The Psychology of Human Needs
by Andy Bernay-Roman
The Hierarchy of needs
If you were lost in the desert, and you could only have one thing, what would you
choose: a jug of clean water or a wide-screen top-of-the-line plasma HDTV? If you were
on a wilderness mountain top away from civilization, and you could only have one, what
would you choose: a warm jacket or a great novel? Clearly, the need dictates the
choice. Although you might WANT the latest TV or good book, thirst and need for
warmth dictate that you choose the water and the coat. A natural hierarchy of needs
emerges that guides us to make the right choices. Sometimes we align with biology,
sometimes we don’t. In the end, biology rules.
The Need Pyramid
in
Abraham Maslow, a great pioneer of humanistic psychology
the ‘60’s, came up with this chart to illustrate the hierarchy of
human needs. Like a pyramid, he said, the baseline, foundational
needs need to be met before the higher needs can even be addressed. “Being” needs sit on top of “deficit” needs. In this
model, the body comes first, social needs come second,
and self-actualization last. That means if you have a
physical ailment, you have to address it before you
can actualize your ability to be socially fulfilled, or
fully live out your capacity to be creative or selfreflective.
At Hippocrates, we challenge this model. Although we believe in laying a foundation of good physical health and correcting physical ailments with super-nutrition and
right lifestyle, we don’t ONLY believe in starting from the ground up. We also believe
that fulfilling the being needs (at the top of Maslow’s pyramid) translates into physical
well-being. Hippocrates doesn’t just work from the bottom up. We help guests rally at
the level of Being (substitute the word Personhood, or Self-esteem, or Acceptance, or
Empowerment) in the face of illness, and we witness that “invisible” realm boosting
physical health every day. We help guests heal their lives, their relationships, their abilities to make healthy boundaries, their beliefs about worth and deservedness, and oh,
yeah, we help them eat well too. The body follows what is in the heart and mind. Leading with your heart and mind is the best way to put your body’s well-being first. Wholeness combats disease because of its integrative nature. Wholeness rejects fragmentation. Disease thrives in it. Healing is to make-whole. Wholeness is a feeling available at
any stage of physical healing, and is one that furthers itself. Feeling good physically
clearly invites a person to feel good otherwise, and feeling good inside invites the body
to follow suit.
Needs not Met
Another dimension of human needs addresses what happens when needs are
not met. One thing is for sure: they don’t just go away. If I’m thirsty and go to a well with
no water, my thirst doesn’t disappear because I can’t get any from it. My need turns to
pain. Thirst with no water is not pleasant, but dehydration hurts and causes damage.
Social and emotional needs not met also lead to pain and trauma, and both end up in
the body. Social psychologist Erik Erikson elucidated a timeline of universal, human developmental needs. As we grow up from being an infant, into toddlerhood, childhood,
teenagehood, young adulthood, and finally adulthood, we are faced with certain tasks at
each stage. We either successfully accomplish these tasks, or biologicaly get stuck in
time, in some past developmental need. Unmet needs at any age cry out to be fulfilled.
The body uses its resources to either act out or repress unmet needs. Both can be
draining. Both can result in stressful living, and unconscious strategies of struggle.
Needs and the need for therapy
Erik Erikson would have us believe that unless our early childhood needs are met
in a timely manner, we cannot truly move forward into maturity, and therefore never be
fully well. At Hippocrates we challenge that model as well. Although biology dictates that
needs be met along a definitive developmental timeline, and that they don’t go away
even when they aren’t fulfilled, we believe in healing. Rivers certainly don’t travel in
straight lines, and nor does the flow of human development. We believe in the therapeutic restoration of wholeness in the present, no matter what the past. We believe that
proper therapy cleverly facilitates the emergence of consciousness to make whole those
aspects of personhood which fragmented in the face of needs not met, and the pain of
needs not met.
Illness and the timeline and hierarchy of needs
Illness often derails us from a sense of well-being, erodes our esteem, and
serves to keep us isolated. The “higher”, being needs can’t even emerge when we’re in
the grips of the deficit needs of illness. Self-actualization goes out the window in the
face of survival. Or so Maslow would have us think. And actually, he’s right: many times
we do see guests arrive at the Institute in states of despair, defeat, loss, deprivation, victimhood. We see good people letting illness win and rob them of a good life. Illness often also throws people into regressive states of mind, because the real dependence and
losses that follow in its wake are reminiscent of the dependency and powerlessness of
childhood. Illness challenges our personhood in both the hierarchical sense of our
needs and in the timeline sense as well.
Detox as pivotal to change
Guests at Hippocrates enter both physical and emotional detox. We see them go
through all sorts of phases, and when successful with it, we see them transformed. We
see some struggle with it, fighting it, prolonging it. We see some guests yearn for the
plasma TV and feel deprived when faced only with the jug of water, even though biology
clearly recognizes that water will save a life and TV only distract or entertain it. We see
guests rediscover the ways of their own bodies, their needs included. We see guests
encounter and embrace old needs never met, but newly emerging--like the need for
authentic human communication, loving touch, and joy. We see guests cry at the reunion with themselves. We see guests wake up to the possibility and reality of feeling good
at every level, and we see them shed the pain of all those needs unmet. We see people
finally knowing what’s good for them and what’s not. These are empowered people.
Although detox focuses primarily on elimination of garbage, that alone isn’t
enough. That’s like trying to dump darkness as a way to bring in light. Doesn’t work.
Darkness is just the absence of light, so dumping it doesn’t bring in more. Light, by its
very nature, dispels darkness. Bringing in more light automatically makes more room for
light. Super nutrition is the light. Loving community is the light. Shedding the pain of unmet needs, and accepting responsibility for our own wellness is the light. Shifting from
struggle mode into a creative orientation is the light.
Meeting our “lower” needs might take us to a high plateau on Maslow’s pyramid,
and might help energize us enough to integrate and finalize hurts from the past, but ultimately it is the love and consciousness at the heart of the healing process that liberates us, and takes us all the way to the peak. From that vantage point we naturally
want to eat well and live right. Welcome to the peak and the frontier of wellness!
-------------------