Joy, rather than happiness, is the goal of life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings. It is based on the experience of one's identity as a being of worth and dignity.

An innocent is only doing what he or Rollo May must do. He claims that by shifting anxiety to a fear one can therefore discover incentives to either avoid the feared object or find the means to remove this fear of it. May wrote this book with the intentions of it being easily read yet still providing all the information that came from the research in studying the cause and effects of anxiety.

May was a close friend of the philosopher and theologian Paul Tillich who also had a significant influence on his work. He is often associated with both humanistic psychology and existentialist philosophy. He was the author of the influential book Love and Will which was publiRollo Mayd in 1969.