· 08:05JEFFREY MISHLOVE It seems that, uh, much of our modern culture, though, is an attempt to cope with this fundamental anxiety by diversions and, what you would have called banal pleasures.

· 08:15DR. ROLLO MAY Yeah, well you just put your finger on the most significant aspect of modern society. We try to avoid anxiety by getting rich, by making a hundred thousand dollars when we’re 21 years of age, by becoming millionaires. Now, none of those things, uh, lead to the joy of creativity that I’m talking about. One can own the world, uh, and still be without the inner sense of , of pleasure, of joy, of courage, of creation. Uh, and I think our society is in the midst of a vast change. The society that began at the Renaissance, uh, now is ending. Uh, and we are seeing the results of this ending of a, a social period. Uh, and the fact that psychotherapy has grown with such great zest, almost every other person in California is a psycotherapist.

· 09:25JEFFREY MISHLOVE It seems that way.

· 09:30DR. ROLLO MAY Yes, it does. And, this always happens when an age is dying. You see, the Greeks began their great, uh, age in the seventh, sixth centuries B.C. Uh, and then they taught that beauty and goodness andtruth, all these great things that philosophers talked about. Uh, but by the third, uh, second century B.C., or first century B.C., that had all been forgotten. The philosophers now talked about security. And they, uh, tried to help people, uh, get along with as little pain as possible. And they made mottos for human beings. Beauty and truth and goodness had been lost. Now, our Renaissance began the modern age, uh, and at the beginning of an age, there are no psychotherapists. This is taken care of by religion and by art, uh, and by beauty, by music. But the end of an age, every age down through history has been the same. Uh, every other person becomes a therapist because there are no, uh, no ways of ministering to people in need. Uh, and they form long lines at the psychotherapists’ office. I think it’s a sign of the decadence of our age, rather than a sign of our, uh, greatintelligence.