Orestes, Anxiety, and the Irish Housing Crisis: What Rollo May Can Teach Us About a Generation in Limbo

Why are so many young people in Ireland feeling stuck, anxious, and lost in their own country?

It’s tempting to label it a mental health crisis, and it is, but there’s something deeper going on. The Irish housing crisis isn’t just about affordability or availability. It's an existential crisis.

American existential psychologist Rollo May, in his book Man’s Search for Himself, offers a mythological lens to understand this. He draws on the story of Orestes, a young man caught between an old world that demands obedience and a new world that demands personal responsibility. Sound familiar?

Orestes: The Struggle to Become

In the myth, Orestes is pursued by the Furies after avenging his father’s death. The Furies represent the old moral order: rigid, fearful and punishing. But a new voice emerges, through the gods Apollo and Athena, calling Orestes to make a choice for himself, based on conscience rather than fear.

May sees this as a metaphor for modern life: we must leave behind inherited systems that no longer serve us, face the anxiety of freedom, and forge our own paths. But this transformation isn’t easy. It requires courage and a society that allows it.

Modern Furies: Housing, Debt, and Insecurity

Today, young Irish adults face their own Furies:

• Soaring rents
• Impossibly high house prices
• Stagnant wages
• Dependency on family well into adulthood
• Blame for not being “resilient” enough

The message is: Grow up, but do it without housing, without security, and without support. These pressures trap a generation in a permanent adolescence. And they provoke the same kind of existential anxiety Orestes felt.

Anxiety: Not a Weakness, But a Sign of Growth

Rollo May challenges the idea that anxiety is something to be avoided. He argues it’s a natural and even necessary part of personal development.

Young people are anxious not because they’re weak, but because they are being blocked from growing into themselves. Anxiety, in this context, is a signal that something is wrong. That life is not unfolding as it should.

Responsibility Without Power

Orestes takes responsibility for his actions and is given a fair trial. But young people in Ireland today are expected to act like adults, save for a home, contribute to society, and build a future while being denied the basic tools to do so.

It’s a cruel joke: responsibility without power. Expectations without opportunity.

A New Moral Order Is Needed

In the myth, Athena intervenes to bring about a new justice. A society that recognises personal growth and transformation. We need something similar today.

Ireland must stop treating housing as a commodity and start treating it as a foundation for life. We must see the existential cost of blocked growth: anxiety, despair, and disconnection.

The Call to Action

We are at a crossroads. Young people are not asking for luxury they are asking for room to grow, to become who they are.

Rollo May reminds us: to become ourselves, we must face our anxiety, take responsibility, and push against systems that no longer serve life.

The Irish housing crisis is not just a policy failure. It is a spiritual one. And it’s time we treated it that way.

Rollo May’s reading of Orestes is not just personal, it’s political. The Irish housing crisis represents a collective failure to allow a generation to face its existential task. If young people are denied the opportunity to make choices and accept responsibilities, their identity formation is stunted, and society loses its vitality.

Sean Phelan is an existential psychotherapist in private practice. He works with individuals exploring questions of identity, purpose, anxiety, and becoming.