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Self Actualization and Its Philosophical
Self Actualization and Its Philosophical
Abstract:
This paper examines the use and origins of the concept of self-actualization as it came to be employed in
psychotherapy. The term is most often associated with the theory and work of Abraham Maslow. An
interdisciplinary approach is employed to contextualize the history and origins of self-actualization theory,
with a primary emphasis on philosophy and psychotherapy, along with broader references to historical and
literary contributions to the development of self-actualization. Aristotle coined the Greek work entelechy
to explain an intrinsic force that drives the organism to realize its full potential. This concept has been
taken up and developed further both in myth, literature and from the Enlightenment era onwards by
philosophers such as Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Heidegger. Carl Rogers and Maslow further
developed self-actualization within the burgeoning field of psychotherapy in the 1950s.
Body:
What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization…It
refers to the desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to
become actualized in what he is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as
the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that
one is capable of becoming. (Maslow. 1943, 370-96)
psychology and the theories of Abraham Maslow beginning in the 1950s. However,
holistic psychologist Kurt Goldstein, an organismic theorist, first advanced the term in
the 1930s. In his view, the individual is a totality striving towards actualization: "the
basic drive... the only drive by which the life of an organism is determined." (Goldberg,
human needs, placing self-actualization at the top of his pyramid, attainable once lower
order physical and social needs have been met. Yet, even before Goldstein and Maslow,
other psychologists have addressed the concept of self-actualization. Swiss
psychoanalyst Carl Jung was a precursor in the 1920s with his theory of self-realization
psyche together with life experiences are integrated into a well-functioning whole. Turn-
of-the-century American psychologist William James with his psychology of the self can
that of fully realizing innate potentials and ‘being all that one can be.’ This paper takes
its historical underpinnings through philosophy and literature from Aristotle to Maslow.
entelechy, a term coined by Aristotle (384 – 322 BCE). According to William Sahakian,
the soul as the entelechy (self-contained purpose) of the body… The person
who actualizes himself fully, i.e., realizes his every major potential capacity or
ability, is adjusted in the sense that he finds himself in a state of eudaimonia
(beautiful state of mind)… (Sahakian, 1975, p.9)
Aristotle proposes that within the self there exists an essential propensity for its own
good. Aristotle invented the word entelechy, as Joe Sachs explains in Aristotle's Physics:
a guided study, by combining entelēs (complete, full-grown) with echein (to be a certain
way by the continuing effort of holding on in that condition), while at the same time
sound somewhat confusing but relates to motion and the actuality of a potentiality. Sachs
gives the example of a man walking across a room. “The actuality of the potentiality to
be on the other side of the room, as just that potentiality, is neither more nor less than the
walking across the room.” (Sachs, 1995, pp. 78–79). Thus it can be said that purposeful
kinds, the vegetative (found in plants), the sensitive (found in animals), and the rational
soul which only humans possess, although humans also possess the lower two types of
souls. This hierarchical design anticipates Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. As the soul
defines the purpose of the organism, each corresponding organ has teleological
objectives:
the lower functions exist for the higher, their functions being an activity of life
in the following ascending order: (1) nutrition (vegetative life); (2a) perception
(life of sensation); (2b) kinetic soul (life of creative power, desire, and
locomotion); and (3) dianoetic or rational soul (life of intellect or reason).
(Sahakian, 1975, pp 8-9).
catalysts of the lower functions; and that since the soul is unitary, it is indivisible and
found in each function, from the lowest to the highest. Like Maslow’s pyramid, the
higher functions (or needs) build on the preceding ones. In Sahakian’s definition of
(ibid). So for Aristotle, the human being carries within it an entelechy that informs its life
happiness.
Greek dictum “Know thyself” as possibly carrying the connotation ‘self actualization.’
Socrates, in Plato’s Phaedrus, invokes the dictum when young Phaedrus asks him to
explain a myth. Socrates says he cannot, claiming “I am not yet able, as the Delphic
inscription has it, to know myself; so it seems to me ridiculous, when I do not yet know
that, to investigate irrelevant things." (Plato, 230A). Socrates repeats the same sentiment
in Plato’s Philebus, arguing that to remain ignorant of oneself is the height of folly. Self-
knowledge, for Socrates, then, is a lifelong journey, and one that supersedes in
importance all other categories of knowledge. The second and companion inscription at
Delphi, “Nothing in excess” would seem to indicate moderation and self-mastery or,
taken together with the first, a rationalized self-knowing as the guiding principle on life’s
journey. This sense of self and prioritizing of introspection was then taken further by
Aristotle into the realm of life activity, as an unfolding of the implicate self and making
until Emmanuel Kant, however writers such as St Augustine with his autobiographical
work Confessions in 397AD did much to bring into perspective a sense of interiority,
self-auditing, and spiritual striving. The Medieval period saw numerous sagas and epics
such as the Old English 10th century Beowulf and the Old Norse Poetic Edda. In the 12th
to 15th centuries came Arthurian Romances such as Parzival, Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight, and Le Morte d'Arthur. Common to all was the hero’s journey – they were often
magical and harrowing accounts of the self-transformation of the hero through trials and
ordeals. To paraphrase Joseph Campbell, hero myths are public dreams of self-
actualization. Yet, it was not until the Enlightenment era (1650-1800) that private
dreams began to gain public currency, with Shakespeare representing a kind of bridge
between the medieval romances and the new individualism. Indeed Shakespeare gives
hint of this coming era in Hamlet (1600), a drama in which codes of duty, conduct and
social position are at odds with a growing existential subjectivity and introspection. As
he expresses it in the words of mad Ophelia: “Lord, we know what we are, but know not
The Western sense of self broke through to a deeper psychological level with
Rousseau’s Confessions in 1766, the first secular autobiography, in which Rousseau took
pains to disclose even the more shameful acts of his youth, and offered a detailed account
of his personal development and emotions. With Rousseau, Western subjectivity reached
a new benchmark, inspiring others such as Goethe and Wordsworth to write deeply
personal autobiographies. Contemporary with Rousseau was the birth of the modern or
1795 novel Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship sets its young protagonist on a journey of
self-realization. In Germany the novel became the prototype for a new genre of what
would later be termed Bildungsroman (novels of formation) in which a young man sets
In the midst of this century, German philosopher Emmanuel Kant defined both
the Enlightenment and its chief ideal: the conception of the self as rational, responsible
and self-determining. He expressed this 18th century zeitgeist in his 1784 essay "What is
Enlightenment?"
determining of laws of universality and necessity. These laws, Kant argues, cannot be
evinced in the external world, and are therefore to be derived only from pure reason.
Central to reason, for Kant, is freedom. Reason itself presupposes freedom for without
freedom reason could not act, make judgments and make choices. Kant therefore
conceives of the self as autonomous and free, for if it were entirely causally determined,
In his earliest published work, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces
problem of mind-body dualism ongoing at the time. Kant argues for an essential force, a
dynamic teleological structure at the heart of each body or substance. Entelechy is the
nouminal self-actuating force, the implicate order of the phenomenal self – the ground or
full potentiality of being. Self-accualization for Kant then, is premised on the assumption
Kant’s philosophy is often accused of being overly moralistic and bound by duties
to community. We are obligated to develop both our moral capacities and our natural
capacities. Regarding the latter, Kant states in his 1797 work, The Metaphysics of
Morals:
It is a duty of man to cultivate his natural powers (of the spirit, of the mind, and
of the body) as means to all kinds of possible ends. Man owes it to himself (as
an intelligence) not to let his natural predispositions and capacities (which his
reason can use someday) remain unused, and not to leave them, as it were, to
rust. (Kant, 1797, ch6:444)
While Kant leaves it up to the individual as to which capacities one chooses to develop, it
is one’s imperfect duty to make a concerted effort to nurture the gifts of nature – not
haphazardly, but intentionaly and rationaly towards fulfillment of self and contribution to
culture. The will or self-actualizing force is guided by judgement towards fullness of
being. Kant scholar Robert Johnson argues that for Kant, failure in one’s duty towards
self-actualization is a moral failing, but rather than wronging society, one wrongs oneself:
what makes it wrong to fail in this obligation is not that you will let others
down or even that the world will be made worse off, although both might also
be true. What makes it wrong is that you have failed to respect your own
humanity. (Johnson, p14)
For Kant, then, self-actualization is a primary duty in maintaining moral self-regard, and
the German philosophical tradition, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 – 1831)
an a priori form that possesses within itself the aspired end. Hegel is similar to Kant in
that happiness may result from self-actualization, but is a conditioned good and not a
final aim. For Kant happiness is secondary and dependent upon moral virtue. For Hegel,
the goal of self-actualization is neither happiness nor moral virtue, but freedom. It is a
complex freedom in which one becomes free from nature (animality) through a
relationship with nature rather than a being determined by nature. Thus self-actualization
is first a process of converting our natural drives for indeterminate objects into directed
other-to-be. For Hegel, freedom is only realized within relationship with the other. As
Williams writes: “freedom is not located simply in the ‘individual’, but rather in the
achieved through a dialectical process in which the subject mediates its relation-to-self
known as the ‘third force’ or humanistic psychology. This third force was in some ways
a reaction to both the Freudian school of psychoanalysis where unconscious forces and
childhood traumas determined the individual, and the behaviorist model represented
both apply a client-centered approach rather than a diagnostic and didactic one. They
prefer to engage with the present person rather than interpret his or her past and they
share a belief that people have the capacity for self-awareness and choice. Both schools
were influenced by the 19th century philosophers Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) and
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 -1900). A key concept first expressed by Kierkegaard was
‘authenticity’ – the degree to which one is true to oneself despite external pressures and
intervening agencies such as the church or the media. 20th century philosophers Martin
authenticity further.
For both humanistic and existential psychotherapy, the concept of self-
adaptive measures, the therapist assists the client in transcending debilitating self-
concepts and attitudes, clearing the way for growth and self-actualization. Self-
actualization psychology, prefigured by Kurt Goldstein in the 1930s with his holistic
theory of personality, grew popular in the US starting in the 1950s through the works of
and is articulated as such in his nineteen basic propositions, upon which his theory is
based. The fourth proposition in Roger’s book Client-Centered Therapy (1951) states
that: “The organism has one basic tendency and striving – to actualize, maintain, and
enhance the experiencing organism.” (Rogers, 1951, p489). His theory shares some
strong parallels with the philosophy of Nietzsche, particularly his book Thus Spoke
Zarathustra (1885) where Nietzsche declares the ‘death of God’ and the advent of the
you three metamorphoses of the spirit: how the spirit shall become a camel, and the
camel a lion, and the lion at last a child" (Nietzsche, 1885/1969. p54). While the camel is
a beast of burden, doing what it ‘must’ do and ‘ought to’ do, in the (existential) desert, in
the solitude of its predicament, it transforms (with therapeutic encouragement) into a lion
because "it wants to capture freedom for itself and be lord in its own desert" (ibid). The
lion is secure in its relationship to itself, but it still must become a child. As Nietzsche
writes: “But tell me, my brothers, what can the child do that the lion cannot? The child is
motion, a sacred Yes” (ibid.). Nietzsche describes a state where one is no longer blocked
movement. Rogers also sees in early childhood an explanation for his fourth proposition:
The whole process (of self-enhancement and growth) may be symbolized and
illustrated by the child’s learning to walk…. The forward direction of growth is
more powerful than the satisfaction of remaining infantile. Children will
actualize themselves in spite of the painful experiences of so doing.” (Rogers,
1951, p490-491).
For Rogers, the child’s forward-moving tendency is always stronger than any regressive
when the child is evaluated by others and a struggle to preserve a positive self-concept
Nietzsche’s philosophy emphasized the quality of the individual life and is more
individualism. His final book, published posthumously in 1908, was titled Ecce Homo:
How One Becomes What One Is. Here, as in previous works, Nietzsche’s conception of
self-actualization entails a strenuous over-coming of the parts that are not yourself and an
experiences, but accepting and even affirming them as stages in self-becoming. The self
is freed for growth and experience once repression and disassociation cease and one can
act from a position of inclusive self-ownership. As Duncan Large writes in his
individual can function optimally when there is little to no dissonance between one’s self-
concept and one’s actual behavior and experience. Psychological strain and tension arise
from morbid self-blame, denial of or disassociation from one’s behavior and experience.
Psychological adjustment exists when the concept of the self is such that all the
sensory and visceral experiences of the organism are, or may be, assimilated on
a symbolic level into a consistent relationship with the concept of self.
(Rogers, 1951, p 526)
has said famously elsewhere: “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I
am, then I can change.” (Rogers, 1961, p31) When such integration occurs, one is better
able to carry out what Nietzsche calls a ‘revaluation of all values’ as one becomes more
self-directed and no longer dependent on what Kant terms ‘self-incurred tutelage.’ Thus
one begins to create new values arising from an affirmative relationship to life rather than
one of resentment. This too is the conclusion of Rogers in his nineteen propositions:
As the individual perceives and accepts into his self-structure more of his
organic experiences, he finds that he is replacing his present value system –
based so largely on introjections that have been distortedly symbolized – with a
continuing organismic valuing process. (Rogers, 1951, p 533)
It was Maslow however who spearheaded the self-actualization movement in the
1950s and 60s. He first formally articulated the concept in his 1943 paper A Theory of
pyramid of needs. With the basic physiological needs at the bottom, Maslow suggested
that human motivation moves up the pyramid, and must achieve and master each
subsequent level, namely security, belonging, and esteem, before it is able to focus on
self-actualization and fully realize its potential. Many have criticized Maslow’s
hierarchy, particularly the order in which it is arranged, and that it cannot claim
the culture and society. In a more collectivist society, the needs of acceptance and
community may outweigh the needs for freedom and individuality. The order of needs
may also vary according to historical context (war time, peace time) or age group. In
individual would reveal many similarities with the ideals of Eastern philosophies such as
However this may be, what distinguishes Maslow is that he shifted the focus away
from the study of pathology towards the study of mental health and optimization. For his
principle study on self-actualization, the 1954 work, Motivation and Personality, Maslow
studied the healthiest 1% of the college population as well as exemplary people such as
explains in the book, "the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens
can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy." (Maslow, 1954, p236).
For Maslow, the basis for self-actualization is similar to that of Aristotle, Kant and Hegel,
to become or obtain what media and institutions tell us we lack. As Maslow writes, it is
“intrinsic growth of what is already in the organism, or more accurately of what is the
enjoyment of both solitude and deeper personal relations, problem-centered rather than
towards others, and peak experiences. (Maslow, 1970, pp278-312). These qualities
enthusiasm and absorption in tasks, respectively. While critics of Maslow and Rogers
effectiveness of treatments, a major obstacle to fair assessment has been in using the
(Raskin/Rogers/Witty, 2008, p171). Their work on self-actualization has had both direct
and indirect effects on the subsequent development of psychotherapy from the Human
to the leading German philosophers of the last three centuries: Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche
and Heidegger. While self-actualization theory has been largely supplanted now in
clinical psychology, it remains an inspirational resource to many. In the last three years
REFERENCES
Maslow, Abraham. (1954). Motivation and personality. New York, NY: Harper.
Maslow, A.H. (1970). Motivation and Personality. 2d ed. New York: Harper & Row.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. (1969). Thus Spoke Zarathustra. New York: Penguin Classics.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1908/2007) Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is.
Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Duncan Large. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Plato. (370BCE) The Phaedrus. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Last accessed
Dec 30, 2013: http://www.hermes-press.com/phaedrus_frames.htm
Raskin, Nathaniel & Rogers, Carl & Witty, Marjorie. (2008) Unit 5: Client-Centered
Therapy in Current Psychotherapies 8th Ed. by Raymond Corsini &Danny
Wedding. Belmont: Thomson.
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Wiley & Sons.
Schoenfeld, Martin. (2000) The Philosophy of the Young Kant: The Precritical Project.
New York: Oxford University Press.