Quotes by Rollo May

“in this type of anxiety neurosis the anxious attitude is so intimately a part of the individual's method of evaluating stimuli, of orienting herself or himself to every experience, that he or she c...”

“It is very difficult to appreciate from the outside what a person in severe anxiety is experiencing. Brown rightly remarked about his friends 'imploring a drowning man [me] to swim when they don't ...”

“anxiety, with its concomitant feelings of helplessness, isolation, and conflict, is an exceedingly painful experience. One tends to be angry and resentful toward those responsible for placing him i...”

“I'm the problem of anxiety we must, therefore, always ask the question of what vital value is being threatened”

“But, as is obvious to any observer, many people are thrown into anxiety by situations which are not objectively threatening either in kind or degree. The person may very often state himself that th...”

“Neurotic anxiety, therefore, is that which occurs when the incapacity for coping adequately with threats is not objective but subjective - I.e., is due not to objective weakness but to inner psycho...”

“The threat, thus, in anxiety is not necessarily more intense than fear. Rather, it attacks us on a deeper level. The threat must be to something in the 'core' or 'essence' of the personality. My se...”

“One means of allaying anxiety is frantic activity. The anxiety arising out of the dilemma of powerlessness in the face of suprapersonal economic forces on one hand, but theoretical belief in the ef...”

“Intense fatigue or illness may also weaken the control of the cortex. Hence we find tired or sick persons responding to threats with a greater degree of undifferentiated anxiety. In psychoanalytic ...”

“The threat of frustration of a biological urge does not cause conflict and anxiety unless that urge is identified with some value essential to the existence of the personality.”

“Creative people, as I see them, are distinguished by the fact that they can live with anxiety, even though a high price may be paid in terms of insecurity, sensitivity, and defenselessness for the ...”

“Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we do not experience it.”

“Consciousness is the awareness that emerges out of the dialectical tension between possibilities and limitations.”

“Dogmatism of all kinds--scientific, economic, moral, as well as political--are threatened by the creative freedom of the artist. This is necessarily and inevitably so. We cannot escape our anxiety ...”

“When I use the word rebel for the artist, I do not refer to revolutionary or to such things as taking over the deans office; that is a different matter. Artists are generally soft-spoken persons wh...”

“Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.”

“Our powerful hunger for myth is a hunger for community. The person without a myth is a person without a home...To be a member of one's community is to share in its myths...”

“The fascist authoritarianism, characterized by sado-masochism and destructiveness, had a function which is comparable psychologically to a neurotic symptom - namely, fascism compensated for powerle...”

“A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence.”

“One must have at least a readiness to love the other person, broadly speaking, if one is to be able to understand him.”