The heart of man's dilemma, according to Rollo May, is the failure to understand the real meaning of love and will, their source and interrelation. Bringing fresh insight to these concepts, May shows how we can attain a deeper consciousness.

The Art of Counselling is an insightful guide for all who work in professions where counselling is a key part of their work: for doctors who often need to counsel the bereaved and discuss intimate subjects with their patients; for lawyers who advise clients in difficult situations; social workers and the clergy whose work is largely spent helping those in distress; senior management staff looking to relate productively with their staff - all will find this book an essential companion. Rollo May's direct and personal approach, combined with the use of pertinent examples, guides the reader to understanding how to adjust his or her own personality to deal constructively and positively with others.

Rollo May brings together the ideas of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and other great thinkers to offer insight into the ideas and techniques of existential psychotherapy, of which he was a major force. He pays particular attention to the causes of loneliness and isolation and to our search for stability in order to move towards a future where responsibility, creativity, and love can play a role.

In "Existential Psychoanalysis," Sartre criticizes modern psychology in general, and Freud's determinism in particular. His often brilliant analysis of these areas and his proposals for their correction indicate in what direction an existential psychoanalysis might be developed.
Sartre does all this on the basis of his existential understanding of man, and his unshakeable conviction that the human being simply cannot be understood at all if we see in him only what our study of subhuman forms of life permits us to see, or if we reduce him to naturalistic or mechanical determinism, or in any other way take away from the man we try to study his ultimate freedom and individual responsibility.
An incisive introduction by noted existential psychologist Rollo May guides readers through these challenging yet enlightening passages.

Loneliness, boredom, emptiness: These are the complaints that Rollo May encountered over and over from his patients. In response, he probes the hidden layers of personality to reveal the core of man's integration--a basic and inborn sense of value. Man's Search for Himself is an illuminating view of our predicament in an age of overwhelming anxieties and gives guidance on how to choose, judge, and act during such times.

"A lucid and highly concentrated analysis of the creative process. . . . [May] describes the requisites for the creative encounter and the moment of the 'breakthrough.'" —Saturday Review

What if imagination and art are not, as many of us might think, the frosting on life, but the fountainhead of human experience? What if our logic and science derive from art forms, rather than the other way around? In this trenchant volume, Rollo May helps all of us find those creative impulses that, once liberated, offer new possibilities for achievement.

A renowned therapist and inspiring guide, Dr. May draws on his experience to show how we can break out of old patterns in our lives. His insightful book offers us a way through our fears into a fully realized self.

"A signal tesitmonial to the creative spirit. . . . A brilliantly incisive exploration of the creative 'encounter'—the coming to grips of the healthily committed creative artist or thinker with his sociocultural background and with his own dangerously promethean impulses." —Publishers Weekly

"Another in Dr. May's extraordinary, wise, and hopeful . . . series of nearly poetic meditations on the future of mankind." —Boston Globe

"Clear, accurate, and interesting. There is no better short introduction to the existential approach to psychology." —Dallas Morning News

Rollo May draws on the insights of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, and other great thinkers to offer a helpful roadmap of the ideas and techniques of existential psychotherapy. He pays particular attention to the causes of loneliness and isolation, and to our search for stability in an age of anxiety.

"A brisk, clear, popular introduction to existential psychology/psychotherapy. . . [Rollo May] makes a good case for it as a pragmatically broad and flexible method. . . . A solid, stimulating presentation." —Kirkus Reviews

"With his vision of what man can be, Rollo May is the man of tomorrow. . . . For many years he has been one of psychology's persistent pioneers." — Psychology Today

It happens almost daily in a therapist's office. A patient, recalling a person, an event, an emotion, quite unexpectedly supplies a link from a life in the present to one of the durable myths of our culture. In this moment, the myth becomes a mirror, revealing to the patient the source of disturbance and pain in a pattern of behavior that often stretches a year or longer. The healing process begins. The myth, "eternity breaking into time" in Rollo Mays's words, becomes the focal point of recovery. Through tracing myths - whether from classical Greece and Dante's Middle Ages, European legend (Faust and the prototype of Sleeping Beauty), or contemporary American life (Jay Gatsby) -- and relating them to the dreams and associations he encounters in his own practice, Dr. May provides meaning and structure for all who seek direction in a morally confusing world. In this, perhaps the finest achievement of a great therapist, Rollo May writes with "the grace, wit, and style: for which he recently received the Gold Medal of the American Psychological Society.

A leading disciple and confidant of Freud, Otto Rank revolutionized the field of psychoanalytic theory in "The Trauma of Birth" (1924). In this book, Rank proposed that the child's pre-Oedipal relationship to the mother was the prototype of the therapeutic relationship between analyst and patient. Although Rank is now widely acknowledged as the most important precursor of humanistic and existential psychotherapy--influencing such well-known writers as Carl Rogers, Rollo May, and Ernest Becker--Rank's knotty prose has long frustrated readers. In this volume of Rank's lectures, Robert Kramer has brought together for the first time the innovator's clearest explanations of his most influential theories.

The lectures were delivered in English to receptive audiences of social workers, therapists, and clinical psychologists throughout the United States from 1924 to 1938, the year before Rank's untimely death. The topics covered include separation and individuation, projection and identification, love and will, relationship therapy, and neurosis as a failure in creativity. The lectures reveal that Rank, much maligned by orthodox analysts, invented the modern object-relations approach to psychotherapy in the 1920s. In his introduction, based on private correspondence between Rank, Freud, and others in the inner circle, Robert Kramer tells the full story of why Rank parted ways with Freud. The collection of lectures constitutes a "readable Rank," filled with insights still relevant today, for those interested in the humanistic, existential, or object- relational aspects of psychotherapy, or in the development of the psychoanalytic movement.

When this important work was originally published in 1950-the first book in this country on anxiety-it was hailed as a work ahead of its time.In the revised edition of this now-classic study, the distinguished author of Love and Will deepens his exploration into anxiety theory. Dr. May challenges the idea that mental health means living without anxiety, and he explores anxiety's potential for self-realization as well as ways to avoid its destructive aspects.

When this important work was originally published in 1950-the first book in this country on anxiety-it was hailed as a work ahead of its time.In the revised edition of this now-classic study, the distinguished author of Love and Will deepens his exploration into anxiety theory. Dr. May challenges the idea that mental health means living without anxiety, and he explores anxiety's potential for self-realization as well as ways to avoid its destructive aspects.

2011 Reprint of 1950 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Text of original 1950 Edition. This book is the result of several years of exploration, research, and thought on one of the most urgent problems of our day. Clinical experience has proved to psychologists and psychiatrists generally that the central problem in psychotherapy is the nature of anxiety. To the extent that we have been able to solve that problem, we have made a beginning in understanding the causes of integration and disintegration of personality. May's work remains a classic work on this important subject. The book is notable for questioning fundamental assumptions about mental health and asserts that anxiety in fact aids in the development of an ultimately healthy personality.

Stressing the positive, creative aspects of power and innocence, Rollo May offers a way of thinking about the problems of contemporary society.

Rollo May defines power as the ability to cause or prevent change; innocence, on the other hand, is the conscious divesting of one's power to make it seem a virtuea form of powerlessness that Dr. May sees as particularly American in nature. From these basic concepts he suggests a new ethic that sees power as the basis for both human goodness and evil.

Dr. May discusses five levels of power's potential in each of us: the infant's power to be; self-affirmation, the ability to survive with self-esteem; self-assertion, which develops when self-affirmation is blocked; aggression, a reaction to thwarted assertion; and, finally, violence, when reason and persuasion are ineffective.

"Sheds new light on the timely topic of violence."—Library Journal

"[May's book] is an attack on the psychological rejection of power in the intellectual tradition of the Christian West. . . . With great skill [he] weaves together his political reflections and clinical experience. . . . [A] wise, humane, and admirable book."—William Hamilton, Christian Century

The popular psychoanalyst examines the continuing tension in our lives between the possibilities that freedom offers and the various limitations imposed upon us by our particular fate or destiny.

"May is an existential analyst who deservedly enjoys a reputation among both general and critical readers as an accessible and insightful social and psychological theorist. . . . Freedom's characteristics, fruits, and problems; destiny's reality; death; and therapy's place in the confrontation between freedom and destiny are examined. . . . Poets, social critics, artists, and other thinkers are invoked appropriately to support May's theory of freedom and destiny's interdependence."—Library Journal

"Especially instructive, even stunning, is Dr. May's willingness to respect mystery. . . .There is, too, at work throughout the book a disciplined yet relaxed clinical mind, inclined to celebrate . . . what Flannery O'Connor called 'mystery and manners,' and to do so in a tactful, meditative manner."—Robert Coles, America

Here Rollo May discusses our loss of our personal identity in the contemporary world, the sources of our anxiety, the scope of psychotherapy, and the ultimate paradox of freedom and responsibility.

Whether reflecting on war, psychology, or the ideas of existentialist thinkers such as Sartre and Kierkegaard, Dr. May everywhere enlarges our outlook on how people can develop creatively within the human predicament.

Since its publication, Existence has been regarded as the most important, complete, and lucid account of the existentialist approach to psychology. From the works of the leading spokesmen of the existential analytic movement, the editors have selected classic case histories and other writings to define the approach that seeks to understand mental illness, in the words of Rollo May, ..".not as deviations from the conceptual yardstick of this or that psychiatrist...but as deviations in the structure of the particular patient's existence, the disruptions of his condition humane."