Abzug, Robert H. (Author)
Oxford University Press
Physical Details: 432
Language: English
In post-World War II America and especially during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s, the psychologist Rollo May contributed profoundly to the popular and professional response to a widely felt sense of personal emptiness amid a culture in crisis. May addressed the sources of depression, powerlessness, and conformity but also mapped a path to restore authentic individuality, intimacy, creativity, and community. A psychotherapist by trade, he employed theology, philosophy, literature, and the arts to answer a central enduring question: "How, then, shall we live?" Robert Abzug's definitive biography traces May's epic life from humble origins in the Protestant heartland of the Midwest to his longtime practice in New York City and his participation in the therapeutic culture of California. May's books--Love and Will, Man's Search for Himself, The Courage to Create, and others--as well as his championing of non-medical therapeutic practice and introduction of Existential psychotherapy to America marked important contributions to the profession. Most of all, May's compelling prose reached millions of readers from all walks of life, finding their place, as Noah Adams noted in his NPR eulogy, "on a hippy's bookshelf." And May was one of the founders of the humanistic psychology movement that has shaped the very vocabulary with which many Americans describe their emotional and spiritual lives. Based on full and uncensored access to May's papers and original oral interviews, Psyche and Soul in America reveals his turbulent inner life, his religious crises, and their influence on his contribution to the world of psychotherapy and the culture beyond. It adds new and intimate dimensions to an important aspect of America's romance with therapy, as the site for the exploration of spiritual strivings and moral dilemmas unmet for many by traditional religion.
...MoreReview Robert Kugelmann (2022) Review of "Psyche and Soul in America: The Spiritual Odyssey of Rollo May". Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences (pp. 478-480).
Similar Citations
Book
James Schlett;
(2021)
Frontier Struggles: Rollo May and the Little Band of Psychologists Who Saved Humanism
(/isis/citation/CBB905787795/)
Book
Mirinda A. Karshan;
Annelore Homberg;
(2020)
La sfida della cura: Lo psicoterapeuta Canio Tedesco tra formazione, professione e ricerca
(/isis/citation/CBB038825054/)
Article
Paul Williams;
Brian Edgar;
(2018)
The Primal Is the Political: Psychotherapy, Engagement, and Narcissism in the 1970s
(/isis/citation/CBB945026857/)
Article
Nicholson, Ian;
(2007)
Baring the Soul: Paul Bindrim, Abraham Maslow and “Nude Psychotherapy”
(/isis/citation/CBB000773070/)
Thesis
Grogan, Jessica Lynn;
(2008)
A Cultural History of the Humanistic Psychology Movement in America
(/isis/citation/CBB001561156/)
Book
Stewart, William;
(2008)
A Biographical Dictionary of Psychologists, Psychiatrists and Psychotherapists
(/isis/citation/CBB000831113/)
Book
Tomas Matza;
(2018)
Shock Therapy: Psychology, Precarity, and Well-Being in Postsocialist Russia
(/isis/citation/CBB052329453/)
Article
Jonathan Sadowsky;
(2022)
The Human Factor: Psychotherapy and the Reign of Technology
(/isis/citation/CBB412803595/)
Article
Matthew Drage;
(2018)
Of Mountains, Lakes and Essences: John Teasdale and the Transmission of Mindfulness
(/isis/citation/CBB022102119/)
Book
Füredi, Frank;
(2004)
Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age
(/isis/citation/CBB000701273/)
Book
Renato Foschi;
Marco Innamorati;
(2020)
Storia critica della psicoterapia
(/isis/citation/CBB839061265/)
Book
Moskowitz, Eva S.;
(2001)
In Therapy We Trust: America's Obsession with Self-Fulfillment
(/isis/citation/CBB000320361/)
Article
James Schlett;
(2022)
When Rollo May’s “little band” of New York psychologists fought back against organized medicine’s attempts to control psychotherapy
(/isis/citation/CBB438968805/)
Article
Dian Zeng;
Jian Yang;
Lewis Pyenson;
(2019)
Compatible Humanists: Yuen Ren Chao Meets George Sarton
(/isis/citation/CBB290833612/)
Chapter
Rosner, Rachael I.;
(2005)
Psychotherapy Research and the National Institute of Mental Health, 1948-1980
(/isis/citation/CBB000501421/)
Chapter
Menand, Louis;
(2012)
Freud, Anxiety, and the Cold War
(/isis/citation/CBB001251816/)
Article
Deborah Weinstein;
(2018)
Sexuality, Therapeutic Culture, and Family Ties in the United States After 1973
(/isis/citation/CBB686551212/)
Book
Keith Makoto Woodhouse;
(2018)
The Ecocentrists: A History of Radical Environmentalism
(/isis/citation/CBB467529681/)
Thesis
Mary E. Kollmer Horton;
(2021)
A (Un)Natural Alliance: Medical Education and the Humanities the Rise and Fall of the Institute on Human Values in Medicine 1971-1981
(/isis/citation/CBB818216999/)
Thesis
Janzen, Bernd Hubert;
(2006)
Roddenberry's Faith in “Star Trek”: “Star Trek”'s Humanism as an American Apocalyptic Vision of the Future
(/isis/citation/CBB001561496/)
Be the first to comment!