The Meaning of Anxiety

Rollo May challenges the idea that "mental health is living without anxiety," believing it is essential to being human. He explores how it can relieve boredom, sharpen sensibilities, and produce the tension necessary to preserve human existence. May sees a link extending from anxiety to intelligence, creativity, and originality, and guides the reader away from destructive ways to positive ways of dealing with anxiety. He convincingly proposes that anxiety can impel personal change, as it is only by confronting and coping with it that self-realization can occur. 

When this important work was originally published in 1950 the first book in this country on anxiety it was hailed as a work ahead of its time. Still just as relevant and illuminating The Meaning of Anxiety challenges the idea that mental health means living without anxiety and explores anxiety's potential for self-realization as well as exploring ways to avoid its destructive aspects.