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
_____ 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
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.
_____ 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
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
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
May said that “_____ is the individual’s capacity to know that he is the determined one”. _____ is the possibility of changing.
Freedom
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
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 _: 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
human
May believed that the purpose of psychotherapy is to set people _____.
free
