Chapter 9: Abraham Maslow

Overview of Maslow's Holistic-Dynamic Theory

Maslow's Holistic-Dynamics Theory proposes that human beings are constantly driven by a
single or multiple motivations and that, in the right conditions, they can attain a state of
psychological well-being known as self-realization.

Biography of Abraham H. Maslow

Maslow was born Abraham H. in 1908 in New York City, the eldest of seven siblings of Russian
Jewish immigrant parents. After a two to three year period of mediocre academic performance,
Maslow's work became more productive around the time of his marriage. He obtained both a
Bachelor's and a Doctor of Philosophy degree from University of Wisconsin, where he
conducted animal studies alongside Harry Harlow. Maslow spent the majority of his professional
life at Brooklyn College, and also attended Brandeis College. In 1970, Maslow's poor health
necessitated his relocation to California, where he passed away at the age of 62.

Maslow's View of Motivation

Maslow's belief rests on five fundamental acceptances about inspiration: (1) the whole animal is
stimulated at some former; (2) ambition is complex, and ignorant reasons frequently underlie
performance; (3) population are steadily instigated by individual need or another; (4) public
indifferent cultures are all instigated apiece alike elementary needs; and (5) needs may be
organized on a order. (A) Hierarchy of Needs, Maslow held that lower level needs have
dominance over taller level needs; namely, they must be quenched before bigger needs
enhance motivators. Maslow's ranking contains (1) physiological needs, to a degree oxygen,
meal, water, thus; (2) security needs, that involve tangible security, security, reliance,
guardianship, and immunity from hazard, and that influence elementary anxiety if discontented;
(3) love and belongingness needs, containing the desire for companionship, the desire a mate
and offsprings, and the need to fit; (4) consider needs, which trail from the delight of love needs
and that contain self-assurance and the acknowledgment the one has a positive name; and (5)
self-realization needs, that are quenched only for one rationally most athletic family. Unlike other
needs that inevitably are triggered when lower needs are joined, self-materialization needs do
not unavoidably attend to the vindication of esteem needs. Only by adopting specific
B-principles as reality, advantage, singleness, and fairness, can crowd achieve self-realization.
The five needs on Maslow's ranking are conative needs. Other needs contain beautiful needs,
intelligent needs, and mentally maladjusted needs. (B) Aesthetic Needs involve a desire for
beauty and order, and few families have much more powerful beautiful needs than do possible
choice. When nations forsake to meet their aesthetic needs, they enhance gross. (C) Cognitive
needs contain the desire to experience, to accept, and expected bizarre. Knowledge is a
prerequisite for each of the five conative needs. Also, people who are renounced information
and preserved in unintelligence enhance gross, paranoid, and concave. (D) Neurotic Needs,
accompanying each of duplicate three ranges of needs, material or intellectual sickness results
when the needs are discontented. Neurotic needs, however, bring about study of plants
however either they are compensated with a suggestion of correction. Neurotic needs contain
such reasons as a desire to rule, to expose pain, or to subject being to the will of another
human. Neurotic needs are idle and do not promote health. (E) General Discussion of Needs,
Maslow trusted that most societies assuage lower level needs to a better magnitude than they
do larger levels needs, the better the satisfaction of individual need, the more completely the
next maximal need is inclined to arise. In certain cases, the order of needs might be converse.
For example, a deprived parent grants permission to be stimulated by love and needs to
abandon foodstuff so that feed her starving toddlers.

However, if we implicit the automatic inspiration behind many obvious reversals, we would
visualize that they are counterfeit reversals at all. Thus, Maslow claimed that much of our
surface nature is literally stimulated by more fundamental and frequently automatic needs.
Maslow also trusted that few revealing acts are uninspired, in spite of all actions having a cause.
Expressive action has no aim or goal but is only one's way of speaking. In comparison,
managing attitudes (that are instigated) deal with one's attempt to deal with the surroundings.
The conative usually needs to stimulate contending nature. Deprivation of one's needs leads to
pathology of few sorts.

For example, folk's failure to reach self-materialization results in metapathology, delineated as a

lack of principles, a lack of fulfillment, and a deficit of intention in existence. Maslow submitted
that instinctoid needs are innately persistent in spite of they may be modified by education.
Maslow further confided that taller level needs (love, consideration, and self-realization) are later
the transformative scale than lower level needs and that they produce more honest satisfaction
and more peak happenings.

Self-Actualization
Maslow trusted that a very limited portion of the population reached an ultimate level of mental
well-being named self- realization. (A) Values of Self-Actualizers, Maslow grasped that
self-actualizers are meta-stimulated by such B-principles as reality, excellence, advantage,
fairness, and candor. (B) Criteria for Self-Actualization, the four criteria must be join before one
achieves self-materialization: (1) dearth of psychopathology, (2) delight of each of the four lower
level needs, (3) agreement of the B-values, and (4) adequate achievement of individual's
potentials for tumor. (C) Characteristics of Self-Actualizing People, Maslow filed 15 values that
characterize self-actualizing nations, even though not all self-actualizers maintain each of the
traits to the unchanging range.

These traits are (1) more efficient idea of matter, message that self- actualizers frequently have
an nearly unusual ability to discover insincerity in possible choice, and they are not tricked by
sham; (2) agreement of self, possible choice, and nature; (3) inspiration, candor, and ease,
intention that self-actualizers have no need to perform complex or advanced; (4)
problem-concentrated that is the capability to view well-established questions from a hard
philosophical position; (5) the need for solitude, or a aloofness that admits self-actualizing folk
expected unique without being isolated; (6) independence, aim that they not any more are weak
on additional society for their self-esteem; (7) persisted newness of recognition and the skill to
view common belongings with a new fantasy and recognition; (8) frequent reports of peak
knowledge, or those occult knowledge that give one a sense of superiority and impressions of
awe, wonder, bliss, devotion, and modesty; (9) Gemeinschaftsgefühl, that is, public interest or a
deep impression of singleness accompanying all benevolence; (10) deep interpersonal
connections, but accompanying no reckless need to have a large group of companions; (11) the
representative figure structure, or the talent to disregard detail dissimilarities 'tween community;
(12) bias between resources and ends, intention that self-actualizing crowd have a clear sense
legitimate and wrong, and they happening little conflict about elementary values; (13) a
reflective elbow point namely impulsive, unintended, and basic to the situation; (14) creativity,
accompanying a sharp understanding of loyalty, advantage, and reality; (15) opposition to
enculturation, or the capability to set private flags and to withstand the mold set by
sophistication. (D) Love, Sex, and Self-Actualization, Maslow compared D-love (imperfection
love) to B-love (love for being or significance of another guy). Self-actualizing public are fit
B-love cause they can love outside expecting something for something. B-love is together
sensed and joint and not established imperfections within the companions.
Philosophy of Science
Maslow critiqued the science of the past as being value-free, with a method that was sterile and
emotionless. He proposed a Taoist approach to psychology, where psychologists are either
willing to give up control of their science or use it to instill human values and view people with
respect, joy, amazement, awe, rapture and ritual.

Measuring Self-Actualization
Maslow's approach to self-assessment was in line with his scientific philosophy. Initially, he
began his research on self-assessment with little proof of the existence of such a categorization
of individuals. He examined healthy individuals, identified their characteristics, and then
developed a syndrome of psychological health. Subsequently, he further refined the concept of
self-assessment, examined other individuals, and modified the syndrome. Ultimately, he was
able to define self-assessment to the extent that he was satisfied with the definition.
Subsequently, various personality inventories have been developed to measure
self-assessment. The most popular of these is the Personal Orientation (POI) Inventory, which is
composed of 150 items of forced-choice and evaluates a range of self-assessments.

The Jonah Complex

Individuals are naturally inclined to progress towards a state of psychological well-being, and
any failure to achieve this can be classified as abnormal development. An example of an
abnormal syndrome is the phenomenon of the Jonah complex, which is characterized by a fear
of being or performing well. This is a condition that is shared by all individuals. According to
Abraham Maslow, many people allow false modesty to impede their creativity, resulting in a lack
of self-realization.

Psychotherapy
The concept of a hierarchy of needs has a clear impact on psychotherapy. It is widely accepted
that the majority of individuals who engage in psychotherapy do so due to a lack of satisfaction
with their need for love and belonging. This implies that the majority of therapy should be
centered around a constructive interpersonal relationship, and that the role of a therapist should
be to assist clients in satisfying their needs of love and belonging.

Related Research
Researchers have investigated Maslow's concept of self-actualization in a variety of settings
and for a variety of purposes. (A) Self-Actualization and Close Interpersonal Relationships
Michael Sheffield and colleagues used POI as a measure of self-actualization and found that
higher POI scores were inversely related to interpersonal relationships. More specifically,
people who are closer to self-actualization tend to be more spontaneous, more accepting of
aggressive emotions, and more able to maintain intimacy. (B) Self-actualization and creativity:
Mark Runco and his colleagues used a short measure of self-actualization to assess
self-actualization and found a positive relationship between self-actualization scores and his two
measures of creativity. I discovered something.

Although this relationship was not strong, it suggests that creativity is at least partially related to
self-actualization, as Maslow suspected. (C) Self-actualization and self-acceptance: Some
researchers have tested Maslow's assumption that people who are self-actualized are
accepting of themselves. A study of African American businessmen (Sumerlin & Bundrick, 2000)
found that those who scored high on self-actualization tended to be happier and more
self-actualized. Another study by William Compton and his colleagues found this
self-actualization. It is associated with openness to experience and the exploration of new and
exciting experiences.

Critique of Maslow
Maslow's theory of hierarchy of needs has been widely adopted in psychology, as well as in
other fields such as nursing and education. The concept of hierarchy of needs appears to be
both straightforward and logical, thus providing Maslow's theory with the appearance of being
uncomplicated. However, it is actually quite intricate, containing four dimensions of needs, as
well as the possibility of subconsciously motivated behavior. In terms of scientific validity, the
Maslow's model has a high rate of generating research, but a low rate of falsifiability. In terms of
its capacity to organize knowledge and direct action, the theory has a relatively high rate of
success; however, it has a relatively low rate of success in terms of simplicity and internal
consistency.

Concept of Humanity
Maslow argued that human beings are organized in a manner that allows them to respond to
their most immediate needs. People who are hungry seek sustenance, people who are scared
seek security, and so on. Despite his optimism and optimism, Maslow recognized that humans
are capable of great harm and destruction. He posited that humans as a species are gradually
becoming more and more human and driven by higher levels of need. In conclusion, Maslow's
concept of humanity is highly rated in terms of free will, optimism, teleological and individualism,
and social influences, with a rating of approximately average.