Robert H. Abzug is Audre and Bernard Rapoport Regents Chair of Jewish Studies and Professor of History and American Studies at the University of Texas. He is the author of Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination (OUP, 1994), Passionate Liberator: Theodore Dwight Weld and the Dilemma of Reform (OUP, 1980),and an abridged edition of William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience.

"Abzug illuminates psychology's role in relation to religion in an American cultural context through an insightful and contextualized retelling of one of the major figures of religion and psychology in the twentieth century. This book will interes pastors, pastoral counselors, and historians alike." -- Aaron Klink, Religious Studies Review

"Abzug offers a scholarly account of the life and career of Rollo May (1909–94), one of the 20th century's most influential psychologists and psychotherapists. Abzug makes liberal use of May's personal diaries and testimonies from interviews with his associates. The text describes May's ministerial and psychoanalytic training and his emergence as a co-founder of humanistic psychology and the practitioner most responsible for the 'Americanization' of existential psychotherapy. Abzug also traces May's career as a best-selling author (e.g., Love and Will, published in 1969), political activist, and public intellectual. He follows May personally through an early bout with tuberculosis, three marriages, his execution of several splendid paintings, and his delving into the tragic aspects of the human condition.... Recommended. All readers." -- Choice

"As a mid-century public intellectual, Rollo May became the foremost American exponent of existentialism in religion and psychology. Now, in what will surely be a defining assessment, Robert Abzug melds social history, intimate biography, and a masterly explication of the work to introduce or reintroduce readers to Rollo May." -- Peter D. Kramer, Brown University

"Robert Abzug expertly weaves together Rollo May's tumultuous personal life and pathbreaking work in this comprehensive, thoroughly absorbing, and remarkably intimate biography. An intrepid explorer of anxiety, emptiness, and boredom, as well as of LSD, sex, and the counterculture, May brought European existentialism to American readers in a comprehensible and appealing form. A celebrity psychologist in his day, May and his writings on the contours of a meaningful life are all the more pertinent in our own anxious, turbulent times." -- Elizabeth Lunbeck, author of The Americanization of Narcissism

"Making his way from small-town Michigan Christianity to Manhattan psychoanalysis and San Francisco Bay Area spirituality, May's talents — 'working with people' and helping them 'by means of ideas' — produced a deeply American contribution to the perennial problem of living soulfully with human contradiction. In Robert H. Abzug, Rollo May, who described himself as a 'wounded healer,' has found a biographer who does justice to his lifelong quest for thoughtful soulcraft and the higher reaches of self-help." -- Todd Gitlin, author of The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage

"Abzug reminds us of Rollo May's continuing relevance to our personal lives and the life of our country. May's insights into the union of outer and inner life speaks to us in good times and bad, connects us with our past, and gives us hope. You will be glad you've read this book." -- Senator Bill Bradley

“A penetrating yet tender engagement with one of the 20th century's leading psychologists... [This biography is] a far more honest portrait than May's public image as a self-confident intellectual... Readers gain access to May's inner struggles through his uncensored journals, which May gave the author three decades ago and from which he draws deeply to achieve extreme intimacy with his subject. But May lived in the world as much as his journals, and Abzug provides an excellent introduction to May's work that also serves as a useful overview of the tenets and major figures of 20th-century psychologyEL In addition, he offers portraits of youth, family, marriages, affairs, rivalries, illnesses, and deaths-all the rich stuff of life as it concerns a man who was committed to understanding and experiencing the fullest possible range of human possibility. A revelatory book that should sustain May's reputation and influence for at least another generation.” - Kirkus Starred Review