It may sound surprising when I say, on the basis of

my own clinical practice as well as that of my

psychological and psychiatric colleagues, that the
chief problem of people in the middle decade of the
twentieth century is emptiness.
As Freud made clear, the desire was there; the chief
thing necessary was to clear up the repressions, bring
the desire into consciousness, and eventually help the
patient to become able to gratify his desire in accord
Emptiness
with reality.
The experience of emptiness, rather, generally comes
from people’s feeling that they are powerless to do
anything effective about their lives or the world they
live in.
Another characteristic of modern people is loneliness.

They describe this feeling as one of being “on the

outside,” isolated, or, if they are sophisticated, they
say that they feel alienated.
The feelings of emptiness and loneliness go together.

The reasons for the close relation between loneliness

and emptiness are not difficult to discover.

For when a person does not know with any inner

Loneliness conviction what he wants or what he feels; when, in a
period of traumatic change, he becomes aware of the
fact that the conventional desires and goals he has
been taught to follow no longer bring him any security
or give him any sense of direction, when, that is, he
feels an inner void while he stands amid the outer
confusion of upheaval in his society, he senses
danger; and his natural reaction is to look around for
other people.
Anxiety, the other characteristic of modern man, is
even more basic than emptiness and loneliness.

For being “hollow” and lonely would not bother us

The Predicament
except that it makes us prey to that peculiar
psychological pain and turmoil called anxiety.
It is the quality of an experience which makes it
anxiety rather than the quantity.

In its full-blown intensity, anxiety is the most painful

Anxiety emotion to which the human animal is heir.

“Present dangers are less than future imaginings,” as

Shakespeare puts it; and people have been known to
leap out of a lifeboat and drown rather than face the
greater agony of continual doubt and uncertainty,
never knowing whether they will be rescued or not.
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 In its full-blown intensity, anxiety is the most painful
emotion to which the human animal is heir.

“Present dangers are less than future imaginings,” as

Shakespeare puts it; and people have been known to
leap out of a lifeboat and drown rather than face the
greater agony of continual doubt and uncertainty,
never knowing whether they will be rescued or not.
This is what anxiety does to the human being: it
disorients him, wiping out temporarily his clear
knowledge of what and who he is, and blurring his
view of reality around him.
The positive and hopeful side is that just as anxiety
destroys our self-awareness, so awareness of
ourselves can destroy anxiety.

That is to say, the stronger our consciousness of

ourselves, the more we can take a stand against and
overcome anxiety.
Our task, then, is to strengthen our consciousness of
ourselves, to find centers of strength within ourselves
which will enable us to stand despite the confusion
and bewilderment around us.

This is the central purpose of the inquiry in this book.

TO undertake this “venture of becoming aware of

ourselves,” and to discover the sources of inner
strength and security which are the rewards of such a
venture, let us start at the beginning by asking, What
is this person, this sense of selfhood we seek?
Man’s consciousness of himself is the source of his
highest qualities.

It underlies his ability to distinguish between “I” and

the world. It gives him the capacity to keep time,
which is simply the ability to stand outside the
present and to imagine oneself back in yesterday or
ahead in the day after tomorrow.

Thus human beings can learn from the past and plan
for the future.
This consciousness of self, this capacity to see
one’s self as though from the outside, is the
distinctive characteristic of man.
This capacity for consciousness of ourselves gives us
the ability to see ourselves as others see us and to
have empathy with others.

It underlies our remarkable capacity to transport

ourselves into someone else’s parlor where we
will be in reality next week, and then in imagination
to think and plan how we will act.
Strengthen our And it enables us to imagine ourselves in someone
consciousness of else’s place, and to ask how we would feel and what
ourselves we would do if we were this other person.

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 It underlies our remarkable capacity to transport
ourselves into someone else’s parlor where we
will be in reality next week, and then in imagination
to think and plan how we will act.

Strengthen our And it enables us to imagine ourselves in someone

consciousness of else’s place, and to ask how we would feel and what
ourselves we would do if we were this other person.
The first is that of the innocence of the
infant before consciousness of self is
born.
The second is the stage of rebellion, when the person
is trying to become free to establish some inner
Man's Search For Himself strength in his own right.
Dr. Rollo May
This stage is most clearly seen in the child of two or
three or the adolescent, and may involve defiance and
hostility.

In greater or lesser degree rebellion is a necessary

transition as one cuts old ties and seeks to make new
ones. But rebellion is not to be confused with freedom.
The third stage we may call the ordinary
consciousness of self. In this stage a person can to
some extent see his errors, make some allowance for
his prejudices, use his guilt feelings and anxiety as
experiences to learn from, and make his decisions
with some responsibility.

This is what most people mean when they speak of a

healthy state of personality.
But there is a fourth stage of consciousness which is
4 Stages in Consciousness of Self extraordinary in the sense that most individuals
experience it only rarely. This stage is most clearly
illustrated when one gets a sudden insight into a
problem—abruptly, seemingly from nowhere, pops up
an answer for which one has struggled in vain for
days.

Sometimes such insights come in dreams, or at

moments of reverie when one is thinking about
something else: in any case, we know that the
answer emerges from what are called subconscious
levels in the personality.

Such consciousness may occur in scientific, religious

or artistic activity alike; it is sometimes popularly
called “dawning” of ideas or “inspiration.” As all
students of creative activity make clear, this level of
consciousness is present in all creative work.
"Creative consciousness of self."

The classical psychological term for this awareness is

ecstasy. The word literally means “to stand outside
one’s self,” that is, to catch a view of, or experience
something, from a perspective outside one’s usual
limited viewpoint.

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 "Creative consciousness of self."

The classical psychological term for this awareness is

ecstasy. The word literally means “to stand outside
one’s self,” that is, to catch a view of, or experience
something, from a perspective outside one’s usual
limited viewpoint.

No one can arrive at real love or morality or freedom

until he has frankly confronted and worked through
his resentment.

Hatred and resentment should be used as motivations

to re-establish one’s genuine freedom: one will not
transform those destructive emotions into
constructive ones until he does this. And the first step
is to know whom or what one hates.
But by our power to be conscious of ourselves, we
can call to mind how we acted yesterday or last
month, and by learning from these actions we can
influence, even if ever so little, how we act today.
Consciousness of self gives us the power to stand
Freedom is man’s capacity to take a hand in his own
outside the rigid chain of stimulus and response, to
development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.
pause, and by this pause to throw some weight on
Freedom is the other side of consciousness of self: if
either side, to cast some decision about what the
we were not able to be aware of ourselves, we would
response will be.
be pushed along by instinct or the automatic march of
history That consciousness of self and freedom go together is
shown in the fact that the less self-awareness a
person has, the more he is unfree. That is to say, the
more he is controlled by inhibitions, repressions,
childhood conditionings which he has consciously
“forgotten” but which still drive him unconsciously, the
more he is pushed by forces over which he has no
control.
Real love and Freedom When persons first come for psychotherapeutic help,
for example, they generally complain that they are
“driven” in any number of ways: they have sudden
anxieties or fears or are blocked in studying or
working without any appropriate reason.

They are unfree —that is, bound and pushed by

unconscious patterns.
It may be after some months of psychotherapeutic
work little changes begin to appear.

The person begins to recall his dreams regularly; or in

one session he takes the initiative in stating that he
wants to change the subject on hand and get some
help on a different problem; or one day he can say
that he felt angry when the therapist said such and
such; or he is able to cry when previously he never
could feel much of anything, or suddenly he laughs
with spontaneity and wholeheartedness, or is able to
state he doesn’t like Mary with whom he has been
Psychotherapy
conventional friends for years but does like Carolyn.

In such ways, slight as they may seem, his emerging

self-awareness goes hand in hand with his enlarging
power to direct his own life.
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such; or he is able to cry when previously he never
could feel much of anything, or suddenly he laughs
with spontaneity and wholeheartedness, or is able to
state he doesn’t like Mary with whom he has been
conventional friends for years but does like Carolyn.

In such ways, slight as they may seem, his emerging

self-awareness goes hand in hand with his enlarging
power to direct his own life.
As the person gains more consciousness of self, his
range of choice and his freedom proportionately
increase. Freedom is cumulative; one choice made
with an element of freedom makes greater freedom
possible for the next choice.

Each exercise of freedom enlarges the circumference

of the circle of one’s self.

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