Anxiety and Existence: Kierkegaard’s Psychology According to Rollo May

Abstract

In the first systematic study of Kierkegaard's psychology, Kierkegaard's Psychology (1972), written in Danish by Kresten Nordentoft, the author considers that the first attempt to present Kierkegaard's psychological theories was made by Rollo May in The Meaning of Anxiety (1950). In 1958, together with Ernest Angel and Henri Ellenberguer, May also edited Existence. A new dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology. The aim of this article is to describe the way in which May conceives Kierkegaard as a "psychologist", based on the analysis of existentialism and its coincidence with psychoanalysis in the diagnosis of the "crisis of the modern individual", taking the concepts of anxiety and existence as the main thematic lines of description.