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Reading this meticulously researched and thoroughly enjoyable biography of the eminent Rollo May was an astonishing journey. On the way I met myself, as a graduate student, analytic candidate, clinician, and author. I grew more appreciative of May’s enormous (but often unrecognized) influence. I found that many of “my” thoughts probably had their origin when I first read his work. I discovered some of the roots of the Interpersonal school of psychoanalysis. I better understood the legacy inherited by my training analyst, supervisors, and teachers at the William Alanson White Institute (WAWI). The points of view articulated by Erich Fromm and H.S. Sullivan took on different colorings with May’s in the foreground. In this essay I highlight the commonalities and differences among these three foundational Interpersonalists. Abzug filled in many gaps in my knowledge of WAWI’s history. As is often true, understanding its past sheds light on issues still current. The past is prologue. Like a candid family album, this book gave me an enlightening vision of my psychoanalytic heritage. I am grateful for its invitation to see my analytic ancestors as full human beings, with their strengths, limitations, and evolving theoretical positions.
A scholarly page turner is an unusual feat, but Abzug carries this off in style. In Rollo May he has an apt subject. Abzug had remarkable access to his subject’s private diaries, letters, and, in numerous visits over the years, his incredibly fertile mind. But May’s passage from minister to psychoanalyst and public intellectual was hardly without
personal and professional setbacks. His explorations of life’s joys and heartaches were by no means confined to their clinical manifestations. In his personal life he had extensive acquaintance with the meaning of anxiety, (the title of his 1950 book), and so many other topics of both personal and theoretical significance. Among his subjects and evocative book titles are Man’s Search for Himself (1