Transience and Possibility: The Legacy of Rollo May

Abstract

This brief reverie on transience and possibility is a collage-like piece combining bits of poetry, dream, imagery and prose along with more predictable scholastic fare. It reflects, elliptically, on the legacy of preeminent existential-humanistic psychologist Rollo May, honoring the matrix of thinkers out of which his work emerges even as it suggests, simultaneously, his hallowed place amid a chorus of contemporaneous voices and minds. The intended purpose is two-fold: (1) a poetic introduction for our Eastern colleagues to a genuine Western sage; and (2) a challenge to the West to more resolutely embody the “courage to create” that May saw as foundational to the prospect of becoming truly human. Message and form, as a consequence, are intricately merged.

Notes

Note: All artwork is reproduced courtesy of Kristina, whose heartrending story is narrated more thoroughly in my book Ethics & Lao-Tzu: Intimations of Character (2008).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ed Mendelowitz

Ed Mendelowitz completed his doctoral work at the California School of Professional Psychology in Berkeley where he worked closely with Rollo May. He is on the board of editors for the Journal of Humanist Psychology and a contributor to some of the major compendiums of existential/humanistic/depth psychotherapy. He has presented papers on psychology and its relationship to philosophy, religion, and the arts in the USA, Europe and Asia. His essays and talks attempt to get to the heart of the aesthetic, even spiritual, bases of psychology in their invocation of imagination, transience, possibility and awe. Dr. Mendelowitz is a part-time faculty member at Saybrook Graduate School, a lecturer at Tufts Medical Center and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of the Rockies. He writes a quarterly newsletter column on psyche and the arts, Humanitas, for the Society for Humanistic Psychology and lives and works in Boston.