What exactly is "willpower," and why does it feel so profoundly difficult to overcome persistent personal challenges or attain our deepest goals through sheer force of will? It is a universal human frustration: the daily struggle to lose weight, stop procrastinating, quit drinking, or kick bad drug habits, despite our most fervent and honest efforts. The same barrier arises when we try to exercise regularly, practice meditation, eat a healthier diet, or secure sufficient sleep—even though we know with absolute certainty that these behaviors are in our own best interest.
We try repeatedly to succeed in these endeavors, armed with the best of intentions, yet we inevitably seem to either fall short or fail entirely. As St. Paul the Apostle famously lamented, "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do."
When these efforts collapse, what actually goes wrong? What happens to our so-called willpower? In standard dictionary definitions, willpower is commonly defined as the ability to control one’s own actions, emotions, thoughts, impulses, or urges, referring specifically to the "strength of one’s will, especially in the exercise of self-control." When we fail to achieve what we set out to do, society—and our own internal monologue—typically attributes this failure to a total absence of willpower.
We tend to diagnose such apparent weaknesses as a lack of moral fiber, a deficit of inner strength, or poor self-discipline. We quickly turn the blame inward, feeling intense guilt for this perceived personal flaw. Over time, this self-reproach gradually erodes our self-esteem, our personal integrity, and our fundamental sense of agency. Yet psychological researchers suggest that the reality is far more profound. This dynamic is not merely a matter of being weak; rather, it is caused by a deep inner conflict between our conscious intentions and our comprehensive intentionality. The underlying problem is that we are simply not of one mind on these matters. We are, in essence, a house divided against itself.
Will vs. Willpower
The concept and experiential discovery of the human will remains central to successful psychotherapy of any theoretical orientation. However, when the term "will" is used in this clinical context, it signifies something entirely different from what people commonly mean by "willpower."
The pioneering psychoanalyst Otto Rank understood that the human will cannot not be expressed in some form or another. It is communicated either constructively or destructively, positively or negatively. Rank observed that when the human will cannot be expressed productively or creatively, it inevitably becomes neurotic or psychotic, manifesting destructively or negatively in the form of "counter-will." But what precisely is this Rankian notion of will, and how does it diverge from everyday notions of willpower?
As described by psychiatrist and Rank biographer E.J. Lieberman, "Will represents the life center of the human being, something primal and ultimate." Another prominent biographer, Jessie Taft, expanded on this by writing, "Will is not merely the drive of a predominant instinct or combination of instincts; it is that central integration [and expression] of the forces of the individual which exceeds the sum of the parts."
What society labels as willpower is typically treated as an expression of what we believe to be our authentic will or true intentions. In reality, however, conventional willpower usually stems solely from what the conscious ego, the social persona, or the everyday conscious personality desires. For most people, the conscious ego is the part of the self with which they most strongly identify.
Unfortunately, this fragile willpower is routinely sabotaged by what we do not know—or perhaps what we actively refuse to know—about ourselves: the unconscious. It is this hidden realm that undermines our conscious efforts, rendering willpower weak, impotent, and frequently ineffective in the face of deep-seated internal currents.
Otto Rank’s therapeutic framework, known as "Will Therapy"—which served in many ways as a historical precursor to modern existential therapy—sought to cultivate in the client the capacity to express their true will, rather than relying on mere willpower, in a constructive and creative manner. But how is this complex psychological alignment actually accomplished in a therapeutic setting?
Intentions vs. Intentionality
One productive way of navigating this exceedingly common human conundrum regarding willpower is to differentiate carefully between one’s intentions and one’s intentionality.
Intentions consist of what we more or less consciously want, think, or choose to do. Intentionality, on the other hand, is a much broader psychological construct that includes both our conscious and our unconscious intentions combined.
Discerning and determining one’s true intentionality in life is essential to the ability to freely assert one’s will in a constructive or creative fashion—assuming one chooses to do so. This process stands as one of the fundamental goals in contemporary existential therapy. As the renowned existential psychologist Rollo May observed, psychotherapy "ought to be the place par excellence of experiencing intentions and their implied actions and meaning… without the patient having to transform this into overt behavior."
In other words, individuals need a safe container to explore, experience, and verbally express both their conscious intentions and their unconscious intentionality within a structured framework of consciousness, rather than reflexively acting them out in the outside world with disastrous consequences. Discerning one’s deeper intentionality or authentic will in any given situation is an absolute prerequisite to eventually determining what to do with it in outer reality.
The Psychological Reality Behind "Good Intentions"
The popular adage that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" carries profound psychological significance. While our conscious intentions typically serve as direct, straightforward expressions of the ego or the social persona, our deeper intentionality harbors the primitive, primal desires, impulsions, urges, and wishes of what Sigmund Freud conceptualized as the id, what Carl Jung referred to as the shadow, or what Rollo May described as the daimonic.
This underlying intentionality frequently surfaces initially as a form of counter-will—appearing as active resistance or outright opposition to our conscious desires and goals. People often find themselves wanting to say yes to something or someone, yet hearing themselves say no instead. They firmly intend to act in one particular way, only to find themselves behaving in the exact opposite manner. Cognition is abruptly overruled by emotion, or vice versa.
Individuals repeatedly find themselves executing the polar opposite of what they consciously and conscientiously say, think, or feel they want to do, often watching the ensuing wreckage with profound dismay before scratching their heads and wondering what just happened.
It is an extremely confusing, frustrating, and humbling human experience. Yet, it also marks the vital beginning of genuine psychological wisdom. People are forced to acknowledge a sobering truth: they are not entirely the masters in their own house. There are immensely powerful forces at work deep within the human psyche that transcend and routinely trump conscious intentions. This realization underscores how much humanity has yet to learn about the self, revealing that human beings are vastly more complicated and complex creatures than they ever initially imagined.
Exercising the Will of Watkins and the Whole Person
Human will, while an innate capacity, must be actively discovered, discerned, refined, and then—much like a physical muscle—creatively exercised over time. From the perspective of Rankian psychology, neurosis, counter-will, and the chronic failure of what society labels willpower are the direct consequences of an individual’s inability to know, accept, and direct their true will constructively and consistently.
To fully discern one’s intentionality is to experience and discover what one truly wants, moving beyond the superficial layer of what one thinks one wants, feels one wants, or even wants to want. It points directly to the unified will of the whole person. This deep intentionality underpins—and frequently undermines—conscious intention because it taps into the inherent, holistic, organic, and instinctual wisdom residing within the psyche and the body alike.
Whatever our true intentions and underlying intentionality may turn out to be, even when they seem entirely antithetical to the identity we have constructed for ourselves, we must acknowledge and accept them as legitimate parts of our total being. We are tasked with trying to reconcile these competing internal forces as best we can.
Discerning and discovering this deep intentionality demands both extraordinary personal courage and unyielding integrity. Integrity, in this psychological sense, can be understood as the essential unity of the personality. It implies being brutally honest with ourselves regarding both our stated intentions and our hidden intentionality—examining what truly motivates us and confronting what those motivations reveal about who we genuinely are.
While this pursuit is never an easy endeavor and is rarely a pleasant one, it offers a distinct reward: the capacity to achieve genuine, lasting personal transformation and accomplishment in ways that simple, superficial willpower could never hope to achieve.
