Someone who is pandubious (skeptical of everything) is in danger of becoming paralyzed. Contemplate this dialectic: Someone who is fully convinced of all his or her beliefs is perfectly rigid and averse to anything new. In the first essay, The courage to create, May calls our attention to the tension between conviction and doubt as the foundation of the highest form of courage. The creative act is the outcome (synthesis) of various dialectics (conflicts, contradictions, and tensions see also Krueger, 2015). May is also remembered as an existential psychologist, which could mean a lot of things beyond a penchant to cite Kierkegaard & Nietzsche. He objects to the view that creativity is born of neurosis or complexes of inferiority. May refers to himself as a psychoanalyst, but what he says about psychoanalysis is critical. Indeed, May’s style of thinking and writing is similar to these humane psychologists, yet there is a difference in emphasis and approach. I expected to find in May a humanist much like Maslow or Rogers. So I opened up his Courage to Create (1975), a slim volume of essays May published during the 50s and 60s. Now in my post-positivist stage, and with an interest in the psychology of creativity, Rollo is back on my radar. I never read any of his books because I thought of myself as a positivist. His works were not on the syllabus, though, because they did not adhere to the positivist scientific standards of the time. When I was in college, Rollo May was still a household name among those interested in clinical psychology.
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