The Role of Loneliness in the Crisis of 2020 in the United States - According to Rollo May

This paper was written for coursework for my Ph.D in Psychology: Existential-Humanistic Psychology at Saybrook University in a course on The Psychology of Rollo May. References are limited to those of May due to the focus being on understanding his philosophy and psychology.

Introduction

For the United States, 2020 has been one of the more meaningful years in decades. Existential thought has had a resurgence amidst the ongoing world health crisis of COVID-19, the contentious presidential election, the growing political tensions between President Trump and Democrats, and the unrest around human rights and racial injustice. These happenings in the United States are what Reeves (1977) referred to as “distortions of the structures of existence” (p. 14). Said differently, there is widespread feeling that perhaps what is going on is not quite what we meant them to be, and there is a real threat to the value of the individual. Rollo May (1953) would refer to these tensions as “outward occasions for peoples’ disturbances” (p. 3). Yet, these outward occasions are products and participants within the broader individual psychology of our time. 

Throughout May’s career he wrote at length about the intersection, relationship, and tensions between the individual and culture in the development of the person. May (1953, 1972, 1982, 1991) believed that United States culture lives with a sense of emptiness and loneliness that is made up of interwoven phenomena of self-alienation, powerlessness, loss of self-significance, and loss of value to navigate life. But May (1982) asserted that we have innate agency and that these conditions are an invitation to greater self-awareness and freedom. For this essay, since it will likely be published after political tensions settle, I am moved to ask: As a country, how did we get here? 

The Individual and Culture

Influenced by Harry Stack Sullivan’s idea that the individual finds himself imbedded, shaping, and being shaped by the broader culture, May (1953) asserted that the individual is a cross sections of the larger culture; he pointed toward the overlapping and co-creative nature of the individual and culture: “It takes culture to create self and self to create culture…. There is no self except in interaction with a culture, and no culture that is not made up of selves” (1982, p. 241). May (1953, 1982) stated that, as individuals, we have a communal nature and naturally create agreed upon meanings, values, and expectations that guide and hold us together. 

May (1991) believed that at the intersection of the personal and cultural is myth: the value-and-ethic infused stories that provide a sense of meaning or direction in life. Meaning is personal in nature, giving us a sense of grounding, connection to self and others, and significance or value. For an individual, meaning and value are synonymous. What is valuable is anything that touches the individual or gives them a bodily experience that they deem good. May asserted that what we deem as valuable gives us meaning and direction because it moves us towards our potentiality and purpose and connects us with community.

May (1982) believed that as a community of individuals, we are co-creators of our destinies. We co-create these outward occasions by either considering and creating from our experiences or submitting ourselves to a system of values that we may have participated in blindly creating and trust. These systems of values have an ongoing effect on our inner condition and our power to change them. In a letter to Carl Rogers on the topic of evil, May (1982) stated that it is a temptation to view culture as the enemy. While tempting to view culture or politics as the primary source of our individual difficulties, this mentality puts external blame on something that is simultaneously happening within us individually. Even before we come into relationship with these outward occasions, we have our own values which directs our response.

Emptiness

In the shadow of The Meaning of Anxiety (1950), May published Man’s Search for Himself (1953), which is another layer in the foundation of understanding our state as individuals and as a culture in 2020. At that time of his writing in the 1940s and into the 60s, May believed that we were in an age of anxiety both as individuals and as a country. How individuals manage their internal experience of their life or these outward occasions leads to either a greater sense of connection to self and freedom or towards a greater sense of self-alienation and emptiness. May asserted that emptiness and the similar concept of loneliness are the most significant problem people face. 

May (1953) described emptiness as a sense of not knowing what one feels, “an inability to make decisions…not having an experience of their own desires or wants…a painful experience of powerlessness,” and difficulty in relationships and a hidden desire for them “to fill some vacancy within themselves” (p. 4). May described the empty individual as having a firm opinion of what should happen or what others expect of them but having little to no idea what it is they feel or want. May mused that there is a sense of outward-directedness that is very much inwardly characterized by a sense of “passivity and apathy” (p. 8). May described two examples of emptiness: (a) the suburban man who thoughtlessly moves through the same routine for years, eventually dying of what he thinks is a sense of boredom and (b) the young adult who has to be a-part-of something or some group to feel a sense of identity. In these examples, we see the abandoning of their experience, as opposed to courageously facing their anxiety and creatively engaging with their felt experience (May, 1950, 1953, 1975, 1981).

The awareness of emptiness is an awareness of a feeling of emptiness: an awareness of something. As May (1953) stated, the individual is not a battery that is empty and needs to be charged. May (1939, 1969) agreed with Freud that the individual is dynamic, both pushed by life and also free and pulled by personal values. May (1953) wrote that the feeling of emptiness is a feeling that one is powerless over “their lives or the world they live in” (p. 11). May described it as a sense of vacuousness: A sense of I cannot effect change in my life or what I do makes no difference.

Locating this aspect of emptiness is within the broader existential tradition. May (1953) described vacuousness as a sense of a cyclical condition of retreating further and further into despair and self-isolation because one is unable to effect change in their life or the life around them. May’s use of vacuousness is congruent to Frankl’s term existential vacuum. Langle (2003) described it “as a loss of interest (which could lead to boredom) and a lack of initiative (which could lead to apathy)” (p. 110). Such inner conditions lead to a sense of meaninglessness or a sense of hopelessness of not having power to enact change in one’s life.

This outward-directedness and powerlessness has an even more harrowing aspect to it. Long before May’s writing, existentialists had looked critically on the movements of industrialization, modernization, and politicalization of life. May (1953) cited Erich Fromm, who pointed out that people no longer live in accordance to church or some higher moral laws, a theme in what May would later call myth in The Cry for Myth (1991).  Fromm believed that people are now more directed by what he called “anonymous authorities” such as public opinion (as cited in May, 1953, p. 12). These anonymous authorities are adopted ideas of what is right or wrong, but these are ideas of what they say is right or what they say is what brings the individual happiness and security, rather than from the individuals’ identity and potentialities. May (1953) noted that these ideals of a good life or they, that which will give me security and happiness, is a creation and “composite” of our collective emptiness without a center within ourselves (p.12). These ideas and values or anonymous authorities are things that we created from our own anxiety. Upon realization of this vast externality that individuals have created we’re left with this feeling of powerlessness to effect change in our lives.

May’s (1972) Power and Innocence ushered in a warning regarding the long-term effects of this emptiness and externality. May noted that as individuals we are collectively afraid of our emptiness; if we took a moment to look inward, we would be confronted by our lack of self-significance or what Langle would call self-value. Asserting that if we took a moment, individually and collectively, to consider the effects of using externality for our self-significance that it would erupt in 

anxiety and despair, and ultimately, if it is not corrected, to futility and the blocking off of the most precious qualities of the human being. Its end result are dwarfing and impoverishment of persons psychologically, or else surrender to some destructive authoritarianism. (p. 12)

Not only is there a needed inward attention towards ourselves, a matter of self-significance, or value, but an issue of I-matter: that I have an experience and my experience matters. Along with a necessary examining the system that guides us that may in fact not resonate with our own emergent values at all. In the face of such massive systems of ideas and values that we have, sometimes blindly, trusted to provide this happiness and security, if the experience of the individual or minority is not considered they will eventually erupt in violence to regain their significance. May (1972) noted that all violence has its roots in "impotence and apathy” (p. 23), which are both rooted in the individual’s sense of powerlessness. 

Loneliness

Separate, another characteristic of the contemporary individual that heavily overlaps with emptiness is loneliness. May (1953) described loneliness as an experience of being apart from or on the outside of others. As an example, May stated that it is not necessarily that the individual wants to come to the party, or be apart of the group or event for enjoyment or “sharing of experience and human warmth in the gathering” (p. 13), but rather that by being invited and being a-part-of “is proof that they are not alone” (p. 13). This is an inward reason and not social. May explained that loneliness comes about because “the human being gets his original experiences of being a self out of his relatedness to other persons, and when he is alone, without other persons, he is afraid he will lose this experience of being a self” (p. 14). May’s emphasis and understanding of loneliness is both in relationship to the inner-world of the individual and the greater cultural context. 

May (1953) asserted that it is in relationships with others that we find and understand ourselves, and that loneliness is a sort of developmental stage inherent in growing into being a person. According to May, in loneliness we feel a sense of anxiousness and rush outward to the other for safety and validation of our importance. He noted that in the greater societal context, being important has become a way of defining and valuing ourselves: Society has come to say that being “socially acceptable…socially successful…(or) liked” is the goal and great balm of anxiety (p. 14). In moments of loneliness, the individual often describes a sense of feeling “emptied” or left with a “void” as if some part of them has vanished (p. 13). These feelings and the emphasis on finding ourselves through looking outward can create immense fear and a sense of emptiness. As I will discuss in more detail later, anxiety is the invitation to create and expand out sense of self/consciousness. 

If one defines themselves purely by looking outward, then who they are on the inside seemingly does not matter. However, by utilizing this method we step out of relationship with ourselves and the very experience of being a person: the experience and identity of being I. Many people feel that if they were alone and with this emptiness for some period of time that they would lose their sense of reality. May (1953) described this anxiety as a sense of “terror” at the encounter of emptiness (p. 17). Coming to the realization that one’s internal reality seems hollow is immensely painful and disorienting. Terror, in its extreme form, can lead one to psychosis: the sense that the individual needs to make their own reality to fill the space or have some sense of self-significance. May (1969) wrote that “acute loneliness seems to be the most painful kind of anxiety which a human being can suffer” (p. 151). 

As May (1953) and other existential philosophers before him contemplated, living has become an impersonal hollow practice. For many, loneliness is a real threat. In coming back to the herd, as a client described society, we can relinquish our loneliness and its constructive aspects to cultivate ourselves. May asserted that in order to gain consciousness of our selves, we must be with our feelings, and feelings reside in the body. Not only is the individual estranged from the inner dimensions of psyche, soul, and guiding myth, but also their own body from which all is housed and sensed.

Imperative to May’s discussion of loneliness and the role of the body is the cultural context from which he was writing in the mid-20th century, which was the over-emphasis on reason. During this time of high anxiousness, humans relied on science to find “universal principals by which all men might live happily” (May, 1953, p. 31). In doing so they bypassed the individuals and their personal potentialities. Science tended to separate reason from feeling and was deemed more reliable and not susceptible to the changing winds of feeling. This emphasis on science and lack of relationship to feeling has continued throughout the present day in a form of “should” or “ought to” where our decision-making process is based off some inherited or forced value system of what’s right.

Another key component to how May understood loneliness was the role of myth. Myths were one of the ways that the individual and culture created a sense of self (May, 1991). Myths are stories that embody ideas and values that pull us, give us a sense of identity, are something to orient ourselves towards, and help us make sense of life. May (1991) wrote that in loneliness there is a sense that the individual does not know what values or ideas pull them, a sense that they are going somewhere but they have no idea where, no resonance with where they are headed, or they have never taken the time to sense and examine what that somewhere is and are left lost. Like a sailor lost a sea with no direction by which to go.

In 2020, we are the inheritors of decades of industrialization and progression where the body was said to only get in the way. We have repressed the very means of access to our selves. In my psychotherapy practice, I regularly ask individuals what they are feeling and where in their body they are feeling it. Consistently, the response is confusion or a blank stare. May (1953) emphasized the role of the cultural tendency to separate psychology from the body, as if outside forces are always to blame, and he highlighted the likelihood of psychosomatic experiences as the cause of many ailments. He stated that psycho-somatic illnesses and experiences are invitations to reeducate ourselves or re-integrate ourselves with our bodies. May believed that it is as if the symptoms are saying to us: “You must become your whole self. To the extent that you do not, you will be ill; and you will become well only to the extent that you do become yourself” (p. 77). He invited us to take a more active role in healing ourself versus passive acceptance that we get sick in mind or body outside of our control. 

Anxiety as Core to Emptiness and Loneliness

As previously stated, this hollowness or emptiness that life has become for so many people and this sense of being outside a sense of genuine personal contact with other persons is one of the most painful forms of anxiety (May, 1953, 1969). Anxiety both shakes our relationship with ourselves and invites us toward self-creation or actualization of our potentialities (May, 1975). For many, anxiety is the most painful emotion they can bear. In emptiness, we fear to face it because there is an anxiety that I am alone. May (1953) noted that the greatest threat and trigger of anxiety is when something that we value or see as essential to our idea of life and selves is threatened.

The interpretations of the self are vast in their interpretation. In the experience of anxiety, something is happening in relation to our self. As May (1953) stated, similarly to the saying of ignorance is bliss, if we were to lose or have little relationship with ourselves, there would be no anxiety.  For if there was no self, then we wouldn’t be bothered by what’s in the news. It is difficult to deny the troubling nature of the outward-occasion or catastrophes of our time - although we’re in a time when many do. Even when May (1949, 1953) said that culturally we’re in an age of anxiety, later stating we’re in an age of despair, just a few years later he knew that anxiety was a very overused word and its meaning had lost much of its significance. It is a temptation to put blame on anxiety for our individual maladies, for it is also the cause of our outward occasions. 

There is a connection between anxiety, emptiness, and loneliness. All throughout May’s descriptions of emptiness and loneliness he described the individual as left with a feeling of powerlessness. May (1953) wrote, “apathy and lack of feeling are also defenses against anxiety. When a person continually faces dangers he is powerless to overcome, his final line of defense is at last to avoid even feeling the dangers” (p. 250). Picking up this theme again later May (1972) wrote that it is the aggressive form of power that is used to combat the experience of apathy that emerges in times of great anxiety and guilt. This leads to the next ingredient in May’s understanding of loneliness—that of power or the individual’s experience of powerlessness. May described power as the fuel of putting one’s will into action towards a value that pulls us, gives us a feeling, and touches on something that is important to us individually. 

Self-Affirmation and Power

Related to May’s (1953) discussion on the centrality of emptiness and loneliness, he also delved into the loss of relationship with self and its impact on the individual’s power. He noted that individuals have “to a great extent lost the power to affirm and believe in any value” (p. 162). Without a relationship to self, one loses the capacity to detect, experience, or affirm value internally and externally. Consequently, the individual has no power. May (1972) wrote that our central issue, precipitated by the widespread experience of emptiness and loneliness, “is the widespread loss of the sense of individual significance, a loss which is sensed inwardly as impotence” (p. 36) in tandem with the individual’s realization that they have no power to affect change in their life. May cited Nietzsche’s famous statement of the will to power and noted that it is not will nor power, “but rather self-realization and self-actualization” (p. 20). For if there was no awareness of feelings or the body, then there is no relationship to the self. It is through the self—knowing how something is for us—that we know how to interact with our life. May noted that one of the prime focuses of psychotherapy is to aid the person in rediscovering their center of significance, or value, and in doing so their power to engage with life. 

Although in the American culture power is seen as synonymous with wealth, prestige, or position, May (1972) believed that power is “essential for all living things” (p. 19). In Latin, power is defined as “to be able” (May, 1972). With May’s meaning of power, power is a child screaming that something is wrong, the parent raising their hand at a PTA meeting, individuals marching on the streets in protest, or a partner telling the other that they love them as they are making them dinner. May asserted that power has an interpersonal component, for it is the person trying to affirm themselves in relationship with something other that says I matter, or what May would call self-significance.  For May (1972), all expressions of power are the need for self-affirmation and significance, even if sometimes to destructive or violent ends. 

May (1972) identified five phases of power, including the power to be and self-affirmation, which are the initial and most important phases in human development.  The first phase of power is that of the power to be, which is demonstrated in the infant being able to be born.  The second phase of power is self-affirmation—a sense of I matter—or what May referred to as self-esteem. Ideally, in a synchronous and healthy development of the person’s psychology, this sense of significance is cultivated within a loving parent-child relationship. May (1953) stated that love is the “delight in the presence of the other person and an affirming of his value and development as much as one’s own” (p. 182). Without love, there is no relationship or valuing of the other and the cultivation of their inner person. This normal development requires “the love and care of the parent along with his own capacity to explore and increase his sense of mastery day by day” is (p. 125).

For May (1972), power is the maturation or the individual’s reaching forth towards their potentials or areas that are not yet the individual’s reality, writing “Every person is born a bundle of potentialities” (p. 121). It is through our self-significance or esteem that we solidify our being or beliefs in the face of an anxiety-provoking challenge. Consequences arise if these needs of self-esteem are unmet in early childhood. Anxiety is the individual approaching and taking up relationship with their potentiality. Potentiality is actuality which is not yet actualized. Moving through anxiety towards potentialities is critical and requires a sense of power through self-significance. For there is an experience of something coming forth within the person’s experience of anxiety that must be lived out or “neurosis, psychosis, or violence will result” (May, 1972, p.40). This is descriptive of the creative process of the artist or poet who wrestles with experience, to know how to use their power to integrative and connective means, in their pursuit of forth new form (May, 1972, 1975).

May (1972) noted that just as the infant always pushes for a sense of significance, so there will always be conflict between the individual and their context. According to May, culture holds us and gives us a sense of comfort, while also resisting our potentiality. In order to affirm and expand ourselves, we must find resistance to push against. May said that, ideally, we would use our power for constructive and integrative ends when creating a bridge to the other. He asserted that through our power, directed by a sense of will, the individual is moved towards something (May, 1969, 1972, 1991). Without a sense of self-affirmation and self-value, which is cultivated in relationship to the world and others, there can be no outer value. 

May (1972) noted the importance of self-significance in relationship to other: “lack of self-esteem and self-affirmation makes it very difficult to have anything left over for others; an individual must have something with which to ‘prime the pump’ before he can give to others” (p. 249). Self-affirmation is required to have power, and power is required to communicate. When one genuinely takes up relationship through communication, we value the other; to genuinely communicate with another is an act of vulnerability and a “recovery of the original we-ness” (May, 1972, p. 247). As individuals, we have become so isolated from genuine contact that we have become quite lonely and empty. Much of this emptiness resides in a lack of our own self-affirmation or value and a lack of vision or guiding value for ourselves and our culture. 

May would disagree with the statement that “power corrupts,” though it certainly can if the desire for significance is mis-directed, he instead asserted that “powerlessness corrupts” (1972, p. 23). For without power, that deep sense of self-significance, the person is impotent and just going along. However, May did not regard this impotence as a negative, merely a sign that pointed the direction to a faulty myth. An impotence which may lead to violence to regain this sense of self-significance and value. An individual’s or cultures values are that which give the individual direction or “against which to rebel.” (1972, p.33)

Myth and Values

Another central theme in May’s writing is that of the importance and loss of values in modern society (1972, 1981, 1991). Myths can be found in churches, advertisements, experiences, or wherever we find belonging. Through deciphering and integrating the values inherent in myths, we create structure and grounding to navigate life and relationships within the broader community.  A student of Greek mythology, May (1991) believed that it is within myths that we find our values that help us make sense of the world. Furthermore, he viewed the loss of values as closely tied to the loss of myth.

Prior to May even writing on myth he put freedom as the ultimate value. May (1981) wrote that freedom is “the mother of all values” (p. 5). For if there were not freedom to which we sought in courage to create from within our relationship to our center or self, there would be no other values such a “honesty, love,…courage,” or beauty (p. 5). For freedom is the very basis to our ability to value. Quoting Jaspers, May wrote “to be free means to be one’s self” (p. 8), which is to have a personal experience and a set of values by which one is pulled to understand and direct one’s life.

May (1991) pointed toward the characters of Greek mythology as heroes or models that inspire these values and ethics as guiding forces. Heroes arise in seasons of despair and shake us out of the despair towards a value. The Greek characters live with a sense of purpose and a sense of responsibility for the greater community. It was the Greek hero who broke-free and stood up for a value where others were not. This reinforces the value of freedom. To have freedom is to stand up for the I against the opposing value. May (1991) noted that for Plato, myths are the “foundation of values and ethics” (p. 28). For May, purpose is inseparable from a value, for purpose is something that we are drawn or pulled towards and is a felt experiences that enlivens the individual(s). Moreover, purpose is to know where one is meant to go within the need of the whole to contribute to the betterment of all. Without some relationship with the I or self that makes us uniquely us, there is no way to know our purpose—its within feeling (May, 1953, 1991). 

May believed that within the American culture there is a constant movement towards the next thing, with no clear idea of what is being striven towards. Without a guiding myth, a natural loneliness sets in and is the “deepest and least assuage-able of all” (May, 1991, p. 98). May (1991) described one of the most predominate myths as that of the Lone Ranger. We were enamored not by the courage, character, or values of the main character but by his venturing into the wild adventure of life solo. Like the Lone Ranger, we set forth from home to start something new, not knowing what to (May, 1991). This cultural norm is portrayed in the images of the adventurer, trapper, or settler in the wagon train. In a sense, this myth has a core of “I will make something of myself by what I do.” May attributed much of our myth-lessness to our rootlessness as Americans and not allowing ourselves time and space to experiences ourselves and what we are moving towards. Even with new jobs, promotions, home ownership, traveling, marriage, great sex, and other milestones that promise happiness, Americans are often left feeling quite empty. 

In many works, May (1953, 1972, 1981, 1991, 1995) asserted that Americans have lost our center within ourselves, becoming far too individualistic and forgetting our ethics of being a part of a broader social community. Our value of “rugged individualism” has pulled us out of community with not just ourselves but the broader world (May, 1991, p.109). May stated that self-significance for itself is destructive and egocentric as opposed to looking towards connection and relationship/community. May believed that individualism has merit when working towards the goal of not just differentiation but re-engagement with others and “work which contributes to the good of the community” (1953, p. 29; 1991). This is a critique May (1982) put forth with Rogers that humanistic psychology has become far too self-centered and focused on actualization rather than its ultimate value, which is seeing the collective and connected humanity of all and how we navigate this complexity.

Conclusion

In light of Rollo May’s foundational themes of emptiness and loneliness and their interwoven characteristics, the existential distortions of the outward occasions of 2020 do leave us scratching our heads in curiosity. Leaning us towards reflection and inquiry into my initial question of: As a country, how did we get here? May (1991) remarked in the final chapter of The Cry for Myth that something tragic is required to bring us all together. May (1969, 1991) and Schneider (2020) believed the balm of our harrowing emptiness and insignificance was the invitation to value and contemplate all that we are, to develop as the body and mind direct, in responsibility and relationship to themselves, the other, and the broader community. As May (1991) reflected on a conversation with Tillich, it’s in reaching deeply into the conditions of our own humanity that we find intimacy and value not just within ourselves but connection with the humanity of the other. 

References

Langle, A. (2003). Burnout: Existential meaning and possibilities of prevention. European Psychotherapy, 4(1), 107-121.

May, R. (1939). The art of counseling. W.W. Norton.

May, R. (1950). The meaning of anxiety. W.W. Norton.

May, R. (1953). Man’s search for himself. W.W. Norton.

May, R. (1969). Love and will. W.W. Norton.

May, R. (1972). Power and innocence. W.W. Norton.

May, R. (1975). The courage to create. W.W. Norton.

May, R. (1981). Freedom and destiny. W.W. Norton.

May, R. (1982). The problem of evil: an open letter to Carl Rogers. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 22(3), 10-21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022167882223003

May, R. (1991). The cry for myth. W.W. Norton.

Reeves, C. (1977) The psychology of Rollo Ray. Jossey-Bass.

Schneider, K. (2020) The depolarization of America. University Professors Press. 

Schneider, K., & May, R. (1995). The psychology of existence. W.W. Norton.

This paper was written for coursework for my Ph.D in Psychology: Existential-Humanistic Psychology at Saybrook University in a course The Psychology of Rollo May. There are limited references used because the focus was on studying a specific aspect of Mays psychology.

My name is Caleb Dodson I’m a private psychotherapist in Seattle, WA and I’m most passionate about bringing kindness to and excavating a sense of humanity in the most challenging experiences to bring about a more full life.