Quote

Humor is the healthy way of feeling distance between one's self and the problem, a way of standing off and looking at one's problem with perspective.

Rollo May

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Rollo May
Age: 85 †
Born: 1909
Born: April 21
Died: 1994
Died: October 22
Psychologist
Psychotherapist
Writer
Problem
Distance
Self
Perspective
Way
Standing
Healthy
Humor
Feeling
Looking
Feelings

More quotes by Rollo May

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Ecstasy is the accurate term for the intensity of consciousness that occurs in the creative act.
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Reason works better when emotions are present the person sees sharper and more accurately when his emotions are engaged.
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A historical perspective can also help free us from the ever-present danger -- especially at danger in the social sciences -- of absolutizing a theory or method which is actually relative to the fact that we live at a given moment in time in the development of our particular culture.
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There is an energy field between humans. And, when we reach out in passion, it is met with an answering passion and changes the relationship forever.
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Courage is necessary to make being and becoming possible.
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It is infinitely safer to know that the man at the top has his doubts, as you and I have ours, yet has the courage to move ahead in spite of these doubts.
Rollo May
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There is a curiously sharp sense of joy - or perhaps better expressed, a sense of mild ecstasy - that comes when you find the particular form required by your creation.
Rollo May
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Tools and techniques ought to be an extension of consciousness, but they can just as easily be a protection from consciousness. Then the tools become defence mechanisms... against the unconscious.
Rollo May
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Unconscious insights or answers to problems that come in reverie do not come hit or miss... they pertain to those areas in which the person consciously has worked laboriously and with dedication.
Rollo May
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The amazing thing about love is that it is the best way to get to know ourselves.
Rollo May
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Professors will lecture with more inspiration if they occasionally alternate the classroom with the beach: authors will write better when, as Macaulay used to do, they write for two hours, then pitch quoits, and then go back to their writing. But certainly more than the mere mechanical alternation is involved.
Rollo May
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Consciousness is the awareness that emerges out of the dialectical tension between possibilities and limitations.
Rollo May
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Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.
Rollo May
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If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.
Rollo May
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Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem.
Rollo May
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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.
Rollo May
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Courage is the basic virtue for everyone so long as he continues to grow, to move ahead.
Rollo May
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Our age is one of transition, in which the normal channels for utilizing the daimonic are denied and such ages tend to be times when the daimonic is expressed in its most destructive form.
Rollo May
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Indeed, compulsive and rigid moralism arises in given persons precisely as the result of a lack of sense of being. Rigid moralism is a compensatory mechanism by which the individual persuades himself to take over the external sanctions because he has no fundamental assurance that his own choices have any sanction of their own
Rollo May
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The ultimate error is the refusal to look evil in the face.
Rollo May