Contribuições da compreensão existencial da ansiedade em Rollo May para a prática clínica da abordagem centrada na pessoa

Abstract

Anxiety is among the most prevalent psychological phenomena today, posing to humanist clinical practice the challenge of understanding it beyond a symptomatic and medicalizing logic. Rollo May's existential psychology, grounded in the philosophies of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Tillich, proposes that anxiety is an ontological condition inherent to freedom, finitude, and the search for human authenticity. The Person-Centered Approach (PCA), in turn, understands anxiety as a sign of incongruence between organismic experience and the self-structure, offering a clinical practice rooted in a genuine relationship and facilitating conditions for growth. The question arises: in what way can May's existential understanding of anxiety expand clinical practice within the PCA? This paper investigates the contributions of May's existential perspective to Rogerian practice, analyzing the ontological foundations of anxiety in May, the Rogerian conception of the phenomenon, and the integrative dialogue between these viewpoints. A theoretical-conceptual literature review is adopted through a systematic reading of primary works by both authors, complemented by articles indexed in SciELO, PePSIC, Google Scholar, and other specialized bibliographical sources, using keywords such as "existential anxiety," "Person-Centered Approach," and "existential and clinical psychology." It is concluded that integrating May's ontological-existential dimension enriches the clinical management of anxiety in the PCA without compromising the approach's ethical and relational foundations, thereby contributing to the critical and humanizing training of psychologists.