HOLISTIC-DYNAMIC THEORY  If one need is satisfied, it losses its motivational power

and replaced by another needs

ABRAHAM H. MASLOW  (4) All people everywhere are motivated by the same
basic needs (same across all cultures)

Variously been called:  (5) Needs can be arranged on a hierarchy

 Humanistic theory
 Transpersonal theory HIERARCHY OF NEEDS
 The third force in psychology
 The fourth force in personality  Assumes that lower level needs must be satisfied or at
 Needs theory least relatively satisfied before higher level needs become
 Self-actualization theory motivators

 Maslow referred to it as a holistic-dynamic theory  The 5 needs composing this hierarchy are conative needs,
because it assumes that the whole person is constantly mean ing that they have a striving or motivational
being motivated by one need or another and that people character.
have the potential to grow toward psychological health,
that is, self-actualization  These needs, which Maslow often referred to as basic
needs, can be arranged on a hierarchy
 His graduate-level research with primates was greatly
influenced by the work of John B. Watson  Lower level needs have prepotency over higher level
needs; that is, they must be satisfied or mostly satisfied
BIOGRAPHY before higher level needs become activated
S-
A
 Maslow learned to hate and mistrust religion and to Esteem
become a committed atheist (because of his mother). Love & Belonging
Safety
 As a graduate student, he worked closely with Harry Physiological
Harlow, who was just beginning his research with
Hierarchy of Needs
monkeys
Physiological Needs
MASLOW’S VIEW OF MOTIVATION (5)
 The most prepotent of all

 Maslow’s theory of personality rests on several basic  As long as this need remains unsatisfied, their primary
assumptions regarding motivation: motivation is to obtain something (from this level)

 (1) Holistic approach to motivation  In affluent societies, when people say “hungry” they
 The whole person, not any single part or function, is speak about appetite. A truly hungry person will not be
motivated overly particular about taste, smell or texture of food

 (2) Motivation is usually complex  Physiological needs differ from other needs in at least 2
 A person’s behavior may spring from several separate important respects. 1st: the only needs that can be
motives (Ex: desire for sex may also be motivated by need completely/overly satisfied. 2nd: their recurring nature
for dominance, love, companionship)
Safety Needs
 (3) People are continually motivated by one need or
another
 Include physical security, dependency, protection, and
freedom from threatening forces such as war, illness, fear,
danger, chaos, and natural disasters
 Differ from physiological needs in that they cannot be
overly satisfied; we can never be completely protected
from fires, floods, or the dangerous acts of others
 Other people spend more energy than healthy people
trying to satisfy safety needs, and when they are not
successful in their attempts, they suffer from basic
anxiety.
Love and Belongingness Needs
 The desire for friendship; the wish for a mate and
children; the need to belong to a family, a club, a
neighborhood, or a nation
 Also include some aspects of sex and human contact as
well as the need to both give and receive love
 1st Group: People who have had this needs adequately
satisfied from early years do not panic when denied love.
They have confidence that they are accepted by those
who are important to them, so when other people reject
them, they do not feel devastated.
 2nd Group: People who seldom or never received “acts of
love” (Ex: hugs, cuddles, verbal words) will eventually
learn to devalue love and to take its absence for granted.
 3rd Group: People who have received love and
belongingness only in small doses, receive only a taste of
love and belongingness—the will be strongly motivated to
seek it; have stronger needs for affection and acceptance
than do people who have received either a healthy
amount of love or no love at all
 Children need love in order to grow psychologically
(Straightforward, direct ways)
 Adults too (But sometimes cleverly disguised)
 These adults often engage in self-defeating behaviors,
such as pretending to be aloof or adopting a cynical, cold,
and calloused manner in their interpersonal relationships,
but in reality they have a strong need to be accepted and
loved by other people.
 Others whose love needs remain largely unsatisfied adopt
more obvious ways of trying to satisfy them, but they
undermine their own success by striving too hard. These
leave others become suspicious, unfriendly, and
impenetrable.
Esteem Needs
 Include self-respect, confidence, competence, and the
knowledge that others hold them in high esteem
2 levels of esteem needs:
 Reputation—is the perception of the prestige,
recognition, or fame a person has achieved in the eyes of
others
 Self-Esteem—is based on more than reputation or
prestige; it reflects a “desire for strength, for
achievement, for adequacy, for mastery and competence,
for confidence in the face of the world, and for
independence and freedom”
 Once people meet their esteem needs, they stand on the
threshold of self-actualization
Self-Actualization Needs
 When lower level needs are satisfied, people proceed
more or less automatically to the next level. However,
once esteem needs are met, they do not always move to
the level of self-actualization
 Once esteem needs are satisfied, we may or may not
move on to self-actualization depending whether or not
we embrace the B-Values
 Self-actualization needs include self-fulfillment, the
realization of all one’s potential, and a desire to become
creative in the full sense of the word
 Become fully human, satisfying needs that others merely
glimpse or never view at all
 They are natural in the same sense that animals and
infants are natural; that is, they express their basic human
needs and do not allow them to be suppressed by culture
 Maintain their feelings of self-esteem even when scorned,
rejected, and dismissed by other people
 3 other categories of needs
 Satisfaction of aesthetic and cognitive needs is consistent
with psychological health, whereas the deprivation of
these two needs results in pathology. Neurotic needs,
however, lead to pathology whether or not they are
satisfied.
Aesthetic Needs
 Unlike conative needs, aesthetic needs are not universal
 Some people have produced art for art’s sake
 People with strong aesthetic needs desire beautiful and
orderly surroundings, and when these needs are not met,
they may become sick (physically and spiritually)
Cognitive Needs
 Most people have a desire to know, to solve mysteries, to
understand, and to be curious
 When cognitive needs are blocked, all needs on Maslow’s
hierarchy are threatened; that is, knowledge is necessary
to satisfy each of the five conative needs
 Because… (You know the answer, Ivan) pg. 284 Feist & Feist (7th ed.)
 Healthy people desire to know (to theorized, etc.) more
just for the satisfaction of knowing.
 People who have not satisfied their cognitive needs, have
had their curiosity stifled, or have been denied
information, become pathological, a pathology that takes
the form of skepticism, disillusionment, and cynicism
Neurotic Needs
 Satisfaction of other needs is basic to physical and
psychological health; frustration of them may lead to
some level of illness. However, neurotic need lead only to
stagnation and pathology
 Gratified or not, neurotic needs are nonproductive (Ex: A
person who has a neurotic need for power may gain so
much power but it doesn’t lessen his need for it)
 Perpetuate an unhealthy style of life
 No value in the striving for self-actualization
 Usually reactive; that is, they serve as compensation for
unsatisfied basic needs
General Discussion of Needs
 The more a lower level need is satisfied, the greater the
emergence of the next level need
 Needs, emerge gradually, and a person may be
simultaneously motivated by needs from two or more
levels
Reversed Order of Needs
 Ex: An enthusiastic artist may risk safety and health to
complete an important work
 Reversals, however, are usually more apparent than real.
If we understood the unconscious motivation underlying
the behavior, we would recognize that the needs are not
reversed (Ex: Pursuit for creativity just to be appreciated
by others—not S-A need, but a belonging need)
Unmotivated Behavior
 Even though all behaviors have a cause, some behaviors
are not motivated
 Some behavior is not caused by needs but by other
factors such as conditioned reflexes, maturation, or drugs
 Much of what Maslow called “expressive behavior” is
unmotivated.
Expressive and Coping Behavior
 Expressive behavior
 Often unmotivated
 (which is often unmotivated)
 coping behavior
UNFINISHED
 Deprivation of Needs
 Deprivation of any of the basic needs leads to some kind
of pathology:
 Deprivation of physiological needs results in malnutrition,
fatigue, loss of energy, obsession with sex, and so on
 Threats to one’s safety lead to fear, insecurity, and dread
 Unfulfilled love needs, a person becomes defensive,
overly aggressive, or socially timid
 Lack of esteem results in self-doubt, self-depreciation,
and lack of confidence
 Deprivation of self-actualization needs also leads to
pathology, or more accurately, metapathology
 Metapathology (the absence of values, the lack of
fulfillment, and the loss of meaning in life)
Instinctoid Nature of Needs
 Instinctoid: the 5 conative needs (innately determined
but can be modified by learning… Ex: expression of love
varies)
 Noninstinctoid: Learned and not innately determined
(need to comb one’s hair, speak one’s own dialect)
 Instinctoid in contrast to Noninstinctoid
 First: Level of pathology upon frustration
Ex: physiological, safety, love, etc. may lead to pathology
Ex: Need to comb one’s hair doesn’t
 Second: Satisfaction/Duration
Instinctoid: Leads to psychological health/Persistent
Noninstinctoid: Not a prerequisite for health/Temporary
 Third: Species-Specific (only human has esteem and S-A needs)
 Fourth: though difficult to change, instinctoid needs can
be molded, inhibited, or altered by environmental
influences
Comparison of Higher and Lower Needs
 Higher level needs are later on the phylogenetic or
evolutionary scale (Ex: only humans—a recent specie—
have self-actualization needs)
 Higher needs appear later during the course of individual
development
 Higher level needs produce more happiness and more
peak experiences
 The satisfaction of higher level needs is more subjectively
desirable to those people who have experienced both
higher and lower level needs.
SELF-ACTUALIZATION
 Maslow’s ideas on self-actualization began soon after he
received his PhD, when he became puzzled about why
two of his teachers in New York City—anthropologist
Ruth Benedict and psychologist Max Wertheimer
Maslow’s Quest for the Self-Actualizing Person
 Page 288-289 of Feist & Feist (7th edition)
Criteria for Self-Actualization
 First, they were free from psychopathology
 Neurotic and psychotic individuals have some things in
common with self-actualizing people: namely, such
characteristics as a heightened sense of reality, mystical
experiences, creativity, and detachment from other
people
 Second, these self-actualizing people had progressed
through the hierarchy of needs
 Third, embracing of the B-values
 Fourth, full use and exploitation of talents, capacities,
potentialities, etc. In other words, his self-actualizing
individuals fulfilled their needs to grow, to develop, and to
increasingly become what they were capable of becoming
 Values of Self-Actualizers
 Self-actualizing people are motivated by the “eternal
verities,” what he called B-values
 These “Being” values are indicators of psychological
health and are opposed to deficiency needs
 B-values are not needs, they are “Metaneeds” or ultimate
level of needs
 He distinguished between ordinary need motivation and
the motives of self-actualizing people, which he called
metamotivation.
 Metamotivation is characterized by expressive rather than
coping behavior and is associated with the B-values
 Metamotivation was Maslow’s tentative answer to the
problem of why some people have their lower needs
satisfied, are capable of giving and receiving love, possess
a great amount of confidence and self-esteem, and yet fail
to pass over the threshold to self-actualization
 The lives of these people are meaningless and lacking in
B-values. Only people who live among the B-values are
self-actualizing, and they alone are capable of
metamotivation.
 When people’s metaneeds are not met, they experience
illness, an existential illness.
 All people have a holistic tendency to move toward
completeness or totality; and when this movement is
thwarted, they suffer feelings of inadequacy,
disintegration, and un-fulfillment.
 Deprivation of any of the B-values results in
metapathology, or the lack of a meaningful philosophy of
life
B-Values (14)
Totality Beauty Uniqueness
Truth Goodness Simplicity
Completion Justice Effortlessness
Wholeness Autonomy Humor
Perfection Aliveness
The Totality of Truth means Complete, Whole, and Perfect. It says
that the Beauty of Justice, Goodness, and Autonomy, is to be
Alive in a Unique, Simple, and Effortless way of Humor.
Characteristics of Self-Actualizing People (15)
More Efficient Perception of Reality
 They can discriminate between the genuine and the fake
 They are not fooled by facades and can see both positive
and negative underlying traits in others that are not
readily apparent to most people
 Less prejudiced and less likely to see the world as they
wish it to be
 Less afraid and more comfortable with the unknown
Acceptance of Self, Others, and Nature
 Can accept themselves the way they are, and accept
others
 Not overly critical of their own shortcomings
 Tolerate weaknesses in others and are not threatened by
others’ strengths
 Do not expect perfection either in themselves or in others
Spontaneity, Simplicity, and Naturalness
 They are unconventional but not compulsively so
 Highly ethical but may appear unethical or nonconforming
 The similarity between self-actualizing people and
children and animals is in their spontaneous and natural
behavior
 Unpretentious and not afraid or ashamed to express joy,
awe, elation, sorrow, anger, or other deeply felt emotions
Problem-Centering
 Interest in problems outside themselves (others are self-
centered, not like them)
 This interest allows self-actualizers to develop a mission in
life, a purpose for living that spreads beyond self-
aggrandizement
 Their realistic perception enables them to clearly
distinguish between the important and the unimportant
issues in life
The Need for Privacy
 Have a quality of detachment that allows them to be
alone without being lonely
 Have no desperate need to be surrounded by other
people
 May be seen as aloof or uninterested, but in fact, their
disinterest is limited to minor matters
 They are self-movers, resisting society’s attempts to make
them adhere to convention.
Autonomy
 Are autonomous and depend on themselves for growth
even though at some time in their past they had to have
received love and security from others
 Once that confidence is attained, a person no longer
depends on others for self-esteem.
Continued Freshness of Appreciation
 Have the wonderful capacity to appreciate again and
again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with
awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy
 See with a fresh vision such everyday phenomena as
flowers, food, and friends
 They have an appreciation of their possessions and do not
waste time complaining about a boring, uninteresting
existence.
The Peak Experience
Unfinished
Gemeinschaftsgefühl
 Sense of oneness with all humanity (same with Adler)
 Caring attitude toward other people
 Genuine interest in helping others
Profound Interpersonal Relations
 Related to Gemeinschaftsgefühl is a special quality of
interpersonal relations that involves
 deep and profound feelings for individuals
 Have a nurturant feeling toward people in general, but
their close friendships are limited to only a few
 No frantic needs to be friends with everyone, but the few
important interpersonal relationships they do have are
quite deep and intense
 Self-actualizers are often misunderstood and sometimes
despised by others. On the other hand, many are greatly
loved and attract a large group of admirers and even
worshipers
The Democratic Character Structure
 They could be friendly and considerate with other people
regardless of class, color, or age
 Have a desire and an ability to learn from anyone (even
from less healthy ones). They recognize how little they
know in relation to what they could know
 They are respectful and even humble before these people
(the less heathy people)
Discrimination between Means and Ends
 Have a clear sense of right and wrong conduct and have
little conflict about basic values
 They set their sights on ends rather than means and have
an unusual ability to distinguish between the two
 They enjoy doing something for its own sake and not just
because it is a means to some other end
 Philosophical Sense of Humor
 Philosophical, non-hostile sense of humor
 Healthy people see little humor in put-down jokes
 The humor of a self-actualizing person is intrinsic to the
situation rather than contrived; it is spontaneous rather
than planned.
Creativeness
 All self-actualizing people studied by Maslow were
creative in some sense of the word. In fact, Maslow
suggested that creativity and self-actualization may be
one and the same
 Not all are talented but are creative in their own way
Resistance to Enculturation
 Have a sense of detachment from their surroundings and
are able to transcend a particular culture
 They are neither antisocial nor consciously
nonconforming. Rather, they are autonomous, following
their own standards of conduct and not blindly obeying
the rules of others
 Do not waste energy fighting against insignificant customs
and regulations of society
 However, on important matters, they can become
strongly aroused to seek social change and to resist
society’s attempts to enculturate them.
 For this reason, these healthy people are more
individualized and less homogenized than others. They
are not all alike. In fact, the term “self-actualization”
means to become everything that one can become, to
actualize or fulfill all of one’s potentials. When people can
accomplish this goal, they become more unique, more
heterogeneous, and less shaped by a given culture
LOVE, SEX, AND SELF-ACTUALIZATION
 Self-actualizing people are capable of both giving and
receiving love and are no longer motivated by the kind of
deficiency love (D-love). Self-actualizing people are
capable of B-love—love for the essence or “Being” of the
other
 D-lovers love because they expect something in return
 B-lovers love in the name of love
 B-love is mutually felt and shared and not motivated by a
deficiency or incompleteness within the lover
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
 Maslow’s philosophy of science and his research methods
are integral to an understanding of how he arrived at his
concept of self-actualization. Maslow believed that value-
free science does not lead to the proper study of human
personality. Maslow argued for a different philosophy of
science, a humanistic, holistic approach that is not value
free and that has scientists who care about the people
and topics they investigate.
 Maslow agreed with Allport that psychological science
should place more emphasis on the study of the individual
and less on the study of large groups
 When Maslow attended medical school, he was shocked
by the impersonal attitude of surgeons who nonchalantly
tossed recently removed body parts onto a table
 His observation of such a cold and calloused procedure
led Maslow to originate the concept of desacralization:
that is, the type of science that lacks emotion, joy,
wonder, awe, and rapture
 Scientists must be willing to resacralize science or to instill
it with human values, emotion, and ritual
 Psychologists must not only study human personality;
they must do so with enjoyment, excitement, wonder,
and affection
 Maslow argued for a Taoistic attitude for psychology, one
that would be noninterfering, passive, and receptive. This
new psychology would abolish prediction and control as
the major goals of science and replace them with sheer
fascination and the desire to release people from controls
so that they can grow and become less predictable
MEASURING SELF-ACTUALIZATION
 Page 297-299 of Feist & Feist (7th edition)
 THE JONAH COMPLEX CONCEPT OF HUMANITY
 Page 299-300 of Feist & Feist (7th edition)  All of us can be self-actualizing; our human nature carries
with it a tremendous potential for being a Good Human
PSYCHOTHERAPY Being

 Aim—for clients to embrace the Being-values or B-Values
 To accomplish this aim, clients must be free from their
dependency on others so that their natural impulsse
toward growth and self-actualization could become active
 Most people who seek therapy have these two lower level
needs relatively well satisfied but have some difficulty
achieving love and belongingness needs
 Psychotherapy is largely an interpersonal process
 Hierarchy of basic needs must be regularly satisfied
before we become fully human.
 True human nature is seen only in self-actualized people,
and that “there seems no intrinsic reason why everyone
should not be this way.
 Every baby has all the possibilities for self-actualization.
Therefore, self-actualizing people are not ordinary people
with something added, but rather as ordinary people with
nothing taken away!!!!!!!!!

 Through a warm, loving, interpersonal relationship with  Generally optimistic and hopeful about humans, but
the therapist, the client gains satisfaction of love and recognized that people are capable of evil and destruction
belongingness needs and thereby acquires feelings of —stems from the frustration of basic needs, not from the
confidence and self-worth. essential nature of people

 A healthy interpersonal relationship between client and  Society, as well as individuals, can be improved, but
therapist is therefore the best psychological medicine growth for both is slow and painful

 Nearly identical to that of Rogers’
CRITIQUE OF MASLOW
 (1) Generate research:
 However, Maslow’s notions about
metamotivation, the hierarchy of
needs, the Jonah complex, and
instinctoid needs have received
less research interest.
 (2) Falsifiability:
 (3) Organize (knowledge) what
 is known about human
 behavior—Hierarchy of needs:
 (4) Guide (action) to the practitioner: High
 (5) Internally consistent:
 Truth, love, beauty, and the like are instinctoid and are
just as basic to human nature as are hunger, sex, and
aggression
 Because Maslow held that basic needs are structured the
Little above-average same for all people and that people satisfy these needs at
their own rate, his holistic-dynamic theory of personality
places moderate emphasis on:
 Both uniqueness and similarities
 Because people aim toward self-actualization, Maslow’s
view can be considered:
 Teleological and purposive
Low  Maslow’s view of humanity is difficult to classify on such
dimensions as determinism versus free choice, conscious
Excellent versus unconscious, or biological versus social
determinants of personality.
 In general, the behavior of people motivated by
physiological and safety needs is determined by outside
forces, whereas the behavior of self-actualizing people is
at least partially shaped by free choice.
High  Consciousness vs unconsciousness: Difficult to classify

 (6) Parsimonious: Moderate  Biological vs social influences: Both