Customer Reviews

Love and Will

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I read this book in graduate school in 1973 and then again 30 years later. When I was a young man I had not had enough experience with Eros to understand the book. I knew I wished to do great deeds but I did not know the source from which these thoughts emerged. Now, in the second reading, I recognize the forces of Eros in my past and present and recognize the need to integrate the daemonic or shadow to fully harness these forces.

The central thesis of the book is that Eros, the life force, directs our Will toward our highest potential. Rollo May asserts that hate is not the opposite of love, apathy and disinterest is. The opposite of will is not indecision - but rather May sees it as detachment. May's central thesis is that Eros (Love) is the fundamental energy behind Will. Eros is the force that drives men to seek God. Eros is the spirit of life and is not to be confused with the sex drive. Rollo May points out that the sex drive seeks satisfaction and release of tension whereas Eros drives us outward. Much of the first half of the book carefully explains the similarities and differences between the sex drive and Eros, the life force. Primarily May sees sexuality as a drive reduction process, similar to the learning theorists Clark Hull and James B Watson. Eros, however, is the creator, forever reaching out, seeking to expand. As Paul Tillich says "A movement from the potential to the actual" and "vitality is the power of creating beyond oneself without losing oneself." Eros is the power from which we do not want release but rather to be prolonged, to form the world. Eros drives us to go beyond ourselves, to transcend ourselves, to reach ethical goodness, to seek truth and beauty. May connects his theories to St. Augustine, Freud, Maslow, Joseph Campbell, and Plato; all of whom belived that love is the fundamental human experience; pervades all our actions, and is the deepest motivating force. Freud further believed that all civilizations are created by the disciplining and re-direction of the forces of Eros. Rollo May, the therapist, points out that the task is not only to recognize our own power but to recognize the self aggrandizement that accompanies all human endeavor in this realm of power and love. May is similar to Jung in the concept of recognition of the shadow or daemonic as a guide to the self as well as a path toward integration and concentrated power and life force. Referring back to Harry Stack Sullivan, May points out that we can only love others to the extent that we can love ourselves. What is it like to be someone who has harnessed the power of Eros? May quotes Hegel: "Socrates, like all heroes who cause new worlds to rise and inescapably the old one to disintegrate was experienced as a threat; what he fought for is a new form which breaks through and undermines the exisiting world."

I think the reader may find that the works of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung further inform May's thesis. I strongly recommend the book to those who study mythology, philosophy, and psychology.

LOVE AND WILL is probably Rollo May's best book, his magnum opus. It was published in 1969, when May--by then one of the most prominent psychologists on the American scene--was sixty-years old. And, despite its intelligence and psychological sophistication, it became a best-seller. Central to this praiseworthy work are chapters 5 & 6, in which Dr. May introduces (presaging James Hillman) his radical concept of "the daimonic." Any person concerned with the so-called senseless violence so prevalent at the close of the millennium would do well to have a look at these stunning, seminal chapters. Also of interest, especially to psychotherapists, is May's erudite discussion of "intentionality" a little later on. Though May's treatment of some subjects might be slightly dated, there is much here to be strongly recommended, especially for students and other readers who appreciate substantial books such as Ernest Becker's THE DENIAL OF DEATH.

Rollo May merges psychology with philosophy to put contemporary views on love, sex and happiness in perspective. With insight that draws upon centuries of great thinkers, May points out some subtle paradoxes that being in love creates. He examines how our intentions often have to be redirected in order to get what we desire, and by that time, we forget what it was that we were after. Love and Will is no self-help book with fluffy answers or advice. It is an attempt to reconcile our emotions with our actions, ambitious as it is illuminating

Simply stated, this is the most intelligent book I have ever read. Rollo May goes to extrordinary lengths to dissect the misunderstood concept of love. He traces love from the Greeks to modern day. Each page challenges the reader to rethink his/her superficial understanding of love. The author's case studies from his own psychoanalytic practice provide relevant examples of how the values of modern society have reduced love to a physical act of gratification. Anyone interested in improving themselves as a human being must read this very challenging and thought provoking book.

Find out here why love and will are so psychologically intertwined....and why a dearth in one means a dearth of the other. In a culture in which deterministic explanations and excuse-making have largely replaced a recognition of personal responsibility and the power of the will, it's no wonder love itself is impoverished. May also offers alternatives to this state of affairs. An excellent book.

I first read Rollo May's _Love and Will_ about 30 years ago and the wisdom of his writing has stayed with me since. May wrote before the time that "self help" became a heading on the shelves of a bookstore, in a time when analytical psychotherapy was still popular. Bearing that in mind, the reader will find that what May had to say then is all too true today. Whereas in the past love and will solved the problems of relationship to others, they have now become the problem. In our schizoid world real communication is rare. (The reader might think that May wrote after the advent of the personal computer.)

Now, there are a couple of reasons why I do not offer May's final analysis of the problem. One is that with the advent of "self help" we have shifted from an analytical to a behavioral form of psychotherapy. More than one writer says just do these ten things and you will be happy. The second reason is that the reader might miss May's concept of the daimonic. In it's simplest terms, it means that a person has to have something going on in his/her life.

Read the book. Learn the lesson. Set your own course of actions.

Rollo May made one statement which has stood with me after reading this book for the second time a few years ago. I had originally read this book about 1975 when I was 23 years old. The statement he made was our concept of continuous improvement [what Japanese business theorists call Kaizen, but he of course does not mention that] is somewhat of an illusion. Rather things stay the same. He alludes to the human heartbeat as being fairly constant rather than improving and alludes also to the myth of Sisyphus eternally pushing the rock up the mountain only to have it fall back again. The lesson seems to be that will is what holds the love together and makes existence possible even when things do not seem to improve or we are facing endlessly repetititive tasks as the work of love.

The sections on eros and the daimonic are also good, as other reviewers have already mentioned. I heartily recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn more of the fundamental realities of life and love.

Rollo May's Love and Will is the most important book I've read -- of any kind, at any time. It's importance to me is not because of some specific thesis May advances, but for an integrated set of ideas and values, an understanding of human nature, which May presents which has deepened my own thinking and understanding of most of my internal and external life experience. I re-consult the text frequently, and find myself quoting or paraphrasing it to others in many contexts, as I try to explain how I understand human interactions to actually work. (Shortly after first reading it, I have myself went to the length of naming my daughter after the book by giving her the middle name "Will." She has certainly fulfilled that anticipation.)

In general comments elsewhere about Existential Psychology (a 'school' of psychology of which he is often seen as a 'father,') psychoanalyst Rollo May sees psychotherapy -- one of his varied sources in Love and Will -- as more than a cure or remedy; serving rather to broaden the client's ability to create meaning in his or her life. That is what Love and Will has helped me do -- to perceive, create and deepen meaning in my life.

The book was originally written in the late 60s during the sexual revolution, which was spurred on by widespread distribution of the birth control pill and the resulting opportunity to (further) separate love from sex in much of our culture. Love and Will may appear at first blush to be a response, arguing as it does that separating sex from love exacts a terrible toll in apathy. But the meaning of May's ideas are both broader and deeper, and reading his content as primary about sex, or Eros, or even Love -- each among the major subjects addressed here -- gives less importance to this work than it merits. In the formulation about sex, love and apathy, for example, his most urgent focus is on apathy! I don't mean to deny the importance of sex, Love, Eros, or of these theses to his work; I mean to broaden the importance I attach to what May has written here, and what I think he contributes more generally.

When May speaks of Eros, he speaks most profoundly of it as a "daimon," a term which he debated vigorously, for example, with the great pioneer Carl Rogers, who insisted on misreading into it a simpler notion of "demonic!" But May's concept of the daimon was diffrent. In Love and Will, May defines "daimon" as "the urge in every being to affirm itself, assert itself, perpetuate and increase itself...[the reverse side] of the same affirmation that empowers or creativity." So May's "daimonic potentialities -- notably the daimonic urge of Eros -- are the source of both our constructive and destructive impulses --and normally both" -- e.g., toward creativity and love on the one hand, vs. toward rage, paranoia, compulsive sexuality and oppressive behavior on the other. Love and Will has for me held this revelation -- the notion of the same core urges within our psyches being for both good and ill, depending on how we channel them, and often for both. It is fascinating to read a giant like Carl Rogers himself struggle with the subtlety of reconciling both the good and evil within the same daimonic impulse. It exemplifies for me how the power of May's subtle insight works.

Among my difficulties in chewing through Love and Will was his Chapter on Love and Death. I had to return to the chapter several different times before I could make my way through it emotionally. Here, May applies his broader notions of the meaning of anxiety in their most frightening setting. May makes the case the truest love can be experienced only in the face of death -- i.e., with the awareness of death's possibility. How well we know this from all our tradition of art and literature -- Romeo and Juliet, Tristan und Isolde loom so large! Yet how urgently we deny its applicability to our own lives. A skilled deployer of biblical and mythological references, nowhere is May's use more telling than in his noting the banality of love between the immortals in Greek mythology, compared with the fire that infuses those god's relations with mortal lovers.

In his discussion of Will, May quickly distinguishes Will from the straw man version of Will many of us were raised with, which he calls "Victorian Will Power." Will power is decidedly not what May means by Will -- it is an artificial social convention for denial or even repression of one's wishes. It neither entails Free Will, nor the genuine consultation of one's own wants or wishes about anything.

May's exploration of this realm takes us through his idea of "Intentionality," which focuses heavily on our way of knowing, which is so interdependent on our way of intending. We see what we see based on what we intend about it. If we can form no intention, we literally do not perceive! Don't we all have examples of bumping into something right in front of us that, somehow, we literally did not see because we did not have it in mind, i.e., had no intention about it? May's illustrations are more elegant... In one charming example, May describes how we might see a piece of paper in terms of its surface texture if we intend to draw on it, but perceive it in terms of its sturdiness if we intend instead to make a paper airplane from it -- so intertwined are intention and perception. His theory of intentionality builds from this foundation on up.

As elsewhere, May's approach combines practical, real life experience with reference to etymology and philosophy to reinforce the human understanding of how we human's think and understand out reality. Again and again, I have found myself enlightened and enriched by what he has shared.

These are just a few glimpses into a book rich with insights I return to again and again in the 30+ years since I first received this book as a gift in 1979. I recommend it to you for yourself, or as a gift -- not necessarily to read in a single sitting or week, but just as well for noshing and chomping. It need not be consumed as one integrated thesis, even though -- as one fine review here notes -- it will hold up quite well that way.

Make this fine book yours, use it as you wish so long as you actively engage your own mind, and it will serve you well.

This book reminds us that modern life and its emphases on superficial things such as technology and technicality can bring the age of anxiety, diordered will and therefore schizoid world. Human behaviors become more and more avoidant, either by detachment or pathological acting out, and participation in introspection and interpersonal relationships become a rare concept. He presents Eros, Daimonic, and intentionality as a way of deepening the meaning of love and will. The book is relatively easy read, not too theoretical, author's vast application of mythology and epistemology adds more dimension and fun as well. Very insightful and relevant to our time where human nature is frequently exploited, and trivialized.

This text captapults the understanding of certain spiritual experiences into awareness. It discovers, uncovers a rationality to consciuosness without imposing one. And an intellectual depth that gently and elegantly surrounds one in the rich fabric of western culture and its Greek heritage.

Examples are care as the source of will, charity as the biblical translation of agape, rebirth of experience as Eros: the king of the daimonics.