ABRAHAMMASLOW
Biography
AbrahamHarold Maslow was born April 1, 2023 in Brooklyn, New York. He was the first ofseven children born to his parents, who themselves were uneducated Jewishimmigrants from Russia. His parents, hoping for the best for their children inthe new world, pushed him hard for academic success. Not surprisingly, hebecame very lonely as a boy, and found his refuge in books.
Tosatisfy his parents, he first studied law at the City College of New York(CCNY). After three semesters, he transferred to Cornell, and then back toCCNY. He married Bertha Goodman, his first cousin, against his parents wishes. Abeand Bertha went on to have two daughters.
Heand Bertha moved to Wisconsin so that he could attend the University ofWisconsin. Here, he became interested in psychology, and his school work beganto improve dramatically. He spent time there working with Harry Harlow, who isfamous for his experiments with baby rhesus monkeys and attachment behavior.
Hereceived his BA in 1930, his MA in 1931, and his PhD in 1934, all inpsychology, all from the University of Wisconsin. A year after graduation, hereturned to New York to work with E. L. Thorndike at Columbia, where Maslowbecame interested in research on human sexuality.
Hebegan teaching full time at Brooklyn College. During this period of his life,he came into contact with the many European intellectuals that were immigratingto the US, and Brooklyn in particular, at that time - people like Adler, Fromm,Horney, as well as several Gestalt and Freudian psychologists.
Maslowserved as the chair of the psychology department at Brandeis from 1951 to 1969.While there he met Kurt Goldstein, who had originated the idea ofself-actualization in his famous book, The Organism (1934). It was also herethat he began his crusade for a humanistic psychology - something ultimatelymuch more important to him than his own theorizing.
Hespend his final years in semi-retirement in California, until, on June серпня 1970,he died of a heart attack after years of ill health.
Theory
Oneof the many interesting things Maslow noticed while he worked with monkeysearly in his career, was that some needs take precedence over others. For example,if you are hungry and thirsty, you will tend to try to take care of the thirstfirst. After all, you can do without food for weeks, but you can only dowithout water for a couple of days! Thirst is a "stronger" need than hunger. Likewise,if you are very very thirsty, but someone has put a choke hold on you and youcan't breath, which is more important? The need to breathe, of course. On theother hand, sex is less powerful than any of these. Let's face it, you won'tdie if you don't get it!
Maslowtook this idea and created his now famous hierarchy of needs. Beyond thedetails of air, water, food, and sex, he laid out five broader layers: thephysiological needs, the needs for safety and security, the needs for love andbelonging, the needs for esteem, and the need to actualize the self, in thatorder.
1.The physiological needs. These include theneeds we have for oxygen, water, protein, salt, sugar, calcium, and otherminerals and vitamins. They also include the need to maintain a pH balance(Getting too acidic or base will kill you) and temperature (98.6 or near toit). Also, there's the needs to be active, to rest, to sleep, to get rid ofwastes (CO2, sweat, urine, and feces), to avoid pain, and to have sex. Quite acollection!
Maslowbelieved, and research supports him, that these are in fact individual needs,and that a lack of, say, vitamin C, will lead to a very specific hunger forthings which have in the past provided that vitamin C - eg orange juice. Iguess the cravings that some pregnant women have, and the way in which babieseat the most foul tasting baby food, support the idea anecdotally.
2.The safety and security needs . When thephysiological needs are largely taken care of, this second layer of needs comesinto play. You will become increasingly interested in finding safecircumstances, stability, protection. You might develop a need for structure,for order, some limits.
Lookingat it negatively, you become concerned, not with needs like hunger and thirst,but with your fears and anxieties. In the ordinary American adult, this set ofneeds manifest themselves in the form of our urges to have a home in a safeneighborhood, a little job security and a nest egg, a good retirement plan anda bit of insurance, and so on.
3.The love and belonging needs. When physiologicalneeds and safety needs are, by and large, taken care of, a third layer startsto show up. You begin to feel the need for friends, a sweetheart, children,affectionate relationships in general, even a sense of community. Looked atnegatively, you become increasing susceptible to loneliness and socialanxieties.
Inour day-to-day life, we exhibit these needs in our desires to marry, have afamily, be a part of a community, a member of a church, a brother in thefraternity, a part of a gang or a bowling club. It is also a part of what welook for in a career.
4.The esteem needs. Next, we begin to look for a little self-esteem. Maslow noted two versions of esteem needs, a lower one and a higher one. Thelower one is the need for the respect of others, the need for status, fame,glory, recognition, attention, reputation, appreciation, dignity, evendominance. The higher form involves the need for self-respect, including suchfeelings as confidence, competence, achievement, mastery, independence, andfreedom. Note that this is the "higher" form because, unlike the respect ofothers, once you have self-respect, it's a lot harder to lose!
Thenegative version of these needs is low self-esteem and inferiority complexes. Maslowfelt that Adler was really onto something when he proposed that these were atthe roots of many, if not most, of our psychological problems. In moderncountries, most of us have what we need in regard to our physiological andsafety needs. We, more often than not, have quite a bit of love and belonging,too. It's a little respect that often seems so very hard to get!
Allof the preceding four levels he calls deficit needs, or D-needs. If you don'thave enough of something - i.e. you have a deficit - you feel the need. But ifyou get all you need, you feel nothing at all! In other words, they cease to bemotivating. As the old blues song goes, "you don't miss your water till yourwell runs dry! "
Healso talks about these levels in terms of homeostasis. Homeostasis is theprinciple by which your furnace thermostat operates: When it gets too cold, itswitches the heat on; When it gets too hot, it switches the heat off. In thesame way, your body, when it lacks a certain substance, develops a hunger forit; When it gets enough of it, then the hunger stops. Maslow simply extends thehomeostatic principle to needs, such as safety, belonging, and esteem, that wedon't ordinarily think of in these terms.
Maslowsees all these needs as essentially survival needs. Even love and esteem areneeded for the maintenance of health. He says we all have these needs built into us genetically, like instincts. In fact, he calls them instinctual -instinct-like - needs.
Interms of overall development, we move through these levels a bit like stages. Asnewborns, our focus (if not our entire set of needs) is on the physiological. Soon,we begin to recognize that we need to be safe. Soon after that, we craveattention and affection. A bit later, we look for self-esteem. Mind you, thisis in the first couple of years!
Understressful conditions, or when survival is threatened, we can "regress" to alower need level. When you great career falls flat, you might seek out a littleattention. When your family ups a...
