Goldstein’s Self-actualization 1

*Un-copy-edited pre-print

First Revision of “Goldstein’s self-actualization: A biosemiotic view”

Abstract

The author revisits neuropsychiatrist Kurt Goldstein’s (1934/1995, 1963) concept of self-

actualization. It is argued that the interdisciplinary field of biosemiotics (Emmeche and Kull,

2011; Hoffmeyer, 2009) provides contemporary language and examples to understand

Goldstein’s concept, and expands the breadth of its application to include all living things (not

only humans). The introduction to biosemiotics also provides an opportunity for humanistic

psychology to form a meaningful collaboration with the naturalistic sciences.

Self-actualization is defined through three important aspects. The first is that of

individuation or the process of becoming a self. The second is that of holism, or the recognition

that the organism and environment comprise a meaningful whole. Finally, the third is that self

actualization is the only motivating drive. With the expansion of application that a biosemiotic

view provides, it is maintained that all life is governed by biosemiosis.

[Keywords: Kurt Goldstein, Self-actualization, biosemiotics, theoretical biology, semiotics,

holism]
Goldstein’s Self-actualization 2

Introduction

While humanistic psychologists and therapists have popularized the term “self-actualization” in

the 1960s (most notably Maslow, 1968/1999), it was originally used by neuropsychiatrist Kurt

Goldstein (1934/1995, 1963) to describe a biological tendency that typifies all organisms. Self-

actualization is an element that is integral to both humanistic psychology and biology, and

through it the possible relationships between these two areas of inquiry may be examined more

closely.

The field of biosemiotics (Emmeche & Kull, 2011; Hoffmeyer, 2008) is helpful for

describing and providing contemporary examples and analyses of self-actualization. Indeed,

biosemiotics and humanistic psychology share much in common. Like humanistic psychology,

biosemiotic study begins with the assumptions that behavioral phenomena cannot, in principle,

be reduced to simpler and still more fundamental elements (i.e., mechanisms); context, situation,

and organism must each be considered as integral to an organism’s behavior. Furthermore, life

must be understood as a network of relationships whereupon organisms always participate in

meaningful, and meaning-making, behavior. However, these behaviors must be understood

intersubjectively.

An examination of Goldstein’s concept has already begun with Morley’s (1995)

contribution. Morley explains that Goldstein has been misinterpreted by Maslow (1968/1999),

who has introduced a foreign notion of teleology into Goldstein’s self-actualization. This has led

to a problematic emphasis on discovering one’s “real self” or “authentic self,” ultimately

ignoring the role played by environment in the organism-environment relationship. Moreover,

Morley (1995) is confident that Goldstein’s holism “effectively integrates biological constructs

with a non-mechanistic, non-reductionistic understanding of life” and that it “points the way of
Goldstein’s Self-actualization 3

the future development of humanistic thought in psychology” (p. 363). This article reflects

Morley’s vision.

The present analysis begins where Morley’s has ended by more carefully articulating the

conception Goldstein (1934/1995, 1963) introduces—namely, that (1) self-actualization is the

process of individuation—i.e., the emergence of a self; (2) that it must be holistically observed—

i.e., that the total organism and environment must be taken into consideration; and (3) that it is

the single and only impetus or drive of an organism—i.e., all behavior can be understood in

terms of self-actualization. Goldstein makes these observations abundantly clear through

examples of brain-damaged patients and, in some cases, in non brain-damaged persons as well.

In humanistic psychology, self-actualization is useful for demonstrating the personal and

meaningful process of becoming a person, the significance of context in determining meaning,

and the motivating forces behind behavior. It is akin to an organizing principle of human being:

Thus after having reviewed all the facts in this field, one reaches the following

conclusion: We are dealing with a system in which the single phenomena

mutually influence one another through a circular process, which has no

beginning and no end. (Goldstein, 1963, p. 127)

When viewed from the vantage point of biosemiotics, this organizing principle extends to all life.

In section 1, it is argued that individuation does not only belong to the humans, but occurs within

and without humans as well. Danish biosemiotician Jesper Hoffmeyer (2015) describes organic

individuation in a manner that is nonanthropocentric, yet still consequential for understanding

humans. In section 2, the organism-environment whole is turned inside out. Instead of dissolving

the organism-environment dividing line only through the process of organismic self-

actualization, American theoretical biologist Howard H. Pattee argues that this dissolution may
Goldstein’s Self-actualization 4

occur at any level of examination: the precise location of division is arbitrary. Indeed, the

phenomenologists and physicists are beginning to share the same language when making their

observations. Finally, in section 3, it is argued that semiosis describes the fundamental drive of

all life in the same way that self-actualization describes the fundamental drive of human being.

As an example of this, both Goldstein and biosemiotics reject the assumption that there is a

superordinate law governing behavior (survival for Goldstein and natural selection for the

biosemioticians). Instead of being determined by biological law, life may be understood through

the process of biosemiosis.

Before beginning, it is necessary to examine a few historical and biographical comments

about Kurt Goldstein and a more in-depth introduction to Biosemiotics.

Kurt Goldstein

Kurt Goldstein is a familiar figure in the history of Humanistic Psychology. Not only has

he supplied some of the familiar vernacular, he has also inspired many notable figures in the

history of humanistic psychology (Maslow, 1968/1999; Perls, 1972, 1974; May, 1968, 1977; and

Fromm, 1968; among others). Goldstein was also on the founding editorial board of the Journal

of Humanistic Psychology. Biographical sketches of Goldstein are available featuring his

scientific and academic life (Ulich, 1968), his social and personal life (Simmel, 1968), as well as

those chronicling the impact he has had on the field of rehabilitation (Goldberg, 2009). He is a

figurehead of the holistic bent of the early to mid twentieth century in Germany (Harrington,

1999) and has been a powerful influence over the qualitative, humanistic phenomenology of

Merleau-Ponty (1942/1963, 1945/1962). Many articles and book chapters have been written

about his contributions to pedagogy, philosophy, medical theory, psychology, neurology,

Goldstein’s Self-actualization 5

psychopathology, and others. Finally, he remains an exemplar of an integrative science that

blends humanistic psychology and neuroscience (Morley, 1995; Whitehead, 2015).

Biosemiotics

While Goldstein’s holism emerges out of the scientific and medical influence of Smuts

(1926) and Driesch (1929; in Morley, 1995), biosemiotics has emerged primarily out of two

alternative ontologies of the early and mid 20th century. The first is the semiotic theory of

Charles Sanders Peirce, and the second is the life-world (Umwelt) investigation of animals by

Jakob von Uexküll.

Peircean Triad. Peircean semiotics may be understood through the triadic relationship

between sign, signified, and interpretant (i.e., that for which the sign-signified relationships is

registered and interpreted as meaningful). For Peirce, everything can, and must, be viewed

through such relations. However, this is not to say that everything in nature is a sign as Saussure

(1916) has done. While Saussurian semiology enjoyed popularity in the middle part of the

twentieth century, drawing the attention of Merleau-Ponty (1964), it does not typify the entire

field of semiotics. Deely (2008) provides a careful description of the difference between Peirce

and Saussure for those still troubled by the continued practice of semiotics. “To say that all

knowledge is by way of semiosis,” Deely writes, “is not the same as to say that there are nothing

but signs in the universe. […] [T]here is more to being than the being of signs” (pp. 440-441).

Peircean sign-relation is familiar territory for humanistic psychologists. Consider the

example of the famous gestalt image in Sandro del Prete’s (1987) “Message d’Amour les

Dauphines” (in Kull, 2011, pp. 117-119). In one sense, the image is nothing but black

scratchings on a white background. This is a sign. To college students, “Message d’Amour les

Dauphines” reliably signifies sensuality. That is, in the adult observer, this image evokes
Goldstein’s Self-actualization 6

sensuality. The sign itself is not in possession of its meaning; the meaning takes place in-between

the sign and the subject. To an adult, the “Message d’Amour les Dauphines” sign becomes a

signifier of sensuality. The sensual possibility of “Message d’Amour les Dauphines” does not

actualize in children. Children see ten dolphins.

Whether “Message d’Amour les Dauphines” means sensuality or sea-animals depends on

the sign-subject relationship, between whom the meaning emerges. According to Peirce, a sign is

anything that stands for something other than itself. Also, a sign is an irreducible triad, i.e., this

“something other” cannot be isolated without destroying the sign (Kull, 2015, p. 3). Emmeche

and Kull (2011) explain that in biosemiotics, “Meaning is not a molecule, but a relation.

Accordingly, empirical biosemiotics is a study of relations, functions, distinctions that organisms

make, communication, plurality of meaning, and so forth” (p. ix). And they continue,

Our path in this search to understand the life processes has led us, as biologists, to

a semiotic view. Life processes are not only significant for the organisms they

involve. Signification, meaning, interpretation and information are not just

concepts used and constructed by humans for describing such processes. We

conclude that life processes themselves, by their very nature, are meaning-

making, informational processes, that is, sign processes (semioses), and thus can

be fruitfully understood within a semiotic perspective. (p. ix)

Jakob von Uexküll’s Umwelt. Like Charles Sanders Peirce, Jakob von Uexküll is

recognized as one of the most important figures in biosemiotics in the first half of the 20th

century (Kull, 2010). Uexküll was “a biologist who was not content with the commonly used

level of scientific argumentation, and who thus decided to place biology on a solid philosophical

basis” (p. 423).

Goldstein’s Self-actualization 7

In his formulation of organic functioning, von Uexküll (1913) presents what amounts to

the Peircean triad (Kull, 2010; Kull, 1999):

The organic factors that we have studied in development so far—genes, plan, and

protoplasm—are thus notes, melody, and piano. Genes and plan always seem to

be quite perfect, only at their influence on the protoplasm disturbances can occur,

which we experimentally exploit—like a Beethoven’s sonata, which is perfect on

paper, but in their execution on piano often leaves much to be desired. (p. 175;

translated in Kull, 2010, 424f).

Like Goldstein (1934/1995), Uexküll argues that organisms can only be understood

within their milieu—i.e., within their environment of meaning. Uexküll calls this an animal’s

umwelt. “The umwelt,” Kull, Deacon, Emmeche, Hoffmeyer, and Stjernfelt (2011) explain, “is

the set of features of the environment as distinguished by the organism, or the self-centered

world that relates an organism with everything else” (p. 38).

In addition to its useful application to biosemiotics, Uexküll’s theoretical biology has also

been applied by Heidegger (1929-30/1985) and Merleau-Ponty (1956-60/2003) in their analysis

of animal lifeworlds.

Self-actualization

In his work, Goldstein is clear about three aspects of self-actualization: invariance,

organism-environment whole, and the singular role played in motivating an organism. Goldstein

will be consulted for a description and, where applicable, examples. This will be followed by a

biosemiotic description. The aim in their comparison is not to conflate biosemiotics with

humanistic psychology, but to demonstrate how biosemiotics might be an insightful route for

humanistic psychologists who wish to examine still deeper recesses of complexity of life,
Goldstein’s Self-actualization 8

meaning, and intersubjectivity, or who find themselves in a metaphysical jam—e.g. reconciling

neuroscience with human experience (Roy, Varela, Pachoud, & Petitot, 1999; Thompson, 2004;

Varela, 1996, 1998)

1. Individuation

The first axiom of self-actualization concerns the definition of self. An implication that

accompanies self-definition is one of individuation—that is, a self that is distinct from other

biochemical systems. Moreover, individuation is not a changeless state, but a process of

becoming.

When Goldstein uses the term organism, he recognizes that there is an invariant structure

of becoming that remains despite changes to environment, behavior, and organism proper.

There is no question that, in spite of its changing in time and under varying

conditions, an organism remains to a certain degree the same. Notwithstanding all

the fluctuations of the behavior of a human being in varying situations, and the

unfolding and decline that occur in the course of his life, the individual organism

maintains a relative constancy. If this were not the case, the individual would not

experience himself as himself, nor would the observer be able to identify a given

organism as such. It would not even be possible to talk about a definite organism.

(Goldstein, 1963, p. 173)

Self-actualization recognizes the coordination of constituents of an organism—within and

without—in negotiating and understanding its environment. This is always a process. Varela

(1997) prefers the term “emergence” to describe this. He explains that an organism “is not

related to its environment ‘objectively,’[…]. Instead, it relates to the perspective established by

the constantly emerging properties of the agent itself and in terms of the role such running
Goldstein’s Self-actualization 9

redefinition plays in the system’s entire coherence” (pp. 83-84). Emergence is also the term that

Hoffmeyer (2009) has used to describe the biological process of becoming:

[T]he idea of semiotic emergence implies that while there is no centralized

director “behind” the person or organism, the organism or person as an entity is

continuously regenerated as an active, creative authority. The person is thus not a

stable being but rather a constant becoming. (p. 28, italics original)

Like Goldstein has discussed with self-actualization, Hoffmeyer recognizes that the self is an

emergent property that has some degree of authority or autonomy. Humanistic psychologists and

biosemioticians alike reject the assumption that life is determined by biological law. However,

this is not to say that life ignores biological law. In his paper that defines “individuation” as a

biosemiotic activity, Hoffmeyer (2015) uses the example of the genotype-phenotype distinction

to demonstrate how life occurs within, but is never in principle caused by, biological law.

A genotype is the hereditary information that is present in the zygote. This hereditary

information contributes the greatest influence on the development of the organism, but it does

not predict it exactly.

[A]lthough the genetic setup for an organism is of course more or less

permanently settled already at, or shortly after, conception, a wealth of exogenous

factors … are waiting to interfere with the mechanisms whereby this genetic set-

up exerts its effects. (p. 608)

For example, American psychologist Gilbert Gottlieb (1981, in Hoffmeyer, 2015) has

found that newborn ducklings develop a preference for their mother’s species-specific call from

birth. However, this only works when the duckling embryos were exposed to their own prenatal

call sounds. If this prenatal interaction had been prohibited, the ducklings will not develop the
Goldstein’s Self-actualization 10

preference. The duckling genotype provides the ability to develop the species-specific call

preference, but the preference itself—the phenotype or the organism’s expression of that trait—

can only emerge as a product of the environment. More accurately, in this example it can only

emerge as a product of the organism-environment interaction.

For Hoffmeyer, we learn that individuation is a biosemiotic activity. As such, it pertains

to all life. “If, then, by the term individuation we understand the series of stages (morphological

and/or cognitive) that an organism passes through during its lifespan, we can conclude that

individuation is a general trait pertaining to life” (p. 608). This process, no longer unique to

humans, also carries with it a definition of self. For biosemiotics, “self” or “soul” is “an

everyday language attempt to name that innermost agency that springs from the life-history of an

organism, human or non-human” (p. 611). For Gottlieb’s duckling, the species-specific call

preference is the potential of the individual genotype. This potential actualizes when the prenatal

duckling embryos are exposed to their call sounds.

Individuation is not unique to humans, but may be used to describe morphological or

developmental changes that any living system undergoes.

2. Holism: The Organism—Environment Relationship and Meaning

This section examines the organism-environment relationship which is itself an important

aspect of self-actualization. Indeed, it is only through the organism-environment relationship that

Goldstein (1963) is able to describe the meaning behind behavior (pp. 120-149), pathology (pp.

34-68), personality (pp. 171-200), motivation (pp. 150-170), and emotion (pp. 85-119), among

others. An organism can never be viewed in isolation from its environment if its behavior is to be

meaningfully understood. Viewing behavior in isolation risks missing out on its significance.
Goldstein’s Self-actualization 11

Moreover, since the entire organism (and its milieu) is a coordinated affair, as the

previous section has described it, then the entire coordinated affair must be examined. For

instance, Goldstein (1934/1995) explains how “Even such an apparently simple reaction as the

response of the eye to light is by no means limited to the contraction of the iris.” And he

continues,

For here we observe a variety of phenomena occurring throughout the body.

Although they are perhaps of as much importance for the organism as the

contraction of the iris, we usually overlook them because the examination of the

pupillary reflex is the purpose of the stimulation. The effect of light on the

organism is manifold, shows itself emphatically, and can be traced in changes in

motoric and sensory fields. (p. 173)

In order to understand the range of influence or the unexpected lack thereof, Goldstein maintains

that the entire patient (and not just the region of interest) must be considered. This is because

“[t]he more carefully we investigate […], the more we find that, whenever a change is induced in

one region, we can actually observe simultaneous changes in whatever part of the organism we

may test” (p. 174). Finally, the changes induced in the organism are not easily circumscribed to

the organism proper either. “Each organism lives in a world,” Goldstein explains, and that world

is “by no means something definite and static but is continuously forming commensurably with

the development of the organism and its activity” (p. 85).

The organism can never be viewed independently from its environment, for it is

dependent on the latter to supply its needs. Indeed, the very process of semiosis—sign

interpretation—depends on it. “The interpretive capacity is an emergent property of a reciprocal

end-means relationship of a self-propagating dynamical system” (Kull et al, 2011, p. 35). The
Goldstein’s Self-actualization 12

“Message d’Amour les Dauphines” gestalt image discussed earlier has the potential of signifying

dolphins or lovers, but never both simultaneously. The actualization of the event and its meaning

depends on the sign-interpreter relationship. With the dolphins, lovers are a null possibility. With

Lovers, dolphins are a null possibility. The meaning of this event of perception depends on the

possibility of more than one outcome (Kull, 2015). Otherwise, the image is a causal mechanism

that brings about a definite behavioral change (e.g. the perception of dolphins). Meaning depends

on semiosis.

Prioritizing mechanism over meaning and substance over process is precisely what

humanistic psychology has historically found so irksome about the biological analyses of

behavior (Morley, 1995). It is this aspect of biomedical science that humanistic psychologists

find themselves “up against” (Schneider, 2005, p. 168). Biosemiotics has similarly reacted

against the mechanized approach to biology (Kull, 2014, 2015; Hoffmeyer, 2009, 2014).

Hoffmeyer (2014) proposes an amendment to this stripping of meaning from biology:

The world around us reaches us through sign processes, semiosis, i.e. our lives do

not play out in a mechanical body but in a semiotic body. Biosemiotics, the sign-

theoretic or semiotic approach to the study of life and evolution is based on the

understanding that biochemical processes are organized in obedience to a semiotic

logic. Molecular structures are not just chemical entities; they are also potential

sign vehicles mediating communicative activity between cells, tissues, and organs

of our body or between bodies. (p. 95)

Meaning isn’t ignored in the semiotic body; it is the central concern. Hoffmeyer continues,

describing the process of writing with a pencil in hand:

Goldstein’s Self-actualization 13

I do not just sense the pencil mechanically, for my knowing the pencil does not

start in the retina, and it does not end up in the brain, rather it flows back and forth

through an indefinite number of loops where the pencil is integrated into the

movements of my fingers and thus into a world of immediate as well as

memorized bodily experiences and back again to neuronal circuits in the brain

forming a continuous and branched set of loops. My interaction with the pencil is

historical and semiotic, not mechanical. (p. 100)

The meaning explored by biosemioticians is not divergent from the meaning explored by

humanistic psychologists: they are convergent. There is really no need to draw a line in-between

self and other or organism and environment provided the two are reciprocally intertwined.

In the course of the process, comprising not only the now-and-here (impulses

from other senses) but also memorized material (the girl’s former experiences

with this category of visual impressions), and all of it must continuously be

calibrated according to new visual, olfactory, auditory, or touch inputs that she

might receive, and also according to her own motoric interaction with the objects

of her field of vision (even if she does not move, small involuntary movements of

the eye’s focus, saccades, nevertheless continuously need to be integrated). …

Our sensing must be considered one open-ended loop of interactions between

memory, sensory impulses, and motoric activity. (Hoffmeyer, 2014, p. 103)

To truly understand the significance of individuation, it must be viewed within the

organism-environment whole. Their significance deepens further when considered within the

context of the final aspect through which Goldstein describes self-actualization: that it is the only

drive motivating an organism.

Goldstein’s Self-actualization 14

Humanistic psychologists and phenomenologists are keen on the indivisibility between

subject and object (organism and environment), and use subjective experience to demonstrate

this collapse. Biosemiotics accomplishes the same collapse between subject and object but does

so from the description of the biological processes. Instead of describing two distinct

phenomena—one phenomenological and the other biological, this may be seen as one

phenomenon—semiosis—carried out through two levels of investigation. Just as the single

spectral image “Message d’Amour les Dauphines” is seen as either dolphins or lovers, but never

both simultaneously, and neither incorrect, so too do phenomenology and biology converge on

the same phenomenon of life.

Pattee (2015) describes what he has termed the epistemic cut (e.g. between object and

subject; observed and observer). Pattee is clear that this is not a Cartesian separation, but an

arbitrary point of separation between the action of the observer and action of the object observed.

He argues that semiosis may be used to distribute responsibility for the observation between the

object (sign vehicle) and observer (interpretant), rather than collapsing this into the

consciousness of the observer.

Whether or not a material structure described by physical laws functions as a

symbol or has intentionality is entirely up to the subjective interpretation of the

observer-subject. Descriptions of systems in terms of physical laws cannot

determine what to measure or when to measure it. (p. 465)

Another way of stating this is that the dissolution of the dividing line is not only meaningful to

the organism, but is also meaningful to the environment.

Goldstein’s Self-actualization 15

Pattee argues that the precise location of the dividing line between observer and observed

is arbitrary, and he uses von Neumann’s (1955) example of vision to demonstrate this. Von

Neumann writes of the boundary between observer and object in the act of perception:

But in any case, no matter how far we calculate—to the mercury vessel, to the

scale of the thermometer, to the retina, or into the brain, at some time we must

say: and this is perceived by the observer. That is, we must always divide the

world into two parts, the one being the observed system, the other the observer.

[…] The boundary between the two is arbitrary to a very large extent. […] In one

instance in the above example, we included even the thermometer in it, while in

another instance, even the eyes and optic nerve tract were not included. (p. 465)

In von Neumann’s description, the division between observer and observed is not definite but

arbitrary. Pattee finds it fitting to refer to this as an epistemic cut because it more closely

describes an epistemological position being taken with regards to the phenomenon of perception,

and not an ontological observation. The epistemic cut that one chooses to make is consequential,

and it is what currently separates biosemioticians from humanistic psychologists.

Goldstein and biosemiotics agree that behavior may be understood only when organism

and environment are taken into consideration. Humanistic psychologists customarily collapse

this division into the lifeworld of the human subject, but following Pattee (2015), it has been

argued that the location of this collapse is arbitrary—i.e., the collapse of subject-object duality

may also be examined at the level of biology or chemistry without ignoring the individual and

context-dependent exchange of meaningful information.

3. Self-actualization is the Only Motivating Drive

Goldstein’s Self-actualization 16

In understanding an organism or person, Goldstein is very clear that there is only one

drive. He writes,

We assume only one drive, the drive of self-actualization, but are compelled to

concede that under certain conditions the tendency to actualize one potentiality is

so strong that the organism is governed by it. […] [T]he theory of separate drives

can never comprehend normal behavior without positing another agency which

makes the decision in the struggle between the single drives. This means that any

theory of drives has to introduce another, a “higher” agency. (p. 145)

Here Goldstein differentiates the drive toward self-actualization from the drive-theory of

psychoanalysis. In psychoanalysis one finds multiple competing drives; with self-actualization,

there is but one drive. Any sense of competition between drives thus ignores their inter-

connectedness—namely, that they are in service to the same coordinated effect. In another effort

to distinguish the drive for self-actualization from psychoanalytic drives, Goldstein also

maintains that the “tendency to actualize itself is the motive which sets the organism going; it is

the drive by which the organism is moved” (p. 140).

Goldstein concedes that self-actualization can seem to be uncharacteristically

preoccupied with a pre-potent single drive (e.g. physical needs, safety needs, and so on), but he

is also clear that each of these are instances of self-actualization. Even satisfying one’s physical

needs can be understood as an instance of self-actualization, no less so than the satisfaction of

one’s self-esteem needs. This problematizes Maslow’s (1968/1999) motivational hierarchy that

peaks in self-actualization.
Goldstein’s Self-actualization 17

Finally, self-actualization as the single motivating drive of an organism is not

synonymous with self-preservation or simple existential persistence. For example, Goldstein

(1963) explains:

We have learned that man is a being who does not merely strive for self-

preservation but is impelled to manifest spontaneity and creativeness, that man

has the capacity of separating himself from the world and of experiencing the

world as separate entity in time and space. (p. 171)

Goldstein (1934/1995) goes to great lengths to differentiate self-preservation from self-

actualization. He explains that “self-preservation is a phenomenon of disease […]” (p. 337). It is

only when an organism is at death’s door that behavior is organized in service to self-

preservation. But even in this circumstance (which is by no means typical of all organisms) we

may understand that self-preservation is in service to self-actualization—that is, the most

opportune and best expression of an organism given the particular context in that moment of

expression. The system is not guided, for example, by pain reduction or self-preservation, but by

self-actualization. To be sure, both pain reduction and self-preservation can be in service to self-

actualization, but these do not define it.

Indeed, self-preservation may even be found limiting self-actualization, like when a

person “must choose between a greater lack of freedom and greater suffering” (p. 341). This is

precisely what complicates treatment of disease and psychopathology. Goldstein reminds doctors

and therapists that “medical decision always requires an encroachment on the freedom of the

other person” (p. 341). Such an encroachment may prohibit or, at least, constrict the available

avenues for self-actualization.

Goldstein’s Self-actualization 18

Self-preservation as the primary motivation, particularly in the Darwinian sense of a

biological imperative of ‘survival’, is also a notion that biosemioticians reject (Kull, Emmeche,

& Hoffmeyer, 2011). It is an affront to define living organisms as machines programmed to be

mechanically bent on survival. “Living creatures are not just senseless units in the survival

game” Hoffmeyer (2009) explains, “they also experience life (and perhaps even ‘enjoy’ it as we

say when human animals are concerned)” (p. xviii). And he continues, capturing the difference

between self-preservation and self-actualization:

There [in the natural world], organisms never “try to survive”—for the simple

reason that they cannot know they are going to die. […] In brief: Organisms

strive, and this striving […] cannot be set aside in any genuine attempt to

understand the workings of animate natural systems. (p. xviii)

Striving captures the organic process of individuation present in life in all of its forms.

Humanistic psychology finds it fitting to describe human individuation by using Goldstein’s

concept of self-actualization, but the same may be found in prenatal ducklings, sea-sponges, and

unicellular organisms. To be sure, the processes are not identical across each of these

categories—each presents a different level of complexity of information that is exchanged in-

between organism and environment. Hoffmeyer (2015, section 5) calls this breadth of awareness

“semiotic freedom,” and describes the evolution from the first instance of organic individuation

(flatworms 550 million years ago) through the centralized system of nerve-cells in the human

brain today. In his summary, Hoffmeyer is careful to maintain that the mind is not unique to

humans, but its breadth of semiotic freedom is. “The semiotization of biology implies a shift in

focus from life as narrowly bound to certain privileged and distinct structures (such as genomes

or brains), in favor of a process conception” (p. 612).

Goldstein’s Self-actualization 19

In sum, a biosemiotic view of self-actualization sees in the human being a process that

unfolds within and between all living things. This is important for contemporary humanistic

psychologists who are interested in exploring the meaningful insights that the cognitive sciences

and neurosciences bring because it opens these worlds up to a familiar method of examination.

“Molecular structures are not just chemical entities; they are also potential sign vehicles

mediating communicative activity between cells, tissues, and organs of our body or between

bodies” (Hoffmeyer, 2014, p. 95)

Conclusion: Biology and Awe

In reviewing Goldstein’s (1934/1995, 1963) introduction and use of the concept self-

actualization, three distinct but interrelated aspects have been presented: invariance, holism, and

that it is the fundamental motivating force. Each has emphasized the similarity between

humanistic psychology and biosemiotics. Both disciplines are interested in life and all of the

complicated meanings this generates. This realization might justify a reconsideration of the

continued insistence that humanistic psychology must resist biology (lest they risk sacrificing its

rich history and tradition that has been devoted to emphasizing the awe-inspiring aspects of

being human; Schneider, 2005). One option could be a holistic biological investigation in the

context of a biosemiotic framework, something that Goldstein would surely have encouraged

(Gurwitsch, 1966).

As the single drive or motivating force of an organism, self-actualization is fundamental

to all life. “Life” is the quality that accompanies meaningful being in the world—that quality that

humanistic psychologists have made it their business to examine and understand in humans for

over half a century, as well as the “magnificence and mystery of living” that has been studied by

the humanities for over 5,000 years” (Schneider, 2005, p. 167). It would not be unfair or even
Goldstein’s Self-actualization 20

unhumanistic to equate “being human” (or, less anthropocentrically, “being”) with self-

actualization. It may not even be blasphemous to define “being human” as “the ability to create

and take part in meaning-generating processes […]” as Kull, Deacon, et al, (2011, p. 69) have

done with their definition of semiosis.

Goldstein’s Self-actualization 21

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