Love and Will

1. Our Schizoid World: The Crisis of Love and Will

The striking thing about love and will in our day is that, whereas in the past they were always held up to us as the answer to life’s predicaments, they have now themselves become the problem.

Transitional age. Rollo May argues that modern society is experiencing a crisis where love and will, once seen as solutions, are now problems themselves. This stems from the loss of traditional myths and symbols, leading to widespread anxiety and insecurity. Individuals struggle to find significance and influence, resulting in apathy and, potentially, violence.

Apathy and violence. The inability to influence others leads to apathy, which can then escalate to violence. This is because humans cannot endure the perpetual numbing experience of powerlessness. The emphasis on love as a solution has created a situation where self-esteem depends on achieving it, leading to feelings of inadequacy and isolation for those who fail.

Seeking the source. In this schizoid world, characterized by detachment and inability to feel, May suggests a quest to find the sources of love and will within our own consciousness and the collective unconscious of society. This exploration is a moral one, seeking the bases for a new morality in a transitional age.

2. The Paradoxes of Sex and Love in Modern Society

The books which roll off the presses on technique in love and sex, while still best-sellers for a few weeks, have a hollow ring: for most people seem to be aware on some scarcely articulated level that the frantic quality with which we pursue technique as our way to salvation is in direct proportion to the degree to which we have lost sight of the salvation we are seeking.

Sexual wilderness. May identifies several paradoxes in modern attitudes toward sex and love. Despite increased sexual freedom and knowledge, internal anxiety and guilt have risen. The emphasis on technique in sex and love-making often backfires, leading to a mechanistic attitude and alienation.

New puritanism. The new puritanism consists of alienation from the body, separation of emotion from reason, and the use of the body as a machine. This has crept into contemporary psychiatry and psychology. People not only have to learn to perform sexually but have to make sure, at the same time, that they can do so without letting themselves go in passion or unseemly commitment.

Freud and puritanism. Freudian psychoanalysis is intertwined with both the new sexual libertarianism and puritanism. The psychoanalytic puritanism is positive in its emphasis on rigorous honesty and cerebral recitude, as exemplified in Freud himself. It is negative in its providing a new system by which the body and self can be viewed, rightly or wrongly, as a mechanism for gratification by way of “sexual objects.”

3. Eros vs. Sex: The Flight from Passion

We fly to the sensation of sex in order to avoid the passion of eros.

Separation of sex and eros. May argues that modern society has separated sex from eros, using sex as a means to avoid the anxiety-creating involvements of eros. This has led to a trivialization of sex, reducing it to a mere physical act devoid of deeper meaning and passion.

Return of repressed eros. Despite the emphasis on sexual freedom, there is a repression of eros, leading to a "return of the repressed" in primitive ways that mock our withdrawal of feelings. This is seen in phenomena like rising rates of illegitimate pregnancies and a general lack of fulfillment in sexual relationships.

Defining eros. Eros is more than just sexual desire; it is the drive to create, to form meaningful relationships, and to seek higher forms of being. It is the power that attracts us, drawing us toward union and self-fulfillment. Sex is a need, but eros is a desire; and it is this admixture of desire which complicates love.

4. Love and Death: The Interwoven Dance

The confrontation with death—and the reprieve from it—makes everything look so precious, so sacred, so beautiful that I feel more strongly than ever the impulse to love it, to embrace it, and to let myself be overwhelmed by it.

Intimation of mortality. May explores the relationship between love and death, arguing that the awareness of death intensifies our openness to love, while love simultaneously brings an increased sense of mortality. This creates a dynamic tension that enriches the experience of love.

Tragic sense in love. The tragic sense in love is the self-conscious, personal realization that love brings both joy and destruction. It is the understanding that sexual love has the power to propel human beings into situations that can destroy not only themselves but many other people at the same time.

Contraceptives and the tragic. The psychological meaning of contraception is the expanding of the realm of personal responsibility and commitment. But far from being easier, this personal relationship may have to carry more weight and may, therefore, be harder.

5. The Daimonic: Embracing the Depths of Human Nature

If my devils are to leave me, I am afraid my angels will take flight as well.

Defining the daimonic. The daimonic is any natural function that has the power to take over the whole person, such as sex, eros, anger, or the craving for power. It can be creative or destructive, and becomes evil when it usurps the total self without regard to integration or the needs of others.

Objections to the term. The concept of the daimonic is often rejected because it challenges our narcissism and forces us to confront the darker aspects of human nature. However, repressing the daimonic leads to apathy and the potential for destructive outbursts.

Daimonic in primitive psychotherapy. Primitive psychotherapy shows exceedingly interesting and revealing ways of dealing with the daimonic. In the ceremony, the significant point is that the native who wants to be cured identifies with the figure he believes has demonic possession of him.

6. Dialogue and Integration: Naming the Daimonic

The effort by which he succeeds in keeping the right name unwaveringly present to his mind proves to be his saving moral act.

Dialogue as a criterion. Dialogue is the most important criterion that saves the daimonic from anarchy. Dialogue implies that man exists in relationship. The fact that dialogue is possible at all is, in itself, a remarkable point.

Naming the daimonic. Traditionally, the way man has overcome the daimonic is by naming it. In this way, the human being forms personal meaning out of what was previously a merely threatening impersonal chaos.

The daimonic in therapy. In psychotherapy, the daimonic is the elementary power by which one is saved from the horror of not being one’s self on one hand, and the horror, on the other hand, of feeling no connection and no vital drive toward the other person.

7. The Will in Crisis: Responsibility Undermined

The deeply rooted belief in psychic freedom and choice…is quite unscientific and must give ground before the claims of a determinism which governs mental life.

Undermining of personal responsibility. Freud's emphasis on unconscious drives and determinism led to an undermining of will and decision, creating a sense of powerlessness in individuals. This has become a central problem in modern society, where people feel unable to influence their own lives.

Contradiction in will. The crisis of will is characterized by a contradiction: individuals are told they can achieve anything, yet they feel increasingly powerless to make meaningful choices. This creates a paralysis of will and a sense of inner conflict.

Will in psychoanalysis. The terms “will power” and “free will,” so necessary in the vocabulary of our fathers, have all but dropped completely out of any contemporary, sophisticated discussion; or the words are used in derision. People go to therapists to find substitutes for their lost will.

8. Wish and Will: Reclaiming Agency

It is neither pleasant nor edifying to watch the masses amusing themselves; we at least don’t have much taste for it….

Demise of will power. The terms “will power” and “free will” have largely disappeared from contemporary discourse, replaced by an emphasis on unconscious drives and external forces. This has led to a devaluation of personal agency and a sense of helplessness.

Freud's anti-will system. Freud's focus on wish and the unconscious undermined the concept of will, portraying humans as driven by instinctual forces rather than conscious choices. This has contributed to a sense of determinism and a loss of personal responsibility.

The wish. The wish is the imaginative playing with the possibility of some act or state occurring. It is a capacity to reach down deep into ourselves and preoccupy ourselves with a longing to change the future.

9. Intentionality: The Bridge Between Wish and Will

In its origin, function, and relation to sexual love, the Eros of the philosopher Plato coincides exactly with the love-force, the libido, of psychoanalysis, as has been shown in detail by Nachmansohn (1915) and Pfister (1921).

Roots of intentionality. Intentionality, the structure that gives meaning to experience, is a concept with roots in ancient philosophy. It refers to the way our minds actively shape and interpret the world around us.

Examples from psychoanalysis. In psychoanalysis, intentionality is seen in the way patients' perceptions and memories are shaped by their underlying desires and conflicts. It is also evident in the therapeutic relationship, where the therapist's presence and interpretations influence the patient's experience.

Will and intentionality. Will and intentionality are intimately connected. Intentionality provides the foundation for will, giving it direction and purpose. Without intentionality, will becomes a blind force, lacking meaning and connection to the individual's deeper values.

10. The Meaning of Care: Beyond Apathy

Apathy is particularly important because of its close relation to love and will.

Care in love and will. Care is a state in which something does matter; care is the opposite of apathy. Care is the necessary source of eros, the source of human tenderness.

The mythos of care. The mythos of care is a statement which says that whatever happens in the external world, human love and grief, pity and compassion are what matter. These emotions transcend even death.

Care in our day. In our day, the constructive schizoid person stands against the spiritual emptiness of encroaching technology and does not let himself be emptied by it. He lives and works with the machine without becoming a machine.

11. Communion of Consciousness: Love as Personal

Sexual intercourse is the human counterpart of the cosmic process.

Love as personal. Love is not only enriched by our sense of mortality but constituted by it. Love is the cross-fertilization of mortality and immortality. This is why the daimon Eros is described as midway between gods and men and partakes of the nature of both.

Aspects of the love act. The two persons, longing, as all individuals do, to overcome the separateness and isolation to which we all are heir as individuals, can participate in a relationship that, for the moment, is not made up of two isolated, individual experiences, but a genuine union. A sharing takes place which is a new Gestalt, a new being, a new field of magnetic force.

Love, will, and the forms of society. Love and will are both terms describing a person in the process of reaching out, moving toward the world, seeking to affect others or the inanimate world, and opening himself to be affected; molding, forming, relating to the world or requiring that it relate to him.

Last updated: March 16, 2025