Existential Psychology and Trait Theory Notes

Existential Psychology

Rollo Reese May

• Biography:

  • Born: April 21, 1909, in Ada, Ohio.

  • Died: October 22, 1994.

  • Early Life: First son among six children; parents were not well-educated.

  • Marital Life: Divorced twice, remarried to Georgia Lee Miller Johnson.

  • Interests: Arts and literature.

  • Career: English tutor in Turkey and Poland.

• Education and Career:

  • Teacher.

  • Experienced a nervous breakdown.

  • Attended Alfred Adler’s 1932 summer seminar.

  • Studied at Union Theological Seminary, met Paul Tillich.

  • Received Master of Divinity degree but found parish work meaningless.

  • Studied psychoanalysis at the William Alanson White Institute.

  • Met Harry Stack Sullivan and Erich Fromm.

  • Opened private practice in 1946.

  • Joined faculty at William Alamson White Institute.

  • Received PhD in Clinical Psychology from Columbia University in 1949.

  • Contracted tuberculosis, spending 3 years at the Saranac Sanitarium.

Overview of Existentialism

• Roots in the writings of Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855).

• Focuses on the experiencing person and their experience.

• Seeks to understand people as thinking, acting, and willing beings.

What is Existentialism?

• Common elements:

  1. Existence precedes essence.

  2. People are subjective and objective, seeking truth through active, authentic lives.

  3. Search for meaning in life.

  4. Responsibility for who we are and what we become.

  5. Anti-theoretical; theories dehumanize people.

Basic Concepts

• Being-in-the-World (Dasein):

  • Understanding the world from our own perspective.

  • Awareness of self as a living, emerging being.

  • Leads to the dread of nonbeing or nothingness.

• Components of Being-in-the-World:

  • Umwelt: Environment around us.

  • Mitwelt: Relationships with other people.

  • Eigenwelt: Relationship with oneself.

• Anxiety:

  • Experienced when aware of the possibility of nonbeing.

  • Experienced when aware of freedom to choose.

• Types of Anxiety:

  • Normal Anxiety: Proportionate to the threat; experienced by everyone.

  • Neurotic Anxiety: Disproportionate to the threat, involves repression, self-defeating.

• Guilt:

  • Results from:

    1. Separation from the natural world.

    2. Inability to judge the needs of others.

    3. Denial of one's own potential.

• Intentionality:

  • Structure that gives meaning to experience.

  • Allows people to make decisions about the future.

Care, Love, and Will

• Care:

  • Source of love.

  • Recognizing the essential humanity of the other person.

  • Active regard for the other person's development.

• Love:

  • Delight in the presence of the other person.

  • Affirming the value and development as much as one’s own.

• Will:

  • Capacity to organize oneself toward a certain goal.

• Forms of Love:

  • Sex: Basic form, biological function seeking release of sexual tension.

  • Eros: Higher form, seeking enduring union.

  • Philia: Nonsexual friendship.

  • Agape: Highest form, altruistic and selfless.

Freedom & Destiny

• Freedom: Possibility of changing, even if the changes are unknown.

  • Existential Freedom: Freedom of action.

  • Essential Freedom: Freedom of being.

• Destiny: The design of the universe speaking through the design of each individual.

  • Ultimate destiny is death.

  • Includes biological properties like intelligence, gender, size, etc.

The Power of Myth

• Myths as archetypal patterns in human experience (similar to Carl Jung’s collective unconscious).

• Avenues to universal images beyond individual experience.

• Can contribute to psychological growth if embraced.

• Denying myths leads to alienation, apathy, and emptiness.

Psychopathology

• Denying destiny or abandoning myths leads to loss of purpose.

• Directionless individuals become sick and engage in self-destructive behaviors.

• Alienation from the world (Umwelt), others (Mitwelt), and themselves (Eigenwelt).

• Lack of communication—inability to know others and share oneself.

• Symptoms can be temporary or permanent.

Trait Theory

Gordon Allport

• Biography:

  • Born: November 11, 1897, in Montezuma, Indiana.

  • Died: October 9, 1967 (lung cancer).

  • Fourth and youngest son of John E. Allport and Nellie Wise Allport.

  • Studied philosophy and economics at Harvard (1919).

  • Uncertain about future career initially.

  • Undergraduate courses in psychology and social ethics made a lasting impression.

• Career:

  • Taught English and Sociology at Robert College in Istanbul (1919-1920).

  • PhD program at Harvard.

  • Studied under German psychologists Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler, William Stern, Heinz Werner in Berlin and Hamburg.

  • Taught a new course in psychology of personality at Harvard in 1924.

  • Position at Dartmouth College, then returned to Harvard.

  • Married Ada Lufkin Gould.

Overview

• Emphasized the uniqueness of the individual.

• Objected to trait and factor theories that reduce individual behaviors to common traits.

• Each person's traits interact uniquely.

• Advocated studying single individuals in depth (morphogenic science).

• Contrasted morphogenic methods with nomothetic methods.

• Famous morphogenic reports: diaries of Marion Taylor and letters from Jenny.

• Advocated an eclectic approach.

Approach to Personality Theory

• Personality:

  • 1937 Definition: