Loneliness, boredom, emptiness: These are the complaints that Rollo May encountered over and over from his patients. In response, he probes the hidden layers of personality to reveal the core of man's integration--a basic and inborn sense of value. Man's Search for Himself is an illuminating view of our predicament in an age of overwhelming anxieties and gives guidance on how to choose, judge, and act during such times.

Originally published: 1st ed. New York : Norton, Ã1953.

Preface -- pt. 1. Our predicament -- 1. The loneliness and anxiety of modern man -- The hollow people -- Loneliness -- Anxiety and the threat to the self -- What is anxiety? -- 2. The roots of our malady -- The loss of the center of values in our society -- The loss of the sense of self -- The loss of our language for personal communication -- "Little we see in nature that is ours" -- The loss of the sense of tragedy -- pt. 2 Rediscovering selfhood -- 3. The experience of becoming a person -- Consciousness of self--the unique mark of man -- Self-contempt, a substitute for self-worth -- Consciousness of self is not introversion -- The experiencing of one's body and feelings -- 4. The struggle to be -- Cutting the psychological umbilical cord -- The struggle against mother -- The struggle against one's own dependency -- Stages in consciousness of self -- pt. 3 The goals of integration -- 5. Freedom and inner strength -- The man who was put in a cage -- Hatred and resentment as the price of denied freedom -- What freedom is not -- What freedom is -- Freedom and structure -- "Choosing one's self" -- 6. The creative conscience -- Adam and Prometheus -- Religion--source of strength or weakness? -- The creative use of the past -- The person's power to do the valuing -- 7. Courage, the virtue of maturity -- Courage to be one's self -- A preface to love -- Courage to see the truth -- 8. Man, the transcender of time -- Man does not live by the clock alone -- The pregnant moment -- "In the light of eternity" -- No matter what the age -- Index.