Embracing a New Profession

Publishing The Meaning of Anxiety and having experience as a psychotherapist place May in a favorable position to be an influence on the profession. In addition to his practice, he takes the lead for the New York State Psychological Association in the legislative battle to seek a licensing law that would allow non-medical therapists from practicing without linkage to a doctor. He also found a niche at the White Institute, at first creating a pastoral counseling program linking the Institute to clergy and seminar students and then as a full-fledged member of the teaching faculty. His public and professional profile expanded with the publication of Man’s Search for Himself in 1953, a popular and accurate presentation of the ideas of Kierkegaard and Tillich, as well as his own, as they applied to everyday life in modernity. It became a bestseller.