7 Rollo May Quotes on Mental health

Rollo May quotes on mental health

1. It may sound surprising when I say, on the basis of my own clinical practice as well as that of my psychological and psychiatric colleagues, that the chief problem of people in the middle decade of the twentieth century is emptiness.

2. The human being cannot live in a condition of emptiness for very long: if he is not growing toward something, he does not merely stagnate; the pent-up potentialities turn into morbidity and despair, and eventually into destructive activities.

7. In any discussion of religion and personality integration the question is not whether religion itself makes for health or neurosis, but what kind of religion and how is it used? Freud was in error when he held that religion is per se a compulsion neurosis. Some religion is and some is not.

23. The schizoid man is the natural product of the technological man. It is one way to live and is increasingly utilized--and it may explode into violence.

24. Our patients are the ones who express and live out the subconscious and unconscious tendencies in the culture. The neurotic, or person suffering from what we now call character disorder, is characterized by the fact that the usual defenses of the culture do not work for him--a generally painful situation of which he is more or less aware...

33. Depression is the inability to construct a future

65. If we admit our depression openly and freely, those around us get from it an experience of freedom rather than the depression itself.