Chapter 11: Existential Psychology (Rollo May) Flashcards
_____ psychology is rooted in the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and other European philosophers.
Existential
May attributed his own two failed _____ to his mother’s unpredictable behavior and to his older sister’s psychotic episode
marriages
_____ view of anxiety as a struggle against nonbeing, that is, loss of consciousness.
Kierkegaard
He opposed any attempt to see people merely as objects, but at the same time, he opposed the view that subjective perceptions are one’s only reality. Instead, _____ was concerned with both the experiencing person and the person’s experience.
Balance between freedom and responsibility.
Kierkegaard
Two German philosophers, _____ and _____, helped popularize existential philosophy during the 20th century.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger
_____ takes precedence over essence; this means that process and growth are more important than product and stagnation.
Existence 1
_____ oppose the artificial split between subject and object they believe that people are both subjecting and objective who searches for truth in order for them to live active and authentic lives.
Existentialist 2
They stress people’s search for meaning in their lives. People ask questions like “who am I?” “Is my life worth living?”
Existentialism 3
They insist that each of us is responsible for who we are and what we will become. People can choose to become what they can be and what they do is basically their choice.
Existentialism 4
Existentialists take an antitheoritical position, believing that theories tend t objectify people. They believe that if we press our experiences based on preexisting theory, we lose our authenticity to experience such phenomena.
Existentialism 5
Being-in-the-World Nonbeing Anxiety Guilt Intentionality
Existentialism Basic Concepts
Existentialists adopt a phenomenological approach to understanding humanity. To them, we exist in a world that can be best understood from our own perspective.
Being-in-the-World
The basic unity of person and environment is expressed in the German word _____, meaning to exist there. Hence, Dasein literally means to exist in the world and is generally written as being-in-the-world. The hyphens in this term imply the oneness of subject and object, of person and world.
Dasein
_____is the illness of our time, and it manifests itself in three areas.
Being away from existence.
Alienation
Three areas of Alienation.
- Umwelt, or the environment around us;
- Mitwelt, or our relations with other people;
- Eigenwelt, or our relationship with our self.
_____ is the world of objects and things and would exist Even if people had no awareness. It is the world of nature and natural law and includes biological drives, such as hunger and sleep, and such natural phenomena as birth and death.
We cannot escape _____; we must learn to live in the world around us and to adjust to changes within this world.
Freud’s theory, with its emphasis on biology and instincts, deals mostly with _____.
Umwelt
We must relate to people as people, not as things. If we treat people as objects, then we are living solely in Umwelt.
The difference between Umwelt and _____ can be seen by contrasting sex with love. If a person uses another as an instrument for sexual gratification, then that person is living in Umwelt, at least in his or her relationship to that other person.
Mitwelt
The theories of Sullivan and Rogers, with their emphasis on interpersonal relations, deal mostly with _____.
Mitwelt
_____ refers to one’s relationship with oneself. To live in _____ means to be aware of oneself as a human being and to grasp who we are as we relate to the world of things and to the world of people.
Eigenwelt
_____ people live in Umwelt, Mitwelt, and Eigenwelt simultaneously. They adapt to the natural world, relate to others as humans, and have a keen awareness of what all these experiences mean to them
Healthy
Being-in-the-world necessitates an awareness of self as a living, emerging being. This awareness, in turn, leads to the dread of not being: that is, nonbeing or nothingness.
Nonbeing
_____ is not the only avenue of nonbeing, but it is the most obvious one.
Death
When we do not courageously confront our nonbeing by contemplating death, we nevertheless will experience _____ in other forms, including addiction to alcohol or other drugs, promiscuous sexual activity, and other compulsive behaviors. Our nonbeing can also be expressed as blind conformity to society’s expectations or as generalized hostility that pervades our relations to
others.
nonbeing
“The subjective state of the individual’s becoming aware that his [or her] existence can be destroyed, that he can become ‘nothing’”.
Part of life.
Anxiety
It exists when one confronts the issue of fulfilling one’s potentialities. This confrontation can lead to stagnation and decay, but it can also result in growth and change.
Part of life.
Anxiety
“Which is proportionate to the threat, does not involve repression, and can be confronted constructively on the conscious level”.
Does not lead to depression, this is perfectly existing with us. Unlike other descriptions of it that means a cause of disorders etc.
Normal Anxiety
“a reaction which is disproportionate to the threat, involves repression and other forms of intrapsychic conflict, and is managed by various kinds of blocking-off of activity and awareness”.
When you deny it, this is experienced. Bad experience. You are limiting yourself.
Neurotic Anxiety (similar to neurotic claims by Horney)
_____ arises when people deny their potentialities, fail to accurately perceive the needs of fellow humans, or remain oblivious to their dependence on the natural world.
Guilt
As civilization advances technologically, people become more and more removed from nature, that is, from Umwelt. Because this type of guilt is a result of our separation from nature, May also referred to it as _____ guilt, a concept similar to Fromm’s notion of the human dilemma.
separation
The second form of guilt stems from our inability to _____ the world of others (Mitwelt). We can see other people only through our own eyes and can never perfectly judge the needs of these other people.
perceive accurately
The third form of ontological guilt is associated with our _____ of our own potentialities or with our failure to fulfill them. In other words, this guilt is grounded in our relationship with self (Eigenwelt). Again, this form of guilt is universal, because none of us can completely fulfill all our potentials.
This third type of guilt is reminiscent of Maslow’s concept of the Jonah complex, or the fear of being or doing one’s best.
denial
The structure that gives meaning to experience and allows people to make decisions about the future is called _____. Without _____, people could neither choose nor act on their choice.
intentionality
May called _____ “the capacity to organize one’s self so that movement in a certain direction or toward a certain goal may take place”.
will
_____ is an active process, the opposite of apathy. “_____ is a state in which something does matter”. _____ is not the same as love, but it is the source of love
Care
When love is seen as sex, it becomes temporary and lacking in commitment; there is no will, but only wish. When will is seen as will power, it becomes self-serving and lacking in passion; there is no care, but only manipulation.
Union of Love and Will
Sex
Eros
Philia
Agape
Forms of Love
The power to procreation, the drive which perpetuates the race, is the source at once of the human being’s most intense pleasure and his most pervasive anxiety. It is a physiological need that seeks gratification through the release of tension.
Sex
The psychological state desire that seeks procreation through an enduring union with a loved one. It is making love, the wish to establish a lasting union. It is built on are and tenderness with the longing for both partners to experience delight, passion, and depend on experience.
Eros
Eros, the salvation of sex, is built on the foundation of _____, that is, an intimate nonsexual friendship between two people. Philia cannot be rushed; it takes time to grow, to develop, to sink its roots.
Such as friends, siblings.
Philia
Just as eros depends on philia, so philia needs _____. May defined _____ as “esteem for the other, the concern for the other’s welfare beyond any gain that one can get out of it; disinterested love, typically, the love of God for man”. _____is altruistic love.
agape
In summary, _____ adult relationships blend all four forms of love. They are based on sexual satisfaction, a desire for an enduring union, genuine friendship, and an unselfish concern for the welfare of the other person. Such authentic love, unfortunately, is quite difficult.
healthy
Freedom Defined
Forms of Freedom
What Is Destiny?
Freedom and Destiny
May said that “_____ is the individual’s capacity to know that he is the determined one”. _____ is the possibility of changing.
Freedom
Forms of Freedom:
Existential Freedom - of doing
Essential Freedom - of being
May defined _____ as “the design of the universe speaking through the design of each one of us”. Our ultimate _____ is death, but on a lesser scale our _____ includes other biological properties such as intelligence, gender, size and strength, and genetic predisposition toward certain illnesses.
destiny
May suggested that _____, like love-hate or life-death, are not antithetical but rather a normal paradox of life. “The paradox is that freedom owes its vitality to destiny, and destiny owes its significance to freedom”.
freedom and destiny
Myths are the stories that unify a society; “they are essential to the process of keeping our souls alive and bringing us new meaning in a difficult and often meaningless world”.
The Power of Myth
May’s concept of myths is comparable to Carl Jung’s idea of a _____ in that myths are archetypal patterns in the human experience; they are avenues to universal images that lie beyond individual experience.
collective unconscious
Psychopathology: According to May, _____—not anxiety and guilt—are the malaise of modern times.
apathy and emptiness
Psychopathology: When people deny their destiny or abandon their _____, they lose their purpose for being; they become directionless.
myths
May saw _____ 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.
psychopathology
Unlike Freud, Adler, Rogers, and other clinically oriented personality theorists, May did not establish a school of _____ with avid followers and identifiable techniques.
psychotherapy
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. These choices, then, lead to the simultaneous growth of freedom and responsibility
Rollo May
May believed that the purpose of psychotherapy is to set people _____.
free
