Maslow
Born in 1908, died in 1970.
Psychology had focused on
- human frailty rather than human strengths
- avoidance of pain rather than striving for happiness
- only half of the picture, "the darker, meaner half"
Maslow focused on the "psychiatrically healthy" person
- advocated a humanistic psychology as a complement to
(mechanistic) behaviorism
Basic assumptions:
- "man has an essential nature of his own, some skeleton of psychological
structure"
- consists of needs, capacities and tendencies
- some common to the human species
- some unique to the individual
- healthy development consists of actualizing this nature
- "growing from within rather than being shaped from without"
- "psychopathology results from the denial or the frustration or the twisting
of man's essential nature"
- human beings need to develop along the lines of their inner nature
- inner nature is weak, delicate and subtle and easily overcome
- rarely disappears, but persists underground
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- humans are born with an "impulse towards growth"
- can be thwarted by an unhealthy environment
"…(1) since a man is to be called sick who is basically thwarted, and (2)
since such basic thwarting is made possible ultimately only by forces outside the
individual, then (3) sickness in the individual must come ultimately from a
sickness in the society. The good or healthy society then would be defined as
one that permitted man's highest purposes to emerge by satisfying his basic
needs." (1970, p. 58)
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- growth motivation is weak compared to gratify basic needs
- two inner defenses also impede growth:
- Jonah complex – our fear of our own possibilities
- desacralizing – denying the awesome, symbolic, beautiful qualities
of people and existence; results in lack of trust and respect
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
- the lower in the hierarchy, the more dominant (prepotent) the need
- as needs are satisfied, higher needs emerge
- lower level needs involve deficiency motivation: triggered by a deficit
- highest level needs involve growth motivation: striving after goals and
personal growth
- we inherit the urges, but learn how to gratify them
Deficiency Needs
Physiological needs – somatic basis
- "The organism is dominated and its behavior organized only by
unsatisfied needs. If hunger is satisfied, it becomes unimportant in the current
dynamics of the individual." (1970, p. 38)
Safety needs – security, stability, protection, freedom from fear, structure, etc.
Belongingness and love – need for friends, family and "affectionate relations with
people in general"
Esteem needs - Self-esteem: strength, competence, mastery, confidence, etc.
Esteem from others: respect, desires for fame,
status, attention, dignity, etc.
Growth Needs (Metaneeds or B-values)
Self-actualization - Need to know (truth)
- Aesthetic needs (beauty)
"a new discontent and restlessness will
soon develop, unless the individual is doing
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what he, individually, is fitted for…What a
man can be, he must be." (1970, p. 46)
Self-actualization involves "intrinsic growth of what is already in the
organism….development then proceeds from within rather than from without, and
paradoxically, the highest motive is to be unmotivated and unstriving." (1970,
pp134-135)
B-values – Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Wholeness, Dichotomy transcendence,
Justice, Order, Playfulness, etc.
Exceptions to the order of the basic needs:
- esteem before love
- "innately creative people"
- risking a lower need in service of a higher need
- early gratification may develop strength to withstand later thwarting of
needs
- next need may emerge before complete satisfaction of the previous one
- needs can be unconscious or conscious
- everyday conscious desires are "surface indicators of more basic needs"
- hierarchy may not be universal
- most behavior is motivated by more than one need
- to develop a more complete science of the human person, psychologists
have to study healthy individuals
Self-actualizing Individuals
- are more realistically oriented
- accept themselves, other people, and the natural world for what they are
- are more spontaneous
- are problem centered rather than self-centered
- have a need for privacy
- identify with all humanity
- philosophical rather than hostile sense of humor
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- creative
- non-conformist, but not flamboyantly so
- autonomous and independent
- most have had peak experiences
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