MASLOW: HOLISTIC DYNAMIC THEORY - The Five Love Languages:

o Physical Touch
o Quality Time
Maslow’s view of Motivation: o Receiving Gifts
Basic assumptions regarding motivation.
o Acts of Service
1. First, Maslow (1970) adopted a holistic approach to o Words of Affirmation
motivation: that is, the whole person, not any single
1. People who have had their love and belongingness
part or function, is motivated.
needs adequately satisfied from early years do not panic
2. Second, motivation is usually complex, meaning that
when denied love.
a person’s behavior may spring from several separate
2. A second group of people consists of those who have
motives.
never experienced love and belongingness, and, therefore,
3. Third, people are continually motivated by one
they are incapable of giving love.
need or another. When need is satisfied, it ordinarily
3. A third category includes those people who have
loses its motivational power and is then replaced by
received love and belongingness only in small doses.
another need.
Because they receive only a taste of love and
4. Lastly, all people are motivated by the same basic
belongingness, they will be strongly motivated to seek it.
needs.
4th Basic Need: ESTEEM
HIERARCHY OF NEEDS: Maslow’s hierarchy of
- To the extent that people satisfy their love and
needs concept assumes that lower level needs must be
belongingness needs, they are free to pursue esteem
satisfied or at least relatively satisfied before higher level
needs, which include self-respect, confidence,
needs become motivators. The five needs composing this
competence, and the knowledge that others hold them
hierarchy are conative needs, meaning that they have a
in high esteem. Maslow identified two levels of
striving or motivational character.
esteem needs — REPUTATION and SELF-
ESTEEM
Maslow (1970) listed the following needs in order of their
prepotency: (1) physiological, (2) safety, (3) love and
belongingness, (4) esteem, and (5) self-actualization.
5th Basic Need: SELF-ACTUALIZATION
- When lower level needs are satisfied, people proceed
1st Basic Need: PHYSIOLOGICAL more or less to the next level. However, once esteem
- The most basic needs of any person are physiological
needs are met, they do not always move to the level of
needs, including food, water, oxygen, maintenance of
self-actualization. Originally, Maslow (1950)
body temperature, and so on.
assumed that self-actualization needs become potent
whenever esteem needs have been met.
2nd Basic Need: SAFETY
- When people have partially satisfied their
What does positive mental health look like?
physiological needs, they become motivated by safety
“Self-actualization.”
needs, including physical security, stability,
- Self-actualizing people maintain their feelings of self-
dependency, protection, and freedom from
esteem even when scorned, rejected, and dismissed by
threatening forces such as war, terrorism, illness, fear,
other people.
anxiety, danger, chaos, and natural disasters; need for
- In addition to these five conative needs, Maslow
law, order, and structure are also safety needs.
identified three other categories of needs— aesthetic,
cognitive, and neurotic.
3rd Basic Need: LOVE & BELONGINGNESS
- After people partially satisfy their physiological and
 AESTHETICS Needs
safety needs, they become motivated by love and
- Not universal; depends on culture.
belongingness needs, such as the desire for
- Strong aesthetic needs: desire for beauty & orderly
friendship; the wish for a mate and children; the need
surroundings; when these are not met, they
to belong to a family, a club, a neighborhood, or a
become sick/frustrated.
nation. Love and belongingness also include some
- When forced to live in squalid and disorderly
aspects of sex and human contact as well as the need
environments, they feel physically & spiritually
to both give and receive love.
ill.
 COGNITIVE Needs
- Desire to know, to solve mysteries, to understand
and to become curious.
- When cognitive needs are blocked, all needs on
Maslow’s Hierarchy are threatened.
- Knowledge is necessary to satisfy each of the 5
conative needs.
Ex.
1. Knowing how to secure food.
2. Knowing how to build a shelter.
3. Knowing how to relate to people.
4. Knowing how to acquire some level of confidence.
5. Fully using their cognitive potential.
Healthy People: Desire to know more, to theorize, to test
hypotheses, to uncover mysteries or to find out how
something works.
When cognitive needs are not satisfied:
- Curiosity stifled
- Pathological (skepticism, disillusionment
cynicism)
 NEUROTIC Needs
- Frustration when conative, aesthetic and cognitive
needs are not satisfied.
- Stagnation and Pathology.
- Non-productive.
- Perpetuate an unhealthy lifestyle.
- Do not strive for self-actualization.
3. Love and Belongingness: becomes defensive, overly
aggressive or socially timid.
4. Esteem: self-doubt, self-depreciation, lack of
confidence.
MASLOW’S SELF-ACTUALIZATION QUEST:
Criteria for Self-Actualization:
- First, they were free from psychopathology.
- Second, these self-actualizing people had progressed
through the hierarchy of needs.
- Third, embracing the B-values.
- Last, “full use and exploitation of talents, capacities,
potentialities, etc.”
Values for Self-Actualizers:
- Self-actualizing people are motivated by the “eternal
verities” or what he called B-values or “Being”
values.
& - This B-Values are indicators of psychological health.
● Truth ● Goodness
● Beauty ● Wholeness
● Aliveness or Spontaneity ● Uniqueness
● Progress ● Completion
● Justice and order ● Simplicity
● Richness or totality ● Effortlessness
● Playfulness or humor ● Self-sufficiency or autonomy
Characteristics of Self-Actualizing People:

 Reactive
 Compensation for unsatisfied basic needs.

GENERAL DISCUSSION OF NEEDS:

Hypothetical Average Person:
- Physiological: 85%
- Safety: 70%
- Love and Belongingness: 50%
- Esteem: 40%
- Self-Actualization: 10%

- The more a lower level is satisfied, the greater the

emergence of the next level need.
- They emerge gradually.
- May simultaneously motivated by needs from two
or more levels.
Deprivation of Needs:
May lead to pathology.
1. Physiological: malnutrition, fatigue, loss of energy,
obsession with sex.
2. Safety: fear, insecurity, dread.