Rollo May occupies a particularly interesting place in the history of psychotherapy because he brought existential psychology into clinical practice. Influenced by Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and the phenomenological and existential traditions, May was less interested in fitting a person into an abstract theory than in understanding how that particular person experiences their own existence.

One of his central ideas is that modern human beings have achieved extraordinary levels of autonomy and freedom, yet this freedom has not necessarily produced a greater sense of meaning. On the contrary, it can be accompanied by alienation, loneliness, emptiness, and relationships experienced as superficial or unnecessary.

This apparent contradiction feels remarkably contemporary.

We have never had so many possibilities.

We can choose where to live, what profession to pursue, whom to love, what identity to present to the world, and which values to adopt. But having more possibilities does not automatically mean knowing what to do with them.

Freedom can also be a burden.

The Paradox of Freedom

For centuries, much of the meaning of existence was provided by religion, family, tradition, community, and social structures.

These structures could be deeply restrictive, but they also offered ready-made answers:

• Who am I?
• What should I do?
• How should I live?
• Where do I belong?
• What constitutes a good life?

As many of these structures lose their authority, the individual gains freedom but is simultaneously confronted with a difficult task:

Now you must discover for yourself how to live.

This is where Rollo May meets Kierkegaard. Freedom does not produce only excitement. It also produces anxiety.

Because choosing means assuming responsibility.

And choosing one possibility necessarily means giving up others.

Anxiety Is Not Necessarily an Illness

This is one of the most interesting aspects of May's thought.

Not all anxiety should be considered pathological.

There is a form of normal anxiety inherent in being alive. It emerges when we face change, choice, loss, uncertainty, freedom, and mortality.

• If I move to another country, I may feel anxious.
• If I end a relationship, I may feel anxious.
• If I leave a secure profession to begin another, I may feel anxious.
• If I love someone, I may feel anxious because loving someone means recognising that I can lose them.

To eliminate this anxiety completely would mean eliminating something that belongs to the human condition itself.

The problem arises when anxiety becomes disproportionate, rigid, and disabling, progressively restricting our capacity to live.

The therapeutic question then ceases to be merely:

“How can we make this anxiety disappear?”

and becomes:

“What possibility in your existence is this anxiety accompanying?”

Rollo May and Freud: The Past or the Present?

May places considerable emphasis on the “here and now.”

At first glance, this seems to place him in opposition to psychoanalysis.

Freud looks towards history.

May looks towards present experience.

But the opposition is less absolute than it appears.

Contemporary psychoanalysis does not regard the therapeutic session as merely an archaeological investigation of childhood. The past matters precisely because it remains alive in the present.

The patient does not merely talk about relationships.

They enter into a relationship with the therapist.

They do not simply describe their fear of abandonment.

They may begin to experience the therapist's silence as abandonment.

They do not simply explain their need to please others.

They may begin trying to please the analyst.

This is transference.

Existential therapy and psychoanalysis can therefore meet around an extraordinarily fertile question:

“What is happening to you right now, here with me?”

The difference lies in how each tradition understands what emerges from that encounter.

The Therapeutic Relationship Is Not a Detail

Another fundamental idea in May is that the therapeutic attitude should provide trust, understanding, and empathy.

This brings us close to important developments within psychoanalysis itself.

The analyst gradually ceased to be understood merely as a neutral observer who interprets the patient from the outside.

Winnicott demonstrated the importance of the environment.

Bion explored the capacity to contain emotional experience.

Ogden later examined what analyst and analysand create together.

The relationship is no longer merely the place where therapy happens.

The relationship becomes part of the therapy itself.

Experiences that may never have existed in the patient's life can sometimes begin to emerge within a sufficiently safe therapeutic relationship:

• Being heard without immediately being corrected.
• Disagreeing without being abandoned.
• Showing vulnerability without being humiliated.
• Feeling anger without destroying the relationship.
• Saying no without losing the other person.
• Being seen without constantly having to perform a role.

The Therapist Should Not Tell the Patient What Their Life Means

Here May makes a particularly important contribution.

The therapist does not possess the answer to the patient's existence.

It is not the therapist's role to say:

• “You should get married.”
• “You should leave your partner.”
• “You need to have children.”
• “You must forgive.”
• “You need to find a religion.”
• “You should change careers.”

That would mean replacing the patient's freedom with the therapist's authority.

The task is different.

It is to help the person understand the meaning they give to their own existence, their desires, fears, choices, and the possibilities they may be avoiding.

The therapist does not provide meaning.

The therapist helps create the conditions in which the patient can discover and construct it.

Where Rollo May Meets Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis, however, adds a difficult question to the existential emphasis on freedom:

To what extent do we actually know what we want?

A person may say:

“I want this.”

And Freud might ask:

“Why do you want precisely this?”

Someone may believe they freely chose a particular kind of partner, only to discover that they reproduce the same emotional pattern relationship after relationship.

They may believe they chose a profession entirely out of vocation and later discover a profound wish to fulfil parental expectations.

They may consider themselves fiercely independent and eventually realise that their independence also functions as a defence against the fear of depending on another person.

Psychoanalysis therefore introduces an extraordinary complication into the idea of freedom:

It is not enough to be free to choose. We also need to understand something about what unconsciously participates in our choices.

The Goal Is Not a Life Without Suffering

May's approach ultimately aims to help the patient discover possibilities for enriching their existence and creating a more meaningful life.

This does not mean creating a permanently happy life.

A meaningful life still contains:

• loss,
• frustration,
• anxiety,
• conflict,
• limitations,
• ageing,
• and death.

Psychotherapy does not eliminate the human condition.

Perhaps it does precisely the opposite: it helps us inhabit it more fully.

And this is where Rollo May becomes particularly interesting in dialogue with psychoanalysis.

Freud asks:

“What unconscious forces brought you here?”

Rollo May adds:

“Now that you are here, what are you going to do with your existence?”

One question looks towards what determines us.

The other opens a space for what we may still choose.

Perhaps profound psychotherapy needs both.

Understanding the past without learning to live in the present can turn therapy into endless archaeology. But speaking of freedom without understanding unconscious repetition can turn choice into an illusion.

Between what we have inherited and what we can still create lies the space of our existence.

We did not choose everything that happened to us. But perhaps we can understand what happened to us well enough to participate more freely in who we may yet become.