PSY405 Final Term Highlighted Handouts Aug 2023

Lesson 19

Is Maslow a humanistic Psychologist?

fulfilling the needs at the lower level and it is very few who reach the top. Examples are Quaid-e-Azam, Dr. Abdul Salam, and Javed Miandad.

Do you want to reach the top?

5-Emphasis on Psychological He Why Can't All People Achieve Self-Actualization?

8-What Are Self-Actualizers Like?

10-What is goal of psychotherapy?

11- Summary

Biographical Sketch

Abraham Harold Maslow was born April 1, 1908, in Brooklyn, New York. His parents were uneducated Jewish immigrants from Russia who dreamed of a better life for their son than theirs had been. Maslow, the eldest of seven children, was strongly encouraged by his parents to be academically successful.

Maslow's decision to study psychology at Wisconsin was largely affected by the behaviorism of John Watson. Maslow's enthusiasm for behaviorism literally vanished when the first of two daughters was born. Evidently, the complex behavior displayed by Maslow's own children convinced him that Behaviorist Psychology was more relevant to understanding animals than humans.

As a member of the American Psychological Association he was president of the Division of Personality and Social Psychology, and was elected president of the entire association for 1967-1968. Maslow was also a founding editor of both the Journal of Humanistic Psychology and the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, and he served as consulting editor of numerous other scholarly periodicals. Maslow was vitally interested in growth psychology.

The majority of Maslow's books were written within the last ten years of his life and include Toward a Psychology of Being (1962); Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences (1964); Eupsychian Management: A Journal (l965b); The Psych'ology of Science: A Reconnaissance (1966); Motivation and Personality (1970, 2d edition); and The Farther Reaches of Human Nature (1971, a collection of articles previously published by Maslow in various psychological journals). A volume compiled with the assistance of his wife and entitled Abraham H. Maslow: A Memorial Volume was published posthumously in 1972.

Basic Tenets of Humanistic Psychology

The term "humanistic psychology" refers to third force in psychology. Although proponents of this movement represent a wide range of views, they do share certain fundamental conceptions of human nature.

Existential philosophy is concerned with man as an individual and the unique problems of human existence. Man is literally one who exists as being-in-the-world, consciously and painfully aware of his own existence and eventual nonexistence (death).

One of the most fundamental aspects of humanistic psychologyand Maslow's version of it-is that each individual must be studied as an integrated, unique, organized whole. In fact, Maslow's theory was primarily developed as a revolt against those theories (especially behaviorism) that deal in bits and pieces of behavior while ignoring the person as a unified whole.

Advocates of humanistic psychology recognize a profound difference between human and animal behavior. For them, human beings are more than just animals; they are special kinds of animal. Highly significant from a humanistic perspective, then, is the fact that there are no rat, pigeon, monkey, or even dolphin personologistsonly humans have the capacity to theorize about humans.

Freud's theory implicitly assumed that man basically has an evil character, human impulses, if not controlled, will lead to the destruction of others as well as the self. One might not be able to appreciate this view while being mugged in Central Park; however, from the humanistic perspective, the evil, destructive, and violent forces in people arise from a bad environment rather than from any inherent rottenness on their part.

The primacy of human creativity is perhaps the most significant concept of humanistic psychology. Maslow (1950) merits the distinction of being the first to call attention to the fact that the most universal characteristic of the people he studied or observed was creativeness. One need not write books, compose music, or produce art objects to be creative. Comparatively few people do. Creativity is a universal human function and leads to all forms of self-expression. Thus, for example, there can be creative homemakers, disc jockeys, shoe salespersons, business executives, and even college professors!

5-Emphasis on Psychological Health

Maslow consistently argued that none of the available psychological approaches to the study of behavior does justice to the healthy human being's functioning, mode of living, or life goals. In particular, he strongly criticized Freud's preoccupation with the study of neurotic and psychotic individuals. For example, the nature of graduate students would hardly become evident by studying high school dropouts exclusively. In fact, such a study would be much more likely to discover what graduate students are not like than what they are like.

Maslow believed that much of human behavior can be explained by the individual's tendency to seek personal goal states that make life rewarding and meaningful. In fact, motivational processes are the heart of his personality theory. Maslow (1970) depicted the human being as a "wanting animal" who rarely reaches a state of complete satisfaction. If nirvana exists, it is temporary. In Maslow's system, as one personal desire is satisfied, another surfaces to take its place. When a person satisfies this one, still another clamors for satisfaction. It is characteristic of human life that people, are almost always desiring something.

Maslow proposed that human desires (i.e., motives) are innate and that they are arranged in an ascending hierarchy of priority or potency.

In this need-hierarchy conception of human motivation. The needs are, in order of potency: (1) basic physiological needs; (2) safety needs; (3) belongingness and love needs; (4) self-esteem needs; and (5) selfactualization needs, or the need for personal fulfillment. Underlying this scheme is the assumption that loworder needs must be at least somewhat satisfied before an individual can become aware of or motivated by higher-order needs.

For instance, he noted that some creative people have pursued the development and expression of their special talents despite serious hardships and social ridicule. There are also people whose values and ideals are so strong that they are willing to suffer hunger or thirst or even die rather than renounce them. For example, social reformers have continued their struggles despite harrassment, jail sentences, physical deprivation, and, often, certain death. In general, however, the lower the need in the hierarchy, the greater its strength or priority tends to be.

Let's examine each of Maslow's need categories.

1-Physiological Needs: The most basic, powerful, and obvious of all human needs is the need for physical