Theories of Personality Reviewer
Chapter 10
Abraham Maslow’s Holistic-Dynamic Theory
OVERVIEW
Also known as: Humanistic Theory, Transpersonal theory,
Self-Actualization theory, Needs Theory, 3rd Force in
Psychology, 4th Force in Personality
Motivation affects the whole person; it is complete, often
unconscious, continual, and applicable to all people.
A whole person is motivated by a need or another which leads
towards Psychological health or Self-Actualization.
To attain Self-Actualization, people must satisfy lower level
needs first
Influence by some tenets of Psychoanalysis and behaviorism
(But criticized both for having limited views of humanity and
inadequate knowledge of psychologically healthy individuals)
BIOGRAPHY
April 1, 1908 Manhattan New York
Lonely and miserable childhood
Emotionally distant with both parents
Father is always absent. Working at barrels
Strong hatred with her mother
Already saw violence during his childhood by his mother
Shy, lonely and isolated
Will Maslow
Did well in academics during highschool
His father wants him to be a Lawyer, but he discontinue it due
to lack of interest
City Colleges of New York, Cornell University, University of
Wisconsin
BA philosophy, PhD psychology, and discontinue medicine
Bertha Goodman
Edward B. Titchener
Dissertation research on Monkey’s Dominance and Sexual
Behavior
E.L. Thorndike
Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, Max Wertheimer, Kurt Goldstein,
Alfred Adler
Anthropological studies among the Northern Blackfoot Indians
of Alberta, Canada. (Ruth Benedict)
Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts
Maslow Cooperage Corporation.
American Psychological Association
Saga Administrative Corporation in Menlo Park, California
Died: June 8, 1970
MASLOW’S VIEW OF BASIC MOTIVATION
Basic Assumptions:
 Holistic Approach to motivation
 Motivation is usually complex
 People are continually motivated by one need or another
 All people everywhere are motivated by the same basic
needs
 Need can be arranged on a Hierarchy
HIERARCHY OF NEEDS
The lower needs must be satisfied first before being motivated
by a higher needs
Conative Needs – Also known as Basic Needs. It means
having a striving or motivational character (willful striving)
Lower needs have Prepotency over higher needs (must be
satisfied first before higher needs be activated)
Physiological; Safety; Love and Belongingness; Esteem; Self-
Actualization
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PHYSIOLOGICAL NEEDS
Includes, food, water, oxygen, maintenance, body
temperature, etc.
The Most Prepotent of All
Difference of Physiological Needs with the other needs:
 It is the only needs that can Completely Satisfied or
Overly Satisfied
 Recurring Nature
SAFETY NEEDS
People are motivated by this need after partially satisfied their
physiological needs
Includes Physical Security, Stability, Dependency, Protection,
Freedom from threatening forces; Needs for Law Order and
Structure
Cannot be over satiated
Relatively unimportant in healthy adults living in society with
no war
Children are more often motivated by safety needs
Adults who are relatively feel unsafe and retain irrational fear
from childhood often spends more energy in satisfying this
needs than healthy people do. If unsuccessful – Basic
Anxiety
LOVE AND BELONGINGNESS NEEDS
Desire for friendship; the wish for a mate and children; the
need to belong to a family, a club, a neighborhood, or a nation,
sex and human contact.
Need to both Give and Receive Love
 People who have had their love and belongingness needs
adequately satisfied from early years do not panic when
denied love
 People consists of those who have never experienced
love and belongingness, and, therefore, they are incapable
of giving love (devalue love and take its absence for
granted)
 People who have received love and belongingness only in
small doses, will be strongly motivated to seek it (stronger
need for affection and acceptance)
Children need love in order to grow psychologically
Children: Direct and straight forward
Adults: Sometimes cleverly disguised, Engage in self-
defeating behaviors, may give appearance of self-sufficiency
and independence, Adopt more obvious ways of trying to
adopt them.
ESTEEM NEEDS
Self-respect, confidence, competence, and the knowledge that
others hold them in high esteem
2 Levels of Esteem Needs:
1. Reputation
- Perception of the prestige, recognition, or fame a person has
achieved in the eyes of others
2. Self-esteem
- Person’s own feelings of worth and confidence
- Desire for strength, for achievement, for adequacy, for
mastery and competence, for confidence in the face of the
world, and for independence and freedom”
- Self-esteem is based on real competence and not merely on
others’ opinions
SELF-ACTUALIZATION NEEDS
“B-Values” (Truth, beauty, justice etc.)
Self-fulfillment, realization of one’s potential, Desire to be
creative in the full sense of the world
Fully human (natural in the same sense that animals and
infants are natural)
Self-actualizers are not dependent on the satisfaction of either
love or esteem needs; they become independent from the
lower level needs that gave them birth
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OTHER CATEGORIES OF NEEDS
AESTHETIC NEEDS
Not universal
Need for beauty and aesthetically pleasing experiences
Desire for beautiful and aesthetically surroundings
COGNITIVE NEEDS
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 - Knowledge is necessary to satisfy
each of the five conative needs
If not satisfied – Pathology: Skepticism Disillusionment,
Cynicism
NEUROTIC NEEDS
Nonproductive; Lead only to stagnation and pathology
They perpetuate an unhealthy style of life and have no value in
the striving for self-actualization
Compensation for an unsatisfied basic needs
Reversed Order of Needs
Even though needs are generally satisfied in the hierarchical
order, they are reversed occasionally
If we understood the unconscious motivation underlying the
behavior, we would recognize that the needs are not reversed.
Unmotivated Behavior
Some behaviors are not motivated
Some behavior is not caused by needs, but by other factors
such as conditioned reflexes, maturation and drugs
“Expressive behavior” is unmotivated
Expressive and Coping Behavior
Expressive Behavior
Serves no other purpose than to be. Frequently unconscious
and usually takes place naturally and with little effort.
No goals or aim but is merely the person’s mode of expression
Can continue even in the absence of reinforcement or reward.
Coping Behavior
Ordinarily conscious, effortful, learned, and determined by the
external environment.
Individual’s attempts to cope with the environment
Serves some aim or goal (although not always conscious or
known to the person). Always motivated by deficit need.
Deprivation of Needs
Physiological Needs
Malnutrition, fatigue, loss of energy, obsession with sex etc.
Safety Needs
Fear, Insecurity, dread
Love and Belongingness
Defensive, overly aggressive, socially timid
Esteem
Self-doubt, Self-depreciation, Lack of confidence
Self-Actualization
Pathology, Metapathology – (absence of values, the lack of
fulfillment, and the loss of meaning in life.)
Instinctoid Nature of Needs
Some human needs are innately determined even though they
can be modified by learning.
Criterion for separating Instinctoid Need from
Noninstinctoid Need:
1. Levels of pathology upon frustration. The thwarting of
instinctoid needs produces pathology, whereas the frustration
of noninstinctoid needs does not
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2. Instinctoid needs are persistent and their satisfaction leads
to psychological health. Noninstinctoid needs, in contrast, are
usually temporary and their satisfaction is not a prerequisite for
health.
Eternal verities
Indicators of psychological health and are opposed to
deficiency needs, which motivate non-self-actualizers
“Metaneeds” –ultimate level of needs

3. Instinctoid needs are species-specific. Animal instincts Metamotivation

cannot be used as a model for studying human motivation Motives of self-actualizing people
Expressive rather than coping behavior and is associated with
4. Though difficult to change, instinctoid needs can be molded, the B-values.
inhibited, or altered by environmental influence Differentiates self-actualizing people from those who are not.

Comparison of Higher and Lower Needs Only people who live among the B-values are self-actualizing,
and they alone are capable of metamotivation
Similarities Absence of the B-values leads to pathology just as surely as
 Both are Instinctoid lack of food results in malnutrition.
 “Biological” Deprivation of any of the B-values results in metapathology, or
Differences the lack of a meaningful philosophy of life.
 Higher level needs are later on the phylogenetic or
evolutionary scale. B-VALUES
 Higher level needs produce more happiness and more  Truth
peak experiences, although satisfaction of lower level  Goodness
needs may produce a degree of pleasure (temporary).  Beauty
 Wholeness (Transcendence of dichotomies)
SELF-ACTUALIZATION  Aliveness (Spontaneity)
 Uniqueness
CRITERIA FOR SELF-ACTUALIZATION  Perfection
 They were free from psychopathology  Completion
 Had progressed through the hierarchy of needs  Justice (and order)
 Embracing of the “B values”  Simplicity
 Full use and exploitation of talents, capacities,
 Totality (or richness)
potentialities, etc.
 Effortlessness
(Individuals fulfilled their needs to grow, to develop, and to
increasingly become what they were capable of becoming)  Humor
 Autonomy
VALUES OF SELF-ACTUALIZERS
B-values (Being values)
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CHARACTERISTICS OF SELF-ACTUALIZING PEOPLE Psychological science should place more emphasis on the
 More Efficient Perception of Reality study of the individual and less on the study of large groups.
 Acceptance of Self, Others and Nature Subjective reports should be favored over rigidly objective
 Spontaneity, Simplicity, Naturalness ones.
 Problem-Centering People should be allowed to tell about themselves in a holistic
 The Need for Privacy fashion instead of the more orthodox approach that studies
 Autonomy people in bits and pieces.
 Continued Freshness of Gratification
 The Peak Experience Desacralization: that is, the type of science that lacks
 Gemeinschaftsgefühl emotion, joy, wonder, awe, and rapture
 Profound Interpersonal Relations Resacralize science or to instill it with human values, emotion,
 The Democratic Character Structure and ritual.
 Discrimination b/w Means and Ends Taoistic attitude for psychology, one that would be
 Philosophical Sense of Humor noninterfering, passive, and receptive.
 Creativeness This new psychology would abolish prediction and control as
 Resistance to Enculturation the major goals of science and replace them with sheer
fascination and the desire to release people from controls so
Love, Sex and Self-Actualization that they can grow and become less predictable.
“B-love” and “D-love” The proper response to mystery, Maslow said, is not analysis
Capable of giving and receiving love but awe.
B-love is mutually felt and shared and not motivated by a
deficiency or incompleteness within the lover Psychologists must themselves be healthy people, able to
Unmotivated, expressive behavior. tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty.
Sexual Activity: taken quite lightly in the spirit of playfulness There is no need to do well that which is not worth doing.
and humor Rather, it is better to do poorly that which is important.

PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE MEASURING SELF-ACTUALIZATION

Believed that value-free science does not lead to the proper  Personal Orientation Inventory (POI) - standardized test
study of human personality. designed to measure self-actualizing values and behavior
 Short Index of Self-Actualization
Maslow argued for a different philosophy of science, a  Brief Index of Self-Actualization
humanistic, holistic approach that is not value free and that
has scientists who care about the people and topics they
investigate.
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THE JONAH COMPLEX
A healthy interpersonal relationship between client and
Fear of success, a fear of being one’s best, and a feeling of therapist is therefore the best psychological medicine.
awesomeness in the presence of beauty and perfection
Positive psychology - new field of psychology that combines
Rationale of Why People Run Away from Greatness and an emphasis on hope, optimism, and well-being with scientific
Fulfillment: research and assessment (Maslow and Rogers)
 Human body is simply not strong enough to endure the
ecstasy of fulfillment for any length of time, just as peak
experiences and sexual orgasms would be overly taxing if
they lasted too long. (“This is too much” “I can’t stand it
anymore”)
 Most people have private ambition to be great, but when
they compare themselves with those who have
accomplished greatness, they are appalled by their own
arrogance (“Who am I to think I could do as well as this
great person?”)

PSYCHOTHERAPY

Aim: Allow clients to embrace the B-values

To accomplish this aim, clients must be free from their
dependency on others so that their natural impulse toward
growth and self-actualization could become active.

Everyone has an inherent tendency toward self-actualization

The goals of psychology follow from the client’s position on the
hierarchy of needs.

Psychotherapy should be directed at the need level currently

being thwarted, in most cases love and belongingness needs.

Most people who seek therapy have these two lower level
needs relatively well satisfied but have some difficulty
achieving love and belongingness needs. Therefore,
psychotherapy is largely an interpersonal process.