the physical environment of the person. For all beings, this first form of the world also includes the biological drives that define a person, instincts and needs. The second form of the world is the Mitwelt, which refers to the with-world of an individual. This includes the fellow human beings with whom an individual relates. This second form of the world defines what things in the world uniquely mean to an individual. The third and final form of the world is the Eigenwelt, or the own-world. This form of the world defines the relationships that the individual has with the self; it deals with self-awareness and self-relatedness. From the three forms of the world, we can then learn to understand love through the concept of time described above. Practical Examples of Existentialism After the examination of the basic principles underlying Rollo May’s existential psychology theory, some practical examples are here discussed. This will be done by focusing on De Castro’s (2009) exposition on the need to understand human experiences before trying to explain them. This is followed by an examination of the life of Abraham Lincoln and its relation to the existential theory of psychology as explained by Merwin (2012). The life of Lincoln is a near-perfect model of the theory brought by May, and finally, the application of May’s theory to treatment is discussed. This is done by looking at the application of the theory in treating traumatic stress. This position is got from Pitchford (2009), who applied the existential psychology theory to data on the treatment of PTSD in combat veterans. From the above analysis, one major factor discussed is the need to understand human beings as a whole rather than as a sum of small parts. According to De Castro (2009), this is expanded to include the need to understand the being and circumstances surrounding life before trying to explain them. Using the three forms of the world discussed previously, the human being or patient should not be conceptualized from a predetermined state. Doing this would mean that we use the past to determine the present and future, which would restrict the being from fully developing in the present state. For example, if we only consider the being from past actions and circumstances, or using their objectives in life, even if the objectives are to lead to self-actualization, it would mean that we do not deviate from our own predeterminations of the being. This means that we would only be accepting information that support our already made predetermination and avoid other useful ideas that might help in the creation of a useful perspective. De Castro (2009), states that every human experience, both positive and negative is useful in the determination of the meaning of the being. An application of May’s theory simply means the examination and understanding of all the aspects of the human being before forming opinions that try to explain the being. To understand why an individual is what he is, it is inherently important to understand what the individual is, meaning that the present is used before the past is examined, which can then lay a basis for the future. This application is explained better in the life of Abraham Lincoln, which is discussed below as explained by another author. This takes the meaning of the past of an individual, the circumstances and experiences that shape life before the individual is fully understood. Merwin (2012) presents another practical example of the existentialist theory in his article, where the life of Abraham Lincoln is used as a conceptualization of destiny. From the existentialist theory, one of the major principles mentioned is destiny, where the life of an individual is examined as a sum of past and present events that shape existence. From Rollo and Yalom’s (1967) paper, destiny is described as the sum of the talents and limitations available to an individual to shape future existence. May’s theory also emphasizes on the shaping of destiny by acting with the freedom availed to an individual. Looking at the Lincoln’s life, it can be seen that he challenged destiny to complete the achievements he finally gained. Lincoln created a meaningful existence by challenging the limitations facing him, facing hardship and making the most of the opportunities available to him. Lincoln’s life is seen to be a summation of miseries and depression, for example, his mother died when he was still at a very tender age and his father had a sadistic personality. The father mistreated them and eventually left them to fend for themselves when he got a new wife. Lincoln’s siblings also died at a young age due to myriad epidemics, but he eventually overcame these misfortunes to become a great man. Another occurrence that shaped Lincoln’s destiny is his grapple with depression throughout his life. He was put on suicide watch when he was just 26, and later, his love and close friends died to a typhoid epidemic. Financial troubles also plagued him as he struggled to complete his law studies, and the sum of all these factors still did not stop his destiny. However, in applying May’s theory, it can be seen that Lincoln applied his depression and conceptualized it as destiny, a fact that can be seen in the different poetry he wrote. Lincoln’s life is, therefore, one of the best practical examples of destiny as described by Rollo May in his theory. The last application of May’s existentialist theory is seen in the application of the theory to the treatment of traumatic stress, particularly PTSD. Pitchford (2009), in his article, describes the development of a method for treating traumatic stress using existentialism. From the description of May’s theory above, much mention is given to anxieties and the different types that can be used to describe individuals .Pitchford (2009) states that the major work done by therapies is first understanding the patients’ anxieties, and then helping the patients face their anxieties and confront their situations. May described anxiety as a factor that threatens an individual’s sense of security and forces them to cut off their feelings. Cooper (2003), states that it is possible to develop by facing anxieties that rise from the fear of past events, specifically, traumatic events. The repression of neurotic anxiety makes an individual vulnerable to future anxiety attacks, which will affect an individual’s future. With regard to the above analysis, it is therefore important for a therapist to force a patient to confront their fears and anxieties in order to develop in life (Milton, 1993). PTSD and other traumatic stresses are seen as some of the biggest causes of anxieties in individuals, and for a patient to sufficiently heal and move on, the anxiety must be faced. The therapist’s work is then to understand the events that led to the patient’s anxieties, examine the events, and make the patient face them so as to develop. Existentialism can be used to face the paralyzing anxiety that patients with PTSD face, and in this way, the theory can be used to heal traumatic stress victims. Conclusion From the above discussion, the life of Rollo May has been described, including the development of his existential psychology theory. This is then followed by the principles underlying the existential psychology theory, including the concept of the being, the principle of anxiety, and the use of guilt and guilt feelings. These are accompanied by the concepts of the significance of time and the importance of the different forms of the world. This is followed by some practical examples of the application of Rollo May’s theory, which all indicate the importance of May’s existential psychology theory. The main applications of Rollo’s theory can be seen in three ways; with the expounding of the theory by De Castro (2009), which leads to the application of the theory to explain the life and destiny of Abraham Lincoln. This is followed by the practical explanation of how to use the theory to treat combat stress victims as proposed by Pitchford (2009). De Castro (2009) explains the tenets of Rollo’s theory by stating that a human being should never be understood as a result of previous experiences and the environment around them. Before a patient is diagnosed, it is important to understand their environment and the factors that make them be. This is explained better by Merwin (2012), who discusses the life of Lincoln and the factors in his life that had a major impact in shaping his destiny. In the application of the theory to treating combat victims, Pitchford (2009) states that it is important to understand the victim and their anxieties, force the, to face the anxieties, and in turn heal them. References Cooper, M. (2003). Existential Therapies. New York: Sage Publications. De Castro, A. (2009). Rollo May's critical position in psychology: The concept of comprehension applied to dysfunctional experiences, health and psychotherapy. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. 49. Pp. 462-486. Marino, G. (2004). (Ed.). Basic Writings of Existentialism. New York: Modern Library. May, R., and Yalom, I. (2005). Existential Psychotherapy. In R. Corsini & D. Wedding (Eds.), Current Psychotherapies (pp. 269-298). Canada: Thomson Brooks/Cole. Merwin, M. M. (2011). Lincoln and May: Destiny visible in the life of the Great Emancipator. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. 52: 138-156. Milton, M. (1993). Existential Thought and Client Centered Therapy, Counselling Psychology Quarterly, Vol.6 (3). Pp. 239-248. Pitchford, D. B. (2009). The Existentialism of Rollo May: An Influence on Trauma Treatment. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. 49(4). Pp. 441-461. Schneider, K. (1999). The Heart of Rollo May. Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry, Vol. 24. Pp. 104-110. Schneider, K. J. and Krug, O. T. (2009). Existential-Humanistic Therapy. American Psychological Association. Wedding, D. and Corsini, R. J. (2010). Current Psychotherapies. Boston: Cengage Learning. Read More