Social acceptance seems like a cure to existential angst, but it only temporarily relieves loneliness, fear, and anxiety. If, when he first begins tentatively to say “No,” his parents beat him down rather than love and encourage him, he thereafter will say “No” not as a form of true independent strength but as a mere rebellion. May fairly depicts the liberalization of the American culture, including the sexual mores, since the 1920s and carrying through the 1950s. But no ‘ego’ moves on into responsible selfhood if it remains chiefly the reflection of the social context around it.

Or they can gain a false sense of power through rebellion, in reacting, resisting, combating an enemy, until they wither away in hatred and fear.Contemporaries with Erich Fromm on the one hand and Rogers and Maslow on the other, Rollo May tracks a course between them. He draws his insights from occasional tidbits with Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Kafka, whom he considers to have been influential on his thought with regards to the condition of man.

Rollo May leads the reader through an assessment of the current state of society in relation to the individual. It sat on my book shelf for two years and I picked it up just to flip through it and it couldn't have been a better time.His works include Love and Will and The Courage to Create, the latter title honoring Tillich's The Courage to Be. We can now add that the degree of an individual’s inner strength and integrity will depend on how much he himself believes in the values he lives. The only portion on this book that might convince me of impartiality is his statement of considering social factors that would vary as per condition of each patient. I am quite adamant, however on his overemphasis on matriarchal authority, which he blames as being a great factor for the neurosis of his young male patients. As a diagnostic tool for the culture, his replacement of the Orestes complex for Oedipus still seems incredibly off the mark.