ABRAHAM MASLOW

BIOGRAPHY
 Born the eldest of seven children of a Jewish couple
in Brooklyn, New York on April 1, 1908
 Had a dissatisfying childhood and poor school
performance due to pressure from his parents
 Initially took up law at the Central College of New
York and Cornell University
 He married his first cousin against their parents’ will
at the age of 20
 He later on transferred to Wisconsin and obtained his
BA, MA, and PhD in Psychology
 Had classroom experiences with great teachers in
psychology including Harlow, Titchner, Ruth
Benedict, Max Wertheimer and, Alfred Adler, Julian
Rotter, and Kurt Goldstein
BIOGRAPHY
 Became known for his Holistic-Dynamic Theory
of Personality and his Hierarchy of Needs
 Regarded as the champion of self-actualization
and human potential
 Taught at Brandeis University
 President of the APA from 1967-1968
 Published Motivation and Personality in 1970.
 Personal life was filled with pain and ill health.
He was shy, unhappy, isolated, and self-
rejecting
 Died of a heart attack in 1970
THE HOLISTIC – DYNAMIC
THEORY OF PERSONALITY
 assumes that the whole person is continually
being motivated by one need or another and
that people have the potential to grow toward
psychological health, that is, self
actualization. To attain self actualization,
people must satisfy lower level needs such as
hunger, safety, love, and esteem. Only after
they are relatively satisfied in each of these
needs can they reach self-actualization.
FIVE BASIC ASSUMPTIONS OF
MOTIVATION
 The whole person is motivated, requiring a holistic
approach
 Motivation is usually complex: several sources can
contribute to the eventual appearance of some
behavior
 People are continually motivated by one need or
another. Satisfying one need only results in the
individual trying to satisfy other needs.
 People are universally motivated by the same basic
needs
 Needs can be arranged in a hierarchical fashion.
HIERARCHY OF NEEDS
 Certain human needs are more
fundamental than others, and
satisfaction of these "basic" needs is
necessary before "higher" needs can
be addressed.
 Theory of Prepotent Needs
 Lower needs must be satisfied (and take
precedence over) higher order needs.
HIERARCHY OF NEEDS
 PHYSIOLOGICAL NEEDS
 The most basic needs of
oxygen, food, water,
and maintenance of
body temperature (food,
shelter, & clothing)
 Commonly satisfied in
first world countries
 The only needs which
can be completely or
even over satisfied
 Continually recurring
 SAFETY NEEDS
 Protection from harm, the
need for law and order
 Can never be over
satisfied
 When children do not
have their safety needs
met, they develop basic
anxiety and may become
neurotic adults
 In peaceful societies,
safety needs are relatively
easy to satisfy
 Become highly important
during natural disasters,
fires, accidents, and other
life threatening situation
 NEED FOR LOVE AND
BELONGINGNESS
 May manifest in three
scenarios:
 A person who has never
experienced love and
closeness will eventually
devalue love and not be
particularly worried over
their inability to find it
 A person who has
received love and
closeness during
childhood will be able to
love others, and not be
devastated by the
occasional rejection
 NEED FOR LOVE AND
BELONGINGNESS
 A person who has
experienced just a little
love and affection will be
strongly motivated to
meet these needs, and
might go about
satisfying the need for
love and belongingness
in a pathological way
 Maslow states that
children need love in
order to grow
psychologically
 ESTEEM NEEDS
 The need for self-
respect, confidence,
competence, and the
respect of others
 Two levels of esteem
needs:
 Reputation (in others’
eyes)
 Self-Esteem (in own
eyes)
 SELF – ACTUALIZATION
NEEDS
 The highest level of needs in
Maslow’s hierarchy
 According to Maslow, only 2% of
the world’s total population are
self-actualized
 Involves the inculcation of B-Values
(Being Values) in an individual.
When he is forced to live without
these values, he develops
depression, despair, disgust,
alienation, and a degree of
cynicism, or a lack of meaningful
philosophy in life called
Metapathology.
 Self-actualizers have
metamotivation (motivation based
on B-values) which propels them
towards self-actualization.
B – VALUES
 Truth, rather than dishonesty
 Goodness, rather than evil
 Beauty, not ugliness or vulgarity
 Unity, wholeness, and transcendence of
opposites, not arbitrariness or forced choices
 Aliveness, not deadness or the mechanization of life
 Uniqueness, not bland uniformity
 Perfection and necessity, not sloppiness,
inconsistency, or accident
 Completion, rather than incompleteness
B – VALUES
 Justice and order, not injustice and
lawlessness
 Simplicity, not unnecessary complexity
 Richness, not environmental
impoverishment
 Effortlessness, not strain
 Playfulness, not grim, humorless, drudgery
 Self-sufficiency, not dependency
 Meaningfulness, rather than senselessness.
COGNITIVE NEEDS
 The desire to know, to solve mysteries,
to be curious
 Must be constantly satisfied before any
other needs can be satisfied.
Individuals need knowledge in order to
satisfy their conative needs, and their
cognitive needs motivates them to find
answers which will satisfy their other
needs
AESTHETIC NEEDS
 Not thought to be universal, but
reflective of the idea that some people
are motivated by the need for beauty
and order
NEUROTIC NEEDS
 Nonproductive needs which perpetuate an unhealthy
style of life. Neurotic needs are seen as
compensatory reactions to a failure to fulfill one or
more basic needs, such as fixation
PERCENTAGE OF SATISFACTION
IN GENERAL POPULATION
 85% of Physiological Needs met
 70% of Safety Needs met
 50% of Love and Belongingness Needs
met
 40% of Esteem Needs met
 10% of Self-Actualized
THE SELF – ACTUALIZED
PERSON
 Would satisfy 100% of the first four conative
needs, and a majority of self-actualization needs
 Show "expressive" behavior, rather than Coping
Behavior
 Coping Behavior is behavior specifically aimed at need
satisfaction. Coping behavior is motivated by need
deficiencies
 Expressive Behavior is more indicative of "free will"
and encompasses how someone walks, talks, gestures,
and smiles. Expressive behavior is motivated by
internal forces, rather than external stimuli
 Self-actualizers have metamotivation (motivation
based on B-values) which propels them towards
self-actualization
BASIC CRITERION OF THE SELF-
ACTUALIZED INDIVIDUAL
 Free from psychopathology
 Had progressed through the hierarchy
of needs
 Embrace B-values
 Fulfilled their needs to grow, to
develop, and to increasingly become
what they are capable of becoming
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE
SELF – ACTUALIZED PERSON
 More efficient perception of reality
 Acceptance of self, others, and nature
 Spontaneity, simplicity, and naturalness
 Problem centering
 Need for privacy
 Autonomy
 Continued freshness of appreciation
 The Peak Experience
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE
SELF – ACTUALIZED PERSON
 Gemeinschaftgefuhl (a community feeling or
oneness with all of humanity)
 Profound interpersonal relations
 The democratic character structure
 Discrimination between means and ends
 Philosophical sense of humor
 Creativeness
 Resistance to enculturation
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE
SELF – ACTUALIZED PERSON
 Self-Actualizers are more likely to
experience B-Love: love for the essence
or being of the other. This type of love
is qualitatively distinct from D-Love,
(deficiency love) in which a person
loves because he is driven to satisfy his
needs for love and belongingness.
MEASURING SELF -
ACTUALIZATION
 The Personal Orientation Inventory
 Short Index of Self-Actualization
SELF-ACTUALIZED
PERSONALITIES
 Abraham Lincoln
 Thomas Jefferson
 Albert Einstein
 Eleanor Roosevelt
DEVELOPMENT OF
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
 Maslow realized human beings are capable of
terrible things.
 He believed that psychopathologies, neurosis,
and psychotic behavior arises from need
deficiencies
 The pathology may take the form of a
neurotic need
 Maslow states that everyone is born with a
will toward health, and a tendency to grow
towards self-actualization
MASLOW AND
PSYCHOTHERAPY
 Since Maslow believes most people never
move past the stage of satisfying needs of
love and belongingness, he felt that the
therapist must develop an open, warm
relationship with the client.
 Acceptance within a clinical relationship will
hopefully lead to more healthy relationships
outside of therapy.
 For Maslow, the aim of therapy is to decrease
the reliance on others and encourage the
systemic urge toward psychological growth
and self-actualization.
CRITICISM
 Many researchers feel that Maslow’s work,
while important, relied too heavily on case
studies, and not enough experimental work
was done on the construct of self-
actualization
 Maslow’s recognition of self-actualized
individuals was almost exclusively limited to
Highly Educated White Males.
 Critics charge that implicit sexism, racism,
and classism stem from Maslow’s work and
therefore do not represent a valid way of
understanding basic human personality.
REFLECTIONS / INSIGHTS
 Basic needs are the foundation of all
the other needs.
 Each need is a pre-requisite of the
other
 Man has a goal to achieve full potential
in order to benefit other people, as well
as his own self
THANK YOU VERY MUCH!