American psychologist Rollo May (1909-1994) understood motivation and psychopathology within an existential rather than merely mechanistic or drive-based framework. Human beings are fundamentally motivated by the need to preserve, affirm, and give meaning to their existence, and therefore psychological distress often arises when a person’s essential values, freedom, identity, relationships, or sense of meaning are threatened. Consequently, anxiety is not in itself pathological but can be a normal response to the unavoidable conditions of finitude and freedom, whereas neurotic anxiety and psychopathology emerge when the person evades, represses, or becomes unable to constructively confront these existential realities, resulting in diminished freedom, apathy, compulsive behaviour, emptiness, guilt, isolation, or an inability to will and care.
May’s approach developed through the influence of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), Carl Jung (1875–1961), Alfred Adler (1870–1937), Otto Rank (1884–1939), Erich Fromm (1900–1980), Kurt Goldstein (1878–1965), Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), and especially the theologian Paul Tillich (1886–1965). May’s The Meaning of Anxiety (1950) was substantially shaped by Kierkegaard’s analysis of anxiety and Tillich’s theology, while Man’s Search for Himself (1953) and Love and Will (1969) developed his account of meaning, intentionality, freedom, care, love, and will as central dimensions of psychological health.
From a Christian perspective, May’s insistence that human beings cannot be adequately understood without addressing meaning, guilt, freedom, love, death, and transcendence offer an important corrective to reductionistic accounts of psychopathology. Scripture similarly presents persons as embodied, relational, morally responsible beings whose deepest orientation is toward God (Genesis 1:27; Acts 17:28), and recognises anxiety, suffering, guilt, alienation, and despair while directing the person toward trust, hope, repentance, love, and reconciliation (Psalm 42:5; Matthew 6:25–34; Romans 5:1–5; 2 Corinthians 4:16–18; 1 Peter 5:7). May’s emphasis on courage in the face of anxiety can therefore be fruitfully compared with the Biblical call to “be strong and courageous” because God is present (Josh. 1:9), while his account of care, love, and will resonates with the Christian understanding that love of God and neighbour constitutes the centre of faithful human existence (Matt. 22:37–40; 1 Cor. 13:4–7).
Nevertheless, an important theological qualification is necessary: May should not simply be equated with Christian psychology, because although Tillich was a major Christian theological influence and May retained a serious interest in religion, May’s existential framework ultimately placed greater emphasis on human authenticity and the creation/discovery of meaning than on specifically Christian doctrines such as creation, sin, redemption, resurrection, and the lordship of Christ. Thus, a Christian appropriation of May can affirm his refusal to reduce psychopathology to symptoms alone while going beyond him by locating the ultimate ground of human meaning not merely in authentic selfhood but in reconciliation with God through Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17–20), the hope of resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:20–22), and the conviction that human flourishing is ultimately found in loving God and receiving life as his gift.
May’s existential psychology offers a particularly useful framework for understanding personal life strategies as the cognitive and behavioural plans through which individuals interpret their circumstances, respond to perceived threats, and pursue opportunities for growth, because for May human beings are not merely passive products of drives or environments but persons who continually confront anxiety, freedom, choice, responsibility, meaning, and the possibility of becoming. In The Meaning of Anxiety (1950), May conceptualised anxiety as arising when something essential to one’s existence or valued identity is threatened, while also arguing that anxiety can become a stimulus to awareness and constructive action rather than simply something to be eliminated.
Consequently, a life strategy may be understood partly as the way an individual habitually manages existential threat, through avoidance, conformity, dependency, or, more constructively, courageous engagement. In Man’s Search for Himself (1953), May developed this further by emphasising self-awareness, inner centredness, values, goals, freedom and courage: psychologically mature living requires discovering what one genuinely values and accepting responsibility for choices rather than allowing circumstances, social expectations, or anxiety to determine one’s direction.
His Psychology and the Human Dilemma (1967) explicitly connects anxiety with freedom and responsibility, while Love and Will (1969) adds intentionality, care, love and will to the picture: people do not merely react to situations but perceive possibilities, form intentions, desire, decide, and invest themselves in relationships and purposes. Finally, The Courage to Create (1975) suggests that an effective life strategy is not simply defensive adaptation but the courageous creation of new possibilities in an uncertain future. Thus, May helps us conceptualise personal life strategies as relatively enduring patterns of meaning-making, threat appraisal, value selection, intentional action, responsibility and creative adaptation, through which individuals attempt both to preserve what they regard as essential and to realise possibilities for a fuller existence.
May’s emphasis on anxiety, freedom, responsibility, courage, love and meaning provides valuable psychological insights, but his existential humanism needs theological qualification. Christianity affirms that humans possess meaningful agency, yet their identity and ultimate purpose are not finally self-created but grounded in being created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26–27), called to love God and neighbour (Matthew 22:37–40), and reconciled to God through Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17–20). Therefore, the Christian’s strategies for living do not simply involve constructing an authentic self but also discerning and faithfully inhabiting a God-given vocation (Romans 12:1–2; Ephesians 2:10).
May’s interpretation of anxiety also resonates with Biblical realism about fear and uncertainty (“Do not be anxious about tomorrow,” Matthew 6:34), while Christianity offers a distinctive response in trust in divine providence rather than relying exclusively upon human courage (Matthew 6:25–34; Philippians 4:6–7; 1 Peter 5:7). His emphasis on courage can nevertheless be fruitfully reframed through Christian theology. Courage is not merely autonomous self-assertion but faithful action grounded in God’s presence and promises (Joshua 1:9; Psalm 56:3–4), and his concern with love, will and care can be deepened by agapē, in which Christian action is directed toward self-giving love rather than merely personal fulfilment (1 Corinthians 13:4–7; John 13:34–35).
Particularly significant is May’s intellectual relationship with the Christian existential theologian Paul Tillich, whose theology influenced May’s understanding of existential anxiety. Tillich interpreted anxiety in relation to threats of death, meaninglessness and condemnation and connected existential questions with the Christian message. Thus, May can contribute to a Christian account of personal life strategies by helping explain how people cognitively interpret threats and possibilities and behaviourally choose responses, while Christian theology supplies a different account of the ultimate horizon within which those strategies are evaluated: not simply survival, authenticity or self-created meaning, but faithful discipleship, love of God and neighbour, hope, wisdom, and participation in God’s purposes.