He initially went to the University of Wisconsin to major in agriculture, but switched his focus to religion. After graduation he married Helen Elliot and moved to New York City, where he began attending a famous liberal religious institution called Union Theological Seminary. His time at the seminary was short and he soon switched to the clinical psychology program at Columbia University, receiving his PhD in 1931.

Rogers began clinical work at the Rochester society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and learned about Otto Rank’s theory and therapy techniques. This experience enabled him to start developing his own approach.

In 1940 Rogers was offered a full professorship at Ohio State. By 1945 he was invited to set up a counseling centre at the University of Chicago, and while there he published his major work, Client-Centred Therapy: Its Current Practice, Implications and Theory, wherein he outlines his basic theory.

Rogers accepted a position in the Psychology Department at the University of Wisconsin in 1957, but quickly became disillusioned with higher education due to conflicts within the department. By 1964 he was happy to leave the University for a research position in La Jolla, California. It was there that he provided therapy, gave speeches and wrote until his death in 1987.

Published Works

• On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotheraphy by Carl R. Rogers, Peter Kramer (Introduction) (Paperback – September 1995)
• A Way of Being by Carl R. Rogers, Irvin D. Yalom (Introduction) (Paperback – September 1995)
• Measuring Personality Adjustment in Children: Nine to Thirteen Years of Age (Columbia University Teachers College. Contributions to Education, No 45) by Carl R. Rogers (Hardcover – June 1977)
• Man and the Science of Man by William R. Coulson, Carl R. Rogers (Hardcover – June 1968)
• A Dialogue on the Control of Human Behavior by Carl Rogers, B. F. Skinner (Audio Cassette – June 1976)
• Freedom to Learn by Carl R. Rogers, H. Jerome Freiberg
• Carl Rogers’ Some thoughts regarding the current philosophy of the behavioral sciences, Special Fall, 1965 Issue of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology.

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“No counseling or direction was available: my parents had virtually no secular education, never read books and were entirely consumed in the struggle for economic survival. My book choices were capricious, directed in part by the library architecture; the large, centrally placed bookcase on biography caught my attention early, and I spent an entire year going through that bookcase from A (John Adams) to Z (Zoroaster). But it was mainly in fiction where I found a refuge, an alternate, more satisfying world, a source of inspiration and wisdom. Sometime early in life I developed the notion—one which I have never relinquished—that writing a novel is the very finest thing a person can do.

“To the ghetto mentality of my day, career choices for young men were limited or perceived as limited. All of my peers either went into medical school or into business with their fathers. Medical school seemed closer to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, and I entered upon my medical training already having decided to go into psychiatry. Psychiatry. Then, in an effort to teach aspects of Existential Therapy I turned to a literary conveyance and in the past several years have written a book of therapy tales (Love’s Executioner), two teaching novels (When Nietzsche Wept and Lying on the Couch) and, my last book, Momma and the Meaning of Life (a collection of true and fictionalized tales of therapy).

“Though these books have been best sellers to a general audience and have been reviewed often—both favorably and unfavorably—on their literary merit (When Nietzsche Wept won the Commonwealth Gold Medal for best fiction of 1993), I intended them as pedagogical works—books of teaching stories and a new genre—the teaching novel. They have been widely translated—each into about fifteen to twenty languages—and have had considerable distribution abroad. When Nietzsche Wept, for example, was on the top of the Israeli best seller list for over four years. An anthology, The Yalom Reader, was published by Basic books at the end of 1997. In addition to key excerpts from each of my other books it contains several new personal essays which provide introductions for mental health professionals to Love’s Executioner, When Nietzsche Wept and Lying on the Couch. Currently I am working on a novel about Schopenhauer.

“My wife, Marilyn, received a Ph. D. in comparative literature (French and German) from Johns Hopkins and has had a highly successful career as a University Professor and writer (most recently A History of the Breast (Knopf) and is currently writing History of the Wife. My four Children, all living in San Francisco Bay area, have chosen a variety of careers—medicine, photography, creative writing, theater directing, clinical psychology. Five grandchildren and counting.”

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• Professor Emeritus, Saybrook Institute
• Curriculum Vita
• Psychotherapy and Process: The Fundamentals of an Existential-Humanistic Approach (Summary)
• James Bugental’s Introduction to the Special Fall, 1965 Issue of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology

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May was influenced by American humanism, and interested in reconciling existential psychology with other approaches, especially Freud’s.

May uses some traditional existential terms in a slightly different fashion than others, and he invents new words for traditional existentialist concepts. Destiny, for example, could be “thrownness” combined with “fallenness”— the part of our lives that is determined for us, for the purpose of creating our lives. He also used the word “courage” to signify authenticity in facing one’s anxiety and rising above it.

“It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.”

• Creative Quotations from Rollo May
• Rollo May by Dr. C. George Boeree
• Intentionality, The Heart Of Human Will by ROLLO MAY William Allanson White Institute
• Existential Therapy According To Rollo May from A Man’s Search for Himself.

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