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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.

Rollo May

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Rollo May
Age: 85 †
Born: 1909
Born: April 21
Died: 1994
Died: October 22
Psychologist
Psychotherapist
Writer
Wells
Bases
Decade
Well
Decades
Colleagues
People
Century
Emptiness
Middle
Surprising
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Chief
Sound
Chiefs
Clinical
Problem
Psychological
Psychiatric
May
Basis
Twentieth

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The amazing thing about love is that it is the best way to get to know ourselves.
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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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It is dangerous to know, but it is more dangerous not to know.
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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.
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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.
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Creativity is the result of a struggle between vitality and form. As anyone who has tried to write a sonnet or scan poetry, is aware, the form ideally do not take away from the creativity but may add to it.
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Poets may be delightful creatures in the meadow or the garret, but they are menaces on the assembly line.
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The rebel is committed to giving a form and pattern to the world. It is a pattern born of the indomitable thrust of the human mind, the mind which makes out of the mass of meaningless data in the world an order and a form.
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We receive love — from our children as well as others — not in proportion to our demands or sacrifices or needs, but roughly in proportion to our own capacity to love.
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Whatever sphere we may be in, there is a profound joy in the realization that we are helping to form the structure of the new world. This is creative courage, however minor or fortuitous our creations may be.
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Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable.
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Freedom does not come automatically it is achieved. And it is not gained in a single bound it must be achieved each day.
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That because of this interplay of conscious and unconscious factors in guilt and the impossibility of legalistic blame, we are forced into an attitude of acceptance of the universal human situation and a recognition of the participation of every one of us in man's inhumanity to man.
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Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don't find themselves at all.
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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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They pursue meaninglessness until they can force it to mean.
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Anxiety is an even better teacher than reality, for one can temporarily evade reality by avoiding the distasteful situation but anxiety is a source of education always present because one carries it within.
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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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When you are completely absorbed or caught up in something, you become oblivious to things around you, or to the passage of time. It is this absorption in what you are doing that frees your unconscious and releases your creative imagination.
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