Summary
Love and Will is Rollo May's attempt to diagnose a civilizational problem: that contemporary Western culture has severed love from will, reducing both to hollow performances. May argues that the sexual revolution of the 1960s, far from liberating people, produced a new kind of anxiety — the anxiety of meaninglessness. People who can sleep with anyone discover they feel nothing. Freedom without intentionality is not freedom at all.
May draws on existential philosophy and clinical case material to reconstruct what he sees as the four forms of love in the Western tradition: sex (eros in its biological sense), philia (friendship), agape or caritas (the spiritual dimension), and eros in its fuller mythological sense — the drive toward union, beauty, and the new. His concern is that modern culture collapses all four into the first, stripping love of the depth that makes it worth having.
The concept of will receives equally careful treatment. May distinguishes between wish and will — the capacity to act from genuine commitment rather than compulsion or social expectation. He traces the decay of will in modern life to the collapse of shared myth and the retreat of the self into what he calls the "schizoid" posture: detachment as a defense. Daemonic energy — the life-force that can be either creative or destructive — must be acknowledged and integrated rather than repressed or surrendered to.
The book is dense and rewards slow reading. May's prose is literary rather than clinical, and the argument circles back rather than proceeding in a straight line. Its core claim has held up: that love and will require each other, that the attempt to have one without the other produces precisely the flatness and compulsive behavior the sexual revolution was supposed to cure. Anyone wrestling with questions about commitment, desire, or the relationship between freedom and meaning will find May a rigorous and honest guide.
Key takeaways
- 1.
Love and will are not opposites but interdependent: genuine love requires the will to commit, and will without love becomes coercion or compulsion.
- 2.
The sexual revolution increased freedom without increasing meaning. The result was not liberation but a new kind of emptiness — performing intimacy without experiencing it.
- 3.
May identifies four forms of love: sex, philia (friendship), agape (unconditional care), and eros (the drive toward beauty and union). Modern culture conflates all four with physical desire.
- 4.
The daemonic is the force of life itself — creative and destructive in equal measure. Repressing it produces numbness; surrendering to it produces violence. Integration is the only viable path.
- 5.
Wish and will are distinct. Wish is fantasy; will is the commitment to act. The loss of authentic will — the collapse of genuine decision — is a central symptom of modern psychological distress.
- 6.
The schizoid posture — detachment, ironic distance, emotional flatness — is a defense against the vulnerability that love and genuine engagement require. It is not strength.
- 7.
Intentionality gives experience its direction. Without it, sensation accumulates without meaning. May argues that consciousness is always consciousness of something.
- 8.
Myth provides the symbolic framework within which love and will operate. The collapse of shared myth leaves individuals without the meaning-structures that make commitment intelligible.
Discussion questions
Use these on your own, with a book club, or as chat starters in Superbook.
- 1.
May argues that sexual freedom without depth produces anxiety rather than relief. Does that claim match your observation of contemporary culture?
- 2.
Which of May's four forms of love — sex, philia, agape, and eros — do you think modern relationships most consistently neglect?
- 3.
How do you distinguish between wish and will in your own life? What does genuine decision look like for you?
- 4.
May describes the daemonic as the life-force that can be creative or destructive. Where do you see that energy in yourself, and how do you relate to it?
- 5.
The schizoid posture — emotional detachment as self-protection — is something May sees as pervasive. How does it show up in your social environment?
- 6.
May argues that intentionality, not just action, is what gives experience meaning. What are you currently doing without genuine intentionality?
- 7.
How does the loss of shared myth — religious, cultural, political — affect the possibility of committed love in your own context?
- 8.
May treats the body and the spirit as integrated. What does that integration, or its failure, look like in your own experience of love or desire?
- 9.
Is May's critique of the sexual revolution a conservative argument, a radical one, or something else? What does your answer say about how you frame freedom?
- 10.
Where in your life do you perform connection rather than experience it? What does it cost you?
- 11.
May distinguishes authentic will from mere compliance with social expectation. On what matters in your life are you genuinely willing, rather than just going along?
- 12.
The book was written in 1969. Which of May's diagnoses feel more urgent now than they did then, and which feel dated?
Themes
Frequently asked questions
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What is Love and Will about?
It is Rollo May's analysis of how contemporary culture has emptied both love and will of genuine meaning. Drawing on existential philosophy and clinical work, May argues that sexual freedom without commitment produces a new form of alienation, and that authentic love requires an integrated will — not just desire or social compliance.
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Is Love and Will worth reading?
Yes, for readers willing to engage with dense philosophical argument. May's diagnosis of the link between meaninglessness and sexual freedom reads as more prescient now than when it was written. The writing is literary rather than clinical, and the book rewards patience more than speed.
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How long does it take to read Love and Will?
Roughly five to six hours at average pace, but the book is not meant to be read quickly. The argument builds through a series of conceptual distinctions — wish versus will, eros versus sex — that require time to absorb.
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Who should read Love and Will?
Anyone interested in existential psychology, the philosophy of love and commitment, or the cultural roots of modern alienation. It speaks directly to people who sense that contemporary attitudes toward sex and freedom are producing less happiness rather than more.
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What is the most important idea in Love and Will?
That love and will require each other. Love without will is sentimentality or compulsion; will without love is coercion. May argues this integration is both a personal psychological task and a civilizational one.
