ABRAHAM MASLOW
Life highlights
- Had a lonely and miserable childhood
• Described his mother as a horrible creature
• Felt anger and hostility towards his father for being aloof and absent
• Library became his playground
- Mediocre academic performance
- Cold psychology class with Titchener
• He wasn’t interested at psychology that time
- Married at 20 and felt changes in his life
- Went to University of Wisconsin as a student and a teacher
- Discovered his high IQ (Thorndike, Columbia University)
- Attended seminars of European psychologists who accepted the Nazis
- World War II influence
• Wanted a psychology dedicated to peace
- Became APA president
Holistic-Dynamic Theory / Needs Hierarchy Theory
- Focus is on the nature of psychologically healthy individuals
- The whole person is constantly being motivated by one need or another, and that people
have the potential to grow toward psychological health and self-actualization
- Satisfaction of lower needs to reach self-actualization
View of motivation
- Assumptions:
1. Adoption of a holistic approach to motivation
2. Motivation is usually complex
3. People are continually motivated by one need or another
4. All people everywhere are motivated by the same basic needs
5. Needs can be arranged on a hierarchy
Categories of Needs
1. Conative needs
- Have striving or motivational character
- Include those from the hierarchy of needs
- Deficiency needs (D-needs) are included here
• Arise out of one’s requirement of physiological survival and safety (because we
need to survive)
2. Aesthetic needs
- Not universal
- Included in the Being needs (B-needs) / growth needs
, • Arise out of one’s drive to self-actualize and fulfill inherent potential (because we
need to grow)
- Need for beauty and aesthetically pleasing experiences
- E.g. art production
- People with strong aesthetic needs can become sick if the desire for that beauty and
aesthetically pleasing experience will not be satisfied
3. Cognitive needs
- Included in the Being needs (B-needs)
- Desire to know, solve mysteries, understand, and be curious
- Opposite of this is when people develop pathology (as seen with those extremely
skeptical, cynical, disillusioned)
- Necessary to satisfy conative needs, depending on the need of the conative needs
4. Neurotic needs
- Nonproductive and leads to stagnation and pathology
- Reactive (compensation for unsatisfied basic needs)
1. Physiological needs
- Air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing, reproduction
- Most basic and prepotent (strong need)
- Uniqueness of this need:
• The only need that can be completely satisfied or even overly satisfied
• Recurring in nature
2. Safety needs
- Personal security, employment, resources, health, property
- Need for physical security, stability, dependency, protection, and freedom from
threatening forces
- Can depend on age
• For adults: relatively unimportant for societies without war
• Children: high need
• Neurotic and insecure adults: safety needs dominate personality
3. Love and belongingness needs
- Friendship, intimacy, family, sense of connection
- Need to belong to a group
• When adequately satisfied in early years
o Do not panic when denied love
• Never experienced
o May be incapable of giving love
• Small doses of love received
o Strongly motivated to seek for it
Life highlights
- Had a lonely and miserable childhood
• Described his mother as a horrible creature
• Felt anger and hostility towards his father for being aloof and absent
• Library became his playground
- Mediocre academic performance
- Cold psychology class with Titchener
• He wasn’t interested at psychology that time
- Married at 20 and felt changes in his life
- Went to University of Wisconsin as a student and a teacher
- Discovered his high IQ (Thorndike, Columbia University)
- Attended seminars of European psychologists who accepted the Nazis
- World War II influence
• Wanted a psychology dedicated to peace
- Became APA president
Holistic-Dynamic Theory / Needs Hierarchy Theory
- Focus is on the nature of psychologically healthy individuals
- The whole person is constantly being motivated by one need or another, and that people
have the potential to grow toward psychological health and self-actualization
- Satisfaction of lower needs to reach self-actualization
View of motivation
- Assumptions:
1. Adoption of a holistic approach to motivation
2. Motivation is usually complex
3. People are continually motivated by one need or another
4. All people everywhere are motivated by the same basic needs
5. Needs can be arranged on a hierarchy
Categories of Needs
1. Conative needs
- Have striving or motivational character
- Include those from the hierarchy of needs
- Deficiency needs (D-needs) are included here
• Arise out of one’s requirement of physiological survival and safety (because we
need to survive)
2. Aesthetic needs
- Not universal
- Included in the Being needs (B-needs) / growth needs
, • Arise out of one’s drive to self-actualize and fulfill inherent potential (because we
need to grow)
- Need for beauty and aesthetically pleasing experiences
- E.g. art production
- People with strong aesthetic needs can become sick if the desire for that beauty and
aesthetically pleasing experience will not be satisfied
3. Cognitive needs
- Included in the Being needs (B-needs)
- Desire to know, solve mysteries, understand, and be curious
- Opposite of this is when people develop pathology (as seen with those extremely
skeptical, cynical, disillusioned)
- Necessary to satisfy conative needs, depending on the need of the conative needs
4. Neurotic needs
- Nonproductive and leads to stagnation and pathology
- Reactive (compensation for unsatisfied basic needs)
1. Physiological needs
- Air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing, reproduction
- Most basic and prepotent (strong need)
- Uniqueness of this need:
• The only need that can be completely satisfied or even overly satisfied
• Recurring in nature
2. Safety needs
- Personal security, employment, resources, health, property
- Need for physical security, stability, dependency, protection, and freedom from
threatening forces
- Can depend on age
• For adults: relatively unimportant for societies without war
• Children: high need
• Neurotic and insecure adults: safety needs dominate personality
3. Love and belongingness needs
- Friendship, intimacy, family, sense of connection
- Need to belong to a group
• When adequately satisfied in early years
o Do not panic when denied love
• Never experienced
o May be incapable of giving love
• Small doses of love received
o Strongly motivated to seek for it
