Where there is 'freedom from' without corresponding interrelationship, there is the anxiety of the defiant and isolated individual. Where there is de… - Rollo May

If, when he first begins tentatively to say “No,” his parents beat him down rather than love and encourage him, he thereafter will say “No” not as a form of true independent strength but as a mere rebellion.

Another example of how the sense of the self has been disintegrating in our day can be seen when we consider humor and laughter. It is not generally realized how closely one’s sense of humor is connected with one’s sense of selfhood. Humor normally should have the function of preserving the sense of self. It is an expression of our uniquely human capacity to experience ourselves as subjects who are not swallowed up in the objective situation. It is the healthy way of feeling a “distance” between one’s self and the problem, a way of standing off and looking at one’s problem with perspective. One cannot laugh when in an anxiety panic, for then one is swallowed up, one has lost the distinction between himself as subject and the objective world around him.

Care is a state in which something does matter; care is the opposite of apathy. Care is the necessary source of eros, the source of human tenderness.