The Intentionality Test (May)

In the AI Story

May's clinical use of the concept appeared in his treatment of patients who were functionally productive but existentially adrift. They could describe what they were doing in technical detail—the job responsibilities, the daily tasks, the projects underway. But when asked why they were doing it, what the work was for, they could not answer beyond generalities (to earn a living, to be successful, to meet expectations). The inability to answer revealed that the work had become detached from any genuine sense of purpose. The patients were performing roles without inhabiting them, producing outputs without caring about the outcomes. May called this the hollow life—a life of activity without intentionality, of doing without being.

Applied to AI collaboration: the builder can lose intentionality within a single session. The work begins with clear purpose—a specific user need, a genuine problem to solve, a vision of what the product should accomplish. But as Claude generates features and the builder accepts them, as the scope expands and the output accumulates, the connection to the original purpose can quietly sever. By midnight the builder is optimizing features no one requested, solving problems that don't exist, refining outputs already adequate—all with the same intensity, all feeling like productive engagement, all without the intentionality that would distinguish creative work from compulsive activity. The test interrupts the momentum and forces reconnection with purpose.

The intentionality test is harder to pass than the anxiety check because it requires not just self-awareness but self-honesty. The builder can admit to feeling anxious; admitting that the work has lost its purpose feels like confessing failure. The confession is not failure—it is the diagnostic that prevents intensity from consuming depth. May observed that patients who could admit their work had become meaningless were closer to recovery than patients who maintained the fiction of purpose through ever-more-intense activity. The admission was not the end; it was the beginning of the encounter with the question: What do I actually want this work to be for?

The test's prescriptive dimension: if the builder cannot articulate what the work serves, the appropriate response is not to continue producing but to pause and recover intentionality. This pause feels like lost momentum, feels like the daimonic force will be dissipated if not immediately expressed. May's counter-claim: the daimonic force that cannot survive a pause for reflection is not creative but compulsive. Genuine creative energy survives the pause and returns stronger for having been interrogated. Compulsive energy demands immediate discharge and mistakes its own urgency for authenticity. The test distinguishes them.

Origin

Intentionality as philosophical concept originates in phenomenology (Franz Brentano, Edmund Husserl) as the defining property of consciousness—awareness is always awareness of something. May adapted the concept from philosophy into clinical psychology in Love and Will (1969), arguing that intentionality is what separates human activity from mechanical motion. An intentional act is performed by a being who cares about the outcome; a mechanical act is performed because the mechanism runs. The distinction became diagnostic: patients lacking intentionality were engaged in their lives mechanically, performing the motions while the meaning had drained away.

Key Ideas

Directedness Toward Meaning. Intentionality is consciousness oriented toward what matters—experiencing work as connected to purpose larger than the immediate task's completion.

Lost Gradually. Intentionality erodes through accumulated small surrenders, each disconnecting work slightly further from purpose until activity continues through momentum alone.

Requires Honest Answer. The test—What is this work for?—demands not a rationalized justification but genuine articulation of the purpose animating the effort.

Pause If Answer Is Absent. If the builder cannot name what the work serves, the prescription is not continued production but recovery of intentionality through reflection.

Compulsive vs. Creative Intensity. Creative force survives interruption for reflection and returns stronger; compulsive force demands immediate discharge and mistakes urgency for authenticity.