Chapter 10.

Maslow: Holistic Dynamic Theory

Biography Of Abraham Maslow
- Maslow’s childhood was lonely and miserable; his life was filled with intense feelings of shyness, inferiority,
and depression. He didn’t have a great relationship with his parents, especially his mother, and despite
years of psychoanalysis, he never overcame his hatred for his mother.
- He married his cousin, Bertha Goodman.
- He worked closely with Harry Harlow, who was just beginning his research with monkeys. Maslow’s
dissertation research on the dominance and sexual behavior of monkeys suggested that social dominance
was a more powerful motive than sex, at least among primates.
- Maslow was not impressed by Edwards B. Titchener’s approach to psychology. He regarded it as cold.
Bloodless, and having nothing to do with people.
- Maslow became E. L. Thorndike’s research assistant at Teachers College, Columbia University. Maslow
scored 195 on Thorndike’s intelligence test, prompting Thorndike to give his assistant free rein to do as he
wished
- He met and learned from Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, Max Wertheimer, and Kurt Goldstein. He was
influenced by each of these people, most of whom conducted lectures at the New School for Social
Research. Maslow also became associated with Alfred Adler, who was living in New York at that time.
- Ruth Benedict encouraged Maslow to gain some field experience. She sponsored a grant application that
Maslow received to study the Blackfoot Indians. Maslow examined the dominance and emotional security of
the Blackfoot Indians. He was impressed by their culture and recognized what he believed was an innate
need to experience a sense of purpose in life, a sense of meaning.
- Maslow received many honors during his lifetime, including his election to the presidency of the American
Psychological Association for the year 1967–1968, despite this he frequently experienced panic when called
on to deliver a talk.

Holistic-Dynamic Theory
- Assumes that the whole person is constantly being motivated by one need or another and that people have
the potential to grow toward psychological health, that is, self-actualization.

Maslow’s View of Motivation

- Maslow’s theory of personality rests on several basic assumptions regarding motivation.
- Maslow adopted a holistic approach to motivation: That is, the whole person, not any single part or function,
is motivated.
- Motivation is usually complex, meaning that a person’s behavior may spring from several separate motives.
The motivation for a behavior may be unconscious or unknown to the person.
- People are continually motivated by one need or another.
- People everywhere are motivated by the same basic needs.
- Needs can be arranged on a hierarchy.

Hierarchy of Needs
- The five needs composing this hierarchy are conative needs (basic needs), meaning that they have a
striving or motivational character. Maslow listed the following needs in order of their prepotency:
physiological, safety, love and belongingness, esteem, and self-actualization.

1) Physiological Needs
- most basic needs and the most prepotent.
- Biological requirements for human survival. (Food, water, oxygen, maintenance of body temperature, and so
on.)
- The only needs that can be completely satisfied or even overly satisfied.
- Recurring nature.

2) Safety Needs
- Most fundamental needs for humankind.
- Safe circumstances, stability, and protection.
- Cannot be overly satiated.
- Children are more often motivated by safety needs because they live with such threats as darkness,
animals, strangers, and punishments from parents.
Some adults also feel relatively unsafe because they retain irrational fears from childhood that cause them to act as
if they were afraid of parental punishment. They spend far more energy than healthy people trying to satisfy safety
needs, and when they are not successful in their attempts, they suffer from what Maslow called basic anxiety.

3) Love and Belongingness Needs

- Desire for interpersonal relationships and being part of a group.
- People who have had their love and belongingness needs adequately satisfied from their early years do not
panic when denied love.
- People who have never experienced love and belongingness are incapable of giving love.
- People who have received love and belongingness only in small doses will be strongly motivated to seek
it. Esteem Needs
- Desires to have a stable and realistically positive evaluation of themselves.
- Self-respect, confidence, competence, and the knowledge that others hold them in high esteem.
- Maslow identified two levels of esteem needs—reputation and self-esteem.
- Reputation is the perception of the prestige, recognition, or fame a person has achieved in the eyes of
others.
- Self-esteem is a person’s feelings of worth and confidence.

4) Self-Actualization Needs
- The fullest development of the self.
- Self-actualizers are not dependent on the satisfaction of either love or esteem needs; they become
independent from the lower-level needs that gave them birth.
- When lower-level needs are satisfied, people proceed more or less automatically to the next level. However,
once esteem needs are met, they do not always move to the level of self-actualization.
- People who highly respect such values as truth, beauty, justice, and the other B-values become self-
actualizing after their esteem needs are met. Those who do not embrace these values are frustrated in
fulfilling them even though they have satisfied their basic needs.

a. Aesthetic Needs
- Need for order and beauty
- Not universal
- Some people in every culture seem to be motivated by the need for beauty and aesthetically
pleasing experiences.
b. Cognitive Needs
- Need for curiosity and knowledge
- When cognitive needs are blocked, all needs on Maslow’s hierarchy are threatened; that is,
knowledge is necessary to satisfy each of the five conative needs.
- People who have not satisfied their cognitive needs, who have been consistently lied to,
have had their curiosity stifled, or have been denied information, become pathological, a
pathology that takes the form of skepticism, disillusionment, and cynicism.

c. Neurotic Needs
- An unproductive pattern of relating to other people
- Leads only to stagnation and pathology
- Nonproductive; they perpetuate an unhealthy style of life and have no value in the striving for
self-actualization.
- Usually reactive; that is, they serve as compensation for unsatisfied basic needs.
General Discussion of Needs
Maslow estimated that the hypothetical average person has his or her needs satisfied to approximately these
levels:
Physiological needs 85%

Safety needs 70%

Love and Belongingness 50%

needs
Esteem needs 40%

Self-actualizing 10%
Needs emerge gradually, and a person may be simultaneously motivated by needs from two or more levels.

Reversed Order of Needs

- Even though needs are generally satisfied in the hierarchical order occasionally they are reversed. For some
people, the drive for creativity (a self-actualization need) may take precedence over safety and physiological
needs.

a) Unmotivated Behavior
- Some behavior is not caused by needs but by other factors such as conditioned reflexes, maturation,
or drugs. Motivation is limited to striving for the satisfaction of some need. Much of what Maslow
called “expressive behavior” is unmotivated.
b) Expressive behavior
- has a cause but is not motivated. It is frequently unconscious and usually takes place naturally and
with little effort. It has no goals or aims but is merely the person’s mode of expression.
c) Coping behavior
- Is motivated and directed toward the satisfaction of basic needs.
d) Deprivation Of Needs
- Lack of satisfaction with any of the basic needs leads to some kind of pathology.
- Deprivation of self-actualization needs also leads to pathology, or more accurately, Meta pathology.

e) Instinctoid Nature Of Needs

- Some human needs are innately determined even though they can be modified by learning.
f) Instinctoid Needs
- Thwarting these needs produces pathology
- Are persistent and their satisfaction leads to psychological health
- Species-specific
- Can be molded, inhibited, or altered by environmental influences.
- Non-instinctoid Needs
- Thwarting these needs does not lead to pathology.
- Are usually temporary and their satisfaction is not a prerequisite for health.

Comparison of Higher and Lower Needs

- Higher needs are similar to lower ones in that they are instinctoid. Maslow insisted that love, esteem, and
self-actualization are just as biological as thirst, sex, and hunger. Differences between higher needs and
lower ones are those of degree and not of kind.
- First, higher-level needs are later on the phylogenetic or evolutionary scale. Higher needs appear later
during the course of individual development; lower-level needs must be cared for in infants and children
before higher-level needs become operative.
- Second, higher-level needs produce more happiness and more peak experiences, although satisfaction with
lower-level needs may produce a degree of pleasure. Hedonistic pleasure, however, is usually temporary
and not comparable to the quality of happiness produced by the satisfaction of higher needs. Also, the
satisfaction of higher-level needs is more subjectively desirable to those people who have experienced both
higher and lower-level needs. In other words, a person who has reached the level of self-actualization would
have no motivation to return to a lower stage of development.
Self-Actualization
- Maslow’s ideas on self-actualization began soon after he received his Ph.D. when he became puzzled about
why two of his teachers in New York City—anthropologist Ruth Benedict and psychologist Max Wertheimer
—were so different from average people. To Maslow, these two people represented the highest level of
human development, and he called this level “self-actualization.”

 Maslow’s Quest for The Self-Actualizing Person

- Maslow began to take notes on these two people, and he hoped to find others whom he could call a “Good
Human Being.” However, he had trouble finding them.
- Maslow found several older people who seemed to have some of the characteristics for which he was
searching, but when he interviewed these people to learn what made them special, he was almost always
disappointed. Typically, he found them to be “well-adjusted”.
- Maslow faced additional handicaps in his quest for whom he now called the “self-actualizing person.”
- First, he was trying to find a personality syndrome that had never been identified.
- Second, many of the people he believed to be self-actualizing refused to participate in his search.
- Maslow decided to take a different approach—he began reading biographies of famous people to see if he
could find self-actualizing people among the saints, sages, national heroes, and artists. Once he had
learned to ask the right questions, Maslow continued his quest for the self-actualizing person.

 Criteria For Self-Actualization

- First, they were free from psychopathology.
- Second, these self-actualizing people had progressed through the hierarchy of needs and therefore lived
above the subsistence level of existence and had no ever-present threat to their safety. Because they had
their lower-level needs satisfied, self-actualizing people were better able to tolerate the frustration of these
needs, even in the face of criticism and scorn.
- Maslow’s third criterion for self-actualization was the embracing of the B-values.
- The final criterion for reaching self-actualization was “full use and exploitation of talents, capacities,
potentialities, etc.”

 Values Of Self-Actualizers
- Meta motivation – Motivation of self-actualizers. It is characterized by expressive rather than coping
behavior and is associated with the B-values. It differentiates self-actualizing people from those who are not.
 Meta needs – Constitute the goals of self-actualizers and include the needs for knowledge, beauty,
and creativity; Also called B-values.
 Meta pathology – The state of vague frustration or discontent experienced by individuals who are
unable to satisfy their meta needs. When people’s meta needs are not met, they experience illness,
an existential illness.

Characteristics of Self-Actualizing People

- Maslow believed, people must be regularly satisfied with their other needs and must also embrace the B-
values.

a) More Efficient Perception of Reality

- Can easily detect phoniness in others.
- Are less afraid and more comfortable with the unknown.
b) Acceptance Of Self, Others, And Nature
- Can accept themselves the way they are.
c) Spontaneity, Simplicity, And Naturalness
- Are spontaneous, simple, and natural.
d) Problem-Centering
- Are task-oriented and concerned with problems outside themselves.
Extend their frame of reference far beyond self.
e) The Need for Privacy
- Have a quality of detachment that allows them to be alone without being lonely.
May be seen as aloof or uninterested, but in fact, their disinterest is limited to minor matters.
f) Autonomy
- Are autonomous and depend on themselves for growth even though at some time in their past they had to
have received love and security from others.
g) Continued Freshness of Appreciation
 - Have the wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with
awe, pleasure, wonder, and even
retain their constant sense of good fortune and gratitude for it
h) The Peak Experience
- A moment of awe, ecstasy, or sudden insight into life as a powerful unity transcending space, time, and the
self. Peak experience may at times occur for individuals in their pursuit of self-actualization.
- Is unmotivated, non-striving, and non-wishing, and during such an experience, a person experiences no
needs, wants, or deficiencies.
- Often has a lasting effect on a person’s life.
i) Gemeinschaftsgefühl
- Adler’s term for a social interest, community feeling, or a sense of oneness with all humanity.
- Maslow found that his self-actualizers had a kind of caring attitude toward other people.
- Although they often feel like aliens in a foreign land, self-actualizers nevertheless identify with all other
people and have a genuine interest in helping others—strangers as well as friends.
- Self-actualizers may become angry, impatient, or disgusted with others; but they retain a feeling of affection
for human beings in general.
j) Profound Interpersonal Relations
- Have a nurturant feeling toward people in general, but their close friendships are limited to only a few.
- Often misunderstood and sometimes despised by others. On the other hand, many are greatly loved and
attract a large group of admirers and even worshipers, especially if they have made a notable contribution to
their business or professional field.
k) The Democratic Character Structure
- They could be friendly and considerate with other people regardless of class, color, age, or gender, and in
fact, they seemed to be quite unaware of superficial differences among people.
- Have a desire and an ability to learn from anyone.
l) Discrimination Between Means and Ends
- Have a clear sense of right and wrong conduct and have little conflict about basic values.
m) Philosophical Sense of Humor
- Another distinguishing characteristic of self-actualizing people is their philosophical, nonhostile sense of
humor.
- The humor of a self-actualizing person is intrinsic to the situation rather than contrived; it is spontaneous
rather than planned. Because it is situation-dependent, it usually cannot be repeated.
n) Creativeness
- They have a keen perception of truth, beauty, and reality—ingredients that form the foundation of true
creativity.
o) Resistance To Enculturation
- Have a sense of detachment from their surroundings and can transcend a particular culture.
- Do not waste energy fighting against insignificant customs and regulations of society.
- On important matters, they can become strongly aroused to seek social change and to resist society’s
attempts to enculturate them.

Love, Sex, and Self-Actualization

- Self-actualizing people are capable of both giving and receiving love and are no longer motivated by the kind
of deficiency love (D-love) common to other people.
- Self-actualizing people are capable of B-love, that is, love for the essence or “Being” of the other.
- B-love is mutually felt and shared and not motivated by a deficiency or incompleteness within the lover. It is
unmotivated, expressive behavior.
- Self-actualizing people do not love because they expect something in return. They simply love and are
loved.
- Maslow believed that sex between two B-lovers often becomes a kind of mystical experience.
- Self-actualizers are not dominated by sex. They can more easily tolerate the absence of sex (as well as
other basic needs) because they have no deficiency need for it. Sexual activity between b-lovers is not
always a heightened emotional experience; sometimes it is taken quite lightly in the spirit of playfulness and
humor. But this approach is to be expected because playfulness and humor are b-values, and like the other
b-values, they are an important part of a self-actualizer’s life.

Philosophy Of Science
- Maslow argued for a Taoistic attitude, one that is noninterfering, passive, receptive, and subjective.
 - Maslow insisted that psychologists must themselves be healthy people, able to tolerate ambiguity and
uncertainty. They must be intuitive, nonrational, insightful, and courageous enough to ask the right
questions. They must also be willing to flounder, to be imprecise, to question their procedures, and to take
on the important problems of psychology
- In his study of self-actualizing people and peak experiences, Maslow employed research methods
consistent with his philosophy of science. He began intuitively, often “skating on thin ice,” then attempted to
verify his hunches using idiographic and subjective methods. He often left to others the technical work of
gathering evidence. His personal preference was to “scout out ahead,” leaving one area when he grew tired
of it and going on to explore new ones

Measuring Self-Actualization
- Personal Orientation Inventory – developed by Shostrom as a measurement of the attitudes and values of
ordinary to high-functioning adults. It was designed specifically to measure individual attitudes about self-
actualization and is used in therapy, research, and individual personal development. The POI consists of
150 statements that participants respond to with a Likert
The POI 2 major scales:
a. Time Competence/Time Incompetence scale – measures the degree to which people are present-
oriented.
b. Support scale – is “designed to measure whether an individual’s mode of reaction is characteristic
‘self’ oriented or ‘other-oriented”
The POI 10 subscales assess levels of:
1) Self-actualization values
2) Flexibility in applying values
3) Sensitivity to one’s own needs and feelings
4) Spontaneity in expressing feelings behaviorally
5) Self-regard
6) Self-acceptance
7) Positive view of humanity
8) Ability to see opposites of life as meaningfully related
9) Acceptance of aggression
10) Capacity for intimate contact

- High scores on the 2 major scales and the 10 subscales indicate some level of self-actualization; low scores
do not necessarily suggest pathology but give clues concerning a person’s self-actualizing values and
behaviors.
- The POI seems to be quite resistant to faking—unless one is familiar with Maslow’s description of a self-
actualizing person
- Even though the POI has demonstrated reasonable reliability and validity, some have criticized the inventory
for failing to distinguish between known self-actualizers and non-self-actualizers.
- The POI has two practical problems:
 It is long, taking most participants 30 to 45 minutes to complete;
 The two-item forced-choice format can engender hostility in the participants, who feel frustrated by
the limitations of a forced-choice option.

Short Index of Self-Actualization – created by Alvin Jones and Rick Crandall, which borrows 15 items
from the POI that are most strongly correlated with the total self-actualization score. Items on the Short
Index are on a 6-point Likert scale (from strongly disagree to strongly agree). Research on the Short Index
of the POI has indicated that it is a useful scale for assessing self-actualization.

Brief Index of Self-Actualization – developed by John Sumerlin and Charles Bundrick. The original Brief
Index comprised 40 items placed on a 6-point Likert scale and thus yields scores from 40 to 240. Factor
analysis yielded four factors of self-actualization, but because some items were placed in more than one
factor, the authors revised the Brief Index of Self-Actualization by eliminating eight items so that no single
item was found on more than one factor. This inventory yields four factors:
1) Core Self-Actualization or the full use of one’s potential: “I enjoy my achievements”
2) Autonomy: “I fear that I will not live up to my potential”
3) Openness to Experience: “I am sensitive to the needs of others”
4) Comfort with Solitude: “I enjoy my solitude”
The Jonah Complex
- The fear of being one’s best.
- Maslow’s own life story demonstrated his Jonah complex.
- Why do people run away from greatness and self-fulfillment?
 First, the human body is simply not strong enough to endure the ecstasy of fulfillment for any length
of time.
 Most people, he reasoned, have a private ambition to be great, to write a great novel, to be a movie
star, to become a world-famous scientist, and so on. However, when they compare themselves with
those who have accomplished greatness, they are appalled by their arrogance.
- Although the Jonah complex stands out most sharply in neurotic people, nearly everyone has some timidity
toward seeking perfection and greatness. People allow false humility to stifle creativity, and thus they
prevent themselves from becoming self-actualizing.

Psychotherapy
- To Maslow, the aim of therapy would be for clients to embrace the Being- values, that is, to value truth,
justice, goodness, simplicity, and so forth. The goals of psychology follow from the client’s position on the
hierarchy of needs. Because physiological and safety needs are prepotent, people operating on these levels
will not ordinarily be motivated to seek psychotherapy. A healthy interpersonal relationship between client
and therapist is therefore the best psychological medicine. This accepting relationship gives clients a feeling
of being worthy of love and facilitates their ability to establish other healthy relationships outside of therapy.

Related Research
- Some needs such as physiological and safety needs are lower-order needs, whereas needs like esteem and
self-actualization are higher order. According to Maslow’s theory, lower-order needs must be met early in
life, whereas higher-order needs such as self-actualization tend to be fulfilled later in life. These needs were
divided into two types of motivation: lower motivation (e.g., eating and physical exercise) and higher
motivation (e.g., honor, family, and idealism). The researchers found that the lower motives were stronger in
younger people, whereas the higher motives were stronger in older people.

Positive Psychology
- a relatively new field of psychology that combines an emphasis on hope, optimism, and well-being with
scientific research and assessment
- positive psychologists are critical of traditional psychology, which has resulted in a model of the human
being as lacking the positive features that make life worth living.
- Recently, researchers have investigated the potential benefits that come from reexperiencing, through
writing or thinking, such positive experiences.
- In one such study, participants were instructed to write about a positive experience or experiences for 20
minutes each day for 3 consecutive days.
- Other researchers have followed up on the health effects of writing about extremely positive experiences.
Sonja Lyubomirsky and colleagues investigated whether or not just thinking about past positive experiences
would have benefits comparable to or even greater than the benefits derived from writing about such
experiences.
- The recent research in the area of positive psychology reviewed in this section certainly supports this aspect
of Maslow’s theory. Personality Development, Growth, and Goals Implicit in Maslow’s concept of self-
actualization is the assumption that people acquire greater levels of psychological health as they become
older.
- Jack Bauer and Dan McAdams assumed the existence of two kinds of approaches to growth and
development—extrinsic and intrinsic.
- People with intrinsic growth goals would see how getting older results in greater ego and personality
development and well-being. Similarly, for those with extrinsic growth goals, getting older would not lead to
greater personality development and psychological health. Life goals were coded from responses to a task
that asked participants to write a paragraph each about their two most important life goals. The goals
themselves were not coded but, rather, the reasons for the goals.
- As predicted, intrinsic and exploratory goals were positively correlated with maturity and personality
development. Concerning age and personality growth, results generally showed that older people were
indeed higher in ego development and well-being than younger people and that this relationship was
strongest for those with intrinsic growth goals.
 - This conclusion is consistent with Maslow’ s argument that people generally take either a safety or a
growth orientation in their everyday lives and that a growth orientation more readily facilitates psychological
health and well-being.

CRITIQUE OF MASLOW
- Maslow’s notions about meta motivation, the hierarchy of needs, the Jonah complex, and instinctoid needs
have received less research interest.
- Researchers remained handicapped in their ability to falsify or confirm Maslow’s means of identifying self-
actualizing people. Maslow said that his self-actualizing people refused to take any tests that might assess
self-actualization.
- Maslow’s hierarchy of needs framework gives his theory excellent flexibility to organize what is known about
human behavior. Maslow’s theory is also quite consistent with common sense
- Maslow’s theory suggests that business executives should allow workers more responsibility and freedom,
tap into their ingenuity and creativity in solving problems, and encourage them to use their intelligence and
imagination on the job.
- The hierarchy of needs concept follows a logical progression, and Maslow hypothesized that the order of
needs is the same for everyone, although he does not overlook the possibility of certain reversals. Aside
from some deficiencies in his scientific methods, Maslow’s theory has consistency and precision that give it
popular appeal.

Concept Of Humanity
- Maslow believed that all of us can be self-actualizing; our human nature carries with it a tremendous
potential for being a Good Human Being.
- Maslow concluded that true human nature is seen only in self-actualized people, and that “there seems no
intrinsic reason why everyone should not be this way.”
- Maslow was generally optimistic about humans, but he recognized that people are capable of great evil and
destruction. Evil, however, stems from the frustration or thwarting of basic needs, not from the essential
nature of people.
- Maslow believed that society, as well as individuals, can be improved, but growth for both is slow and
painful. Nevertheless, these small forward steps seem to be part of humanity’s evolutionary history.
- Determinism versus free choice – In general, the behavior of people motivated by physiological and safety
needs is determined by outside forces, whereas the behavior of self-actualizing people is at least partially
shaped by free choice.
- Consciousness versus unconsciousness – Maslow held that self-actualizing people are ordinarily more
aware than others of what they are doing and why. However, motivation is so complex that people may be
driven by several needs at the same time, and even healthy people are not always fully aware of all the
reasons underlying their behavior.
- Biological versus social influences – Maslow would have insisted that this dichotomy is a false one.
Individuals are shaped by both biology and society, and the two cannot be separated.