Man's Search for Himself

by Rollo May

their anxiety will carry over and lead the child to feel that he lives in a world in which it is dangerous to venture into becoming one’s self.

Almost every adult is, in greater or lesser degree, still struggling on the long journey to achieve selfhood on the basis of the patterns which were set in his early experiences in the family.

Or, as we put it above, the self is always born and grows in interpersonal relationships. But no “ego” moves on into responsible selfhood if it remains chiefly the reflection of the social context around it.

what needs to be emphasized is not only the admitted fact that we are to some extent created by each other but also our capacity to experience, and create, ourselves.

a dream which is essentially parallel to the dreams of almost everyone who is in a crisis in his growth.

If he is a responsible, independent person in his own right—in contrast to the boy tied to his mother’s apron strings—he will be ejected from his family, and will be isolated and alone.

what need was there within himself to go back to mother and father and the house he pictured as externally beautiful in the dream, when he is confronted with responsibility?

Here let us only emphasize how becoming a person, an identity in one’s own right, is the original development which begins in infancy and carries over into adulthood no matter how old one may be; and the crises it involves may cause tremendous anxiety. No wonder many persons repress the conflict and try all their lives to run from the anxiety!

That is to say, even to meditate on one’s own identity as a self means that one is already engaging in self-consciousness.

To be sure, the continuum between man and animals should be seen clearly and realistically; but one need not jump to the unwarranted conclusion that therefore there is no distinction between man and animals.

We do not need to prove the self as an “object.” It is only necessary that we show how people have the capacity for self-relatedness. The self is the organizing function within the individual and the function by means of which one human being can relate to another. It is prior to, not an object of, our science; it is presupposed in the fact that one can be a scientist.

best way to understand one’s identity as a self is to look into one’s own experience.

In every thought he is seeing himself as an identity as definitely as he would see a colleague walking across the street. His every thought in the process of arguing against the consciousness of self proves this very consciousness in himself.

That is to say, we experience ourselves as a thinking-intuiting-feeling and acting unity.

The self is thus not merely the sum of the various “roles” one plays—it is the capacity by which one knows he plays these roles; it is the center from which one sees and is aware of these so-called different “sides” of himself.

As everyone knows, a little child will react indignantly and strongly if you, in teasing, call him by the wrong name. It is as though you take away his identity—a most precious thing to him. In the Old Testament the phrase “I will blot out their names”—to erase their identity and it will be as though they never had existed—is a more powerful threat even than physical death.

It shows, rather, her demand to be a person in her own right, to have personal identity—a need which was more important to her even than attention or prestige.

Every organism has one and only one central need in life, to fulfill its own potentialities.

But the human being’s task in fulfilling his nature is much more difficult, for he must do it in self-consciousness. That is, his development is never automatic but must be to some extent chosen and affirmed by himself.

act—I can never know exactly how you see yourself and you never can know exactly how I relate to myself. This is the inner sanctum where each man must stand alone.

This fact makes for much of the tragedy and inescapable isolation in human life, but it also indicates again that we must find the strength in ourselves to stand in our own inner sanctum as individuals.

And in the same way if man does not fulfill his potentialities as a person, he becomes to that extent constricted and ill.

This is the essence of neurosis—the person’s unused potentialities, blocked by hostile conditions in the environment (past or present) and by his own internalized conflicts, turn inward and cause morbidity. “Energy is Eternal Delight,” said William Blake; “He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.”

The young man’s life was so empty, implies Kafka, that he woke up one morning no longer a human being but a cockroach.

A cockroach, like lice and rats and vermin, lives off others’ leavings. It is a parasite, and in most people’s minds a symbol for what is unclean and repugnant. Could there be any more powerful symbol of what happens when a human being relinquishes his nature as a person?

But to the extent that we do fulfill our potentialities as persons, we experience the profoundest joy to ...

But this is nothing in comparison to the quiet joy when the adolescent can use his newly emerged power for the first time to gain a friend, or the adult’s joy when he can love, plan and create.

It is based on the experience of one’s identity as a being of worth and dignity, who is able to affirm his being, if need be, against all other beings and the whole inorganic world.

Socrates, who was so confident in himself and his values that he could take his being condemned to death not as a defeat but as a greater fulfillment than compromising his beliefs.

Let us consider the latter objection first. To be sure, one ought not to think too highly of one’s self, and a courageous humility is the mark of the realistic and mature person.

But thinking too highly of one’s self, in the sense of self-inflation and conceit, does not come from greater consciousness of one’s self or greater feelings of self-worth. In fact, it comes from just the opposite. Self-inflation and conceit are generally the external signs of inner emptiness and self-doubt; a show of pride is one of the most common covers for anxiety.

The person who feels weak becomes a bully, the inferior person the braggart; a flexing of muscles, much talk, cockiness, an endeavor to brazen it out, are the symptoms of covert anxiety in a person or a group.

but fascism is a development in people who are empty, anxious and despairing, and therefore seize on megalomaniac promises.

Indeed, it is very easy to get an audience these days if one preaches against conceit and pride in one’s self, for most people feel so empty and convinced of their lack of worth anyway that they readily agree that the one who is condemning them must be right.

People who have almost, but not quite, lost their feeling of worth generally have very strong needs to condemn themselves, for that is the most ready way of drowning the bitter ache of feelings of worthlessness and humiliation.

berates himself at great length for picayune sins, he feels like asking, “Who do you think you are?” The self-condemning person is very often trying to show how important he is that God is so concerned with punishing him.

Much self-condemnation, thus, is a cloak for arrogance. Those who think they overcome pride by condemning themselves could well ponder Spinoza’s remark, “One who despises himself is the nearest to a proud man.”

“If I were different, if I were not bad, they would love me.” By this means he avoids facing the full force and the terror of the realization that he is not loved.

Thus, too, with adults: if they can condemn themselves they do not need really to feel the pain of their isolation or emptiness, and the fact that they are not loved then does not cast doubt upon their feeling of worth as persons.

“If it were not for such and such a sin or bad habit, ...

like whipping a sick horse: it achieves a temporary lift, but it hastens the eventual collapse of the dignity of the person.

Furthermore, the self-condemning substitute provides the individual with a rationalization for his self-hate, and thus reinforces the tendencies toward hating himself.

And, inasmuch as one’s attitudes toward other selves generally parallel one’s attitude toward one’s self, one’s covert tendency to hate others is also rationalized and reinforced.

The steps are not big from the feeling of worthlessness of one’s self to self-hat...

In the circles where self-contempt is preached, it is of course never explained why a person should be so ill-mannered and inconsiderate as to force his company on other people...

or that the more we hate ourselves, the more we love God who made the mistake, in an off moment, of creating this contemptible creature, “I.”

Fortunately, however, we no longer have to argue that self-love is not only necessary and good but that it also is a prerequisite for loving others.

selfishness and excessive self-concern really come from an inner self-hatred.

That is to say, the person who inwardly feels worthless is the one who must build himself up by selfish aggrandizement, and the person who has a sound experience of his own worth, that is who loves himself, has the basis for acting generously toward his neighbor.

Calvin’s contemptuous view of the self was closely related to the fact that individuals felt so insignificant in the industrial developments of the modern period. And the twentieth-century self-contempt arises not only from Calvinism but also from our disease of emptiness.