Rollo Reece May (April 21, 1909 – October 22, 1994) was an American existential psychologist and author of the influential book Love and Will (1969).

He is often associated with humanistic psychology and existentialist philosophy, and alongside Viktor Frankl, was a major proponent of existential psychotherapy.

Reese May, otherwise known as 'Rollo' May, was born in Ada, Ohio, on April 21,1909 to Matie Boughton and Earl Tittle May, a Men's Christian Associations Field Secretary, as the first son and the second eldest of six.

[6] Some may describe Rollo's childhood as difficult due to the divorce of his parents and to his oldest sister's struggle with mental health that resulted in frequent hospitalizations.

[8] At Michigan State University he majored in English, but was expelled due to his involvement in a radical student magazine.

During this time, he studied with doctor and psychotherapist Alfred Adler, with whom his later work shares theoretical similarities.

He was ordained as a minister shortly after coming back to the United States, but left the ministry after several years to pursue a degree in psychology.

He later attended Union Theological Seminary for a BD during 1938, and Teachers College, Columbia University for a PhD in clinical psychology in 1949.

May was a founder and faculty member of Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center in San Francisco.

He followed with a more theoretical book, The Springs of Creative Living: A Study of Human Nature and God (1940) presenting a personality theory influenced by critiquing the work of others, including Freud and Adler.

May also discusses how he believes that experiencing anxiety can aid development and how dealing with it appropriately can lead to having a healthy personality.

In Man’s Search for Himself (1953), May talks about his experience with his patients and the recurring problems they had in common such as loneliness and emptiness.

May identified Paul Tillich as one of his biggest influences and in this book May episodically recalls Tillich's life trying to focus just on the key moments over the eight chapters, taking a psychoanalytic approach to the tale (May, 1973) Listening to our ideas and helping form the structure of our world is what our creative courage can come from; this is the main direction of May in this book.

Argued in this book is May's belief that humans can use myths to help them make sense of their lives, based on case studies May uses from his patients.

May was influenced by North American humanism and interested in reconciling existential psychology with other philosophies, especially Freud's.

Shortly before his death, May wrote the foreword to Robert Kramer's edited collection of Rank's American lectures.

"I have long considered Otto Rank to be the great unacknowledged genius in Freud's circle", wrote May.

[27] He believed that the feelings of threat and powerlessness associated with anxiety motivated humans to exercise freedom to act courageously instead of conforming to the comforts of modern life.

Because emotion had separated from reason, it became socially acceptable to seek sexual relationships while avoiding the natural drive to relate to another person and create new life.

According to May, guilt occurs when people deny their potentialities, fail to perceive the needs of others or are unaware of their dependency on the world.

May believed that psychotherapists towards the end of the 20th century had fractured away from the Jungian, Freudian and other influencing psychoanalytic thought and started creating their own 'gimmicks' causing a crisis within the world of psychotherapy.

[28] May believed that modern psychotherapy in the late 20th century was branching away from its original founders: Freud, Jung, Rank, and Adler.

Existential psychotherapy aligned with the ideas of Freud, Jung, Rank, and Adler, who sought to bring the unconscious to the conscious.

Thus, existential psychotherapy helped patients to hone their mental capacities, allowing them to internalize their experiences; typically, in a more sensitive and intellectual manner.

Existential psychotherapy also emphasized natural concepts like death, love, fear which relates to how individuals can fit into the world around them.

May identified five unconstructive trends: First, May disliked the idea that existential psychology could be specialized to a particular school or group, namely the Ontoanalytic Society.

Third, May believed the association of existential psychology with Zen Buddhism downplayed the significant differences between these two practices.

Conversely, May advocated for therapeutic techniques, as long as they held clear presuppositions, and were administered in an undogmatic manner because therapy was meant to be objective.

May believed existentialists should focus on the man to whom a drive or force is happening and the subsequent experiences of acting willfully.

In this manner, May hoped that existentialists would better understand anxiety, despair and other existential problems which rely on the totality of human experiences.