HOLISTIC-DYNAMIC

THEORY
ABRAHAM MASLOW
1) OVERVIEW
 OVERVIEW
Maslow referred to it as a holistic-dynamic theory because it
assumes that the whole person is constantly being motivated
by one need or another and that people have the potential to
grow toward psychological health, that is, self-actualization.
 The theories of Maslow, Gordon Allport, Carl
Rogers, Rollo May, and others
are sometimes thought of as the third force in
psychology.

(The first force was psychoanalysis and its

modifications; the second was behaviorism and its
various forms).
2) Maslow’s view
of Motivation
 2. VIEW OF MOTIVATION
Maslow’s theory of personality rests on several basic
assumptions regarding motivation.
1) Maslow adopted a holistic approach to motivation.
2) Motivation is usually complex, meaning that a
person’s behavior may spring from several separate
motives. Moreover, the motivation for a behavior
may be unconscious or unknown to the person.
3) People are continually motivated by one need or
another.
4) All people everywhere are motivated by the same
basic needs.
5) Needs can be arranged on a hierarchy.
 3) Maslow’s
Hierarchy of Needs
 3. HIERARCHY OF NEEDS
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs concept assumes that lower level needs
must be satisfied or at least relatively satisfied before higher level
needs become motivators. The five needs composing this hierarchy
are conative needs, meaning that they have a striving or motivational
character.
3.1 Physiological Needs
These include food, water, oxygen, maintenance of body
temperature, and so on. Physiological needs differ from
other needs in at least two important respects.
First, they are the only needs that can be completely
satisfied or even overly satisfied. A second characteristic
peculiar to physiological needs is their recurring nature.
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3.2 Safety Needs
These include physical security, stability, dependency, protection,
and freedom from threatening forces such as war, terrorism,
illness, fear, anxiety, danger, chaos, and natural disasters. The
needs for law, order, and structure are also safety needs.
Some people spend far more energy than do healthy people trying
to satisfy safety needs, and when they are not successful in their
attempts, they suffer from what Maslow called basic anxiety.
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3.3 Love and
Belongingness Needs
These include needs such as 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.
Love and belongingness also include some aspects of sex and
human contact as well as the need to both give and receive
love.
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3.4 Esteem Needs
include self-respect, confidence, competence, and the
knowledge that others hold them in high esteem. Maslow
identified two levels of esteem needs—reputation and self-
esteem. Reputation is the perception of the
prestige, recognition, or fame a person has achieved in the
eyes of others, whereas self-esteem is a person’s own
feelings of worth and confidence. 14
3.5 Self-Actualization
Needs

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4) General Discussion
of Needs
4.GENERAL DISCUSSION OF NEEDS
Maslow estimated that the hypothetical average person has his or her
needs satisfied to approximately these levels: physiological, 85%;
safety, 70%; love and belongingness, 50%; esteem, 40%; and self-
actualization, 10%. The more a lower level need is satisfied, the
greater the emergence of the next level need.
4.1 Reversed Order Needs
Reversals are usually more apparent than real and
some seemingly obvious deviations in the order of
needs are not variations at all. If we understood the
unconscious motivation underlying the behavior, we
would recognize that the needs are not reversed.
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4.2 Unmotivated Needs
Maslow believed that even though all behaviors have a cause,
some behaviors are not motivated. In other words, not all
determinants are motives. Some behavior is not caused by
needs but by other factors such as conditioned reflexes,
maturation, or drugs. Motivation is limited to the striving for
the satisfaction of some need. Much of what Maslow
“expressive behavior” is unmotivated.
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4.3 Expressive and Coping
Behavior
Maslow distinguished between expressive behavior (which is often unmotivated) and
coping behavior (which is always motivated and aimed at satisfying a need).

Expressive behavior is often an end in itself and serves no other purpose than to be. It is
frequently unconscious and usually takes place naturally and with little effort.

Coping behavior is ordinarily conscious, effortful, learned, and determined by the external
environment. It involves the individual’s attempts to cope with the environment; to secure
food and shelter; to make friends; and to receive acceptance, appreciation, and prestige from
others. Coping behavior serves some aim or goal (although not always conscious or known to
the person), and it is always motivated by some deficit need. 20
4.4 Deprivation of Needs
Lack of satisfaction 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.
>>When love needs go unfulfilled, a person becomes defensive, overly aggressive, or socially
timid.
>>Lack of esteem results in the illnesses of self-doubt, self-depreciation, and lack of
confidence.
>>Deprivation of self-actualization needs also leads to pathology, or more accurately,
metapathology. Maslow defined metapathology as the absence of values, the lack of
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fulfillment, and the loss of meaning in life.
4.5 Instinctoid Nature of
Needs
Maslow hypothesizes that some human needs are innately
determined even though they can be modified by learning. He
called these needs instinctoid needs.

Sex, for example, is a basic physiological need, but the manner in

which it is expressed depends on learning. For most people, then,
sex is an instinctoid need.
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instinctoid needs vs noninstinctoid needs
1) The thwarting of instinctoid needs produces pathology,
whereas the frustration of noninstinctoid needs does not.
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.
3) Instinctoid needs are species-specific. Therefore, animal
instincts cannot be used as a model for studying human
motivation. Only humans can be motivated by esteem and
self-actualization.
4) Instinctoid needs can be molded, inhibited, or altered by
environmental influences.
4.6 Comparison of Higher
and Lower Needs
Higher needs are similar to lower ones in that they are instinctoid.
Maslow insisted that love, esteem, and self-actualization are just as biological as thirst,
sex, and hunger.
>> Only humans have the need for self-actualization.
>> Higher needs appear later during the course of individual development; lower level needs
must be cared for in infants and children before higher level needs become operative.
>> Higher level needs produce more happiness and more peak experiences,
although satisfaction of lower level needs may produce a degree of pleasure.
>> A person who has reached the level of self-actualization would have no motivation to
return to a lower stage of development. 24
5) Self-Actualization
5.1 CRITERIA FOR SELF-
ACTUALIZATION
1) First, self-actualizing people are free from psychopathology.
2) These self-actualizing people had progressed through the hierarchy of
needs and therefore lived above the subsistence level of existence and
had no ever-present threat to their safety.
3) Maslow’s third criterion for self-actualization was the embracing
of the B-values.
4) Self-actualizing individuals fulfilled their needs to grow, to develop,
and to increasingly become what they were capable of becoming.
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5.2 VALUES OF SELF-
ACTUALIZERS
Maslow held that 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, which motivate
non-self-actualizers.
Maslow termed B-values “metaneeds” to indicate that they are the
ultimate level of needs. He distinguished between ordinary need
motivation and the motives of self-actualizing people, which he called
metamotivation.
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 Metamotivation is
characterized by expressive
rather than coping behavior
and is associated with the B-
values.
It differentiates self-
actualizing people from
those who are not.
Only people who live
among the B-values are
self-actualizing, and they
Deprivation of any of the B-values results in alone are capable of
metapathology, metamotivation.
or the lack of a meaningful philosophy of life.
5.3 CHARACTERISTICS OF
SELF-ACTUALIZING PEOPLE
Maslow listed 15 tentative qualities that
characterize self-actualizing people to at least
some degree.

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1) More Efficient Perception of Reality
2) Acceptance of Self, Others, and Nature
3) Spontaneity, Simplicity, and Naturalness
4) Problem-centering
5) The Need for Privacy
6) Autonomy
7) Continued Freshness of Appreciation
8) The Peak Experience
9) Gemeinschaftsgefühl
10) Profound Interpersonal Relations
11) The Democratic Character Structure
12) Discrimination Between Means and Ends
13) Philosophical Sense of Humor
14) Creativeness
15) Resistance to Enculturation
5.4 LOVE, SEX AND SELF-
ACTUALIZATION
Before people can become self-actualizing, they must satisfy their
love and belongingness needs. It follows then that self-actualizing
people are capable of both giving and receiving love and are no
longer motivated by the kind of deficiency love (Dlove) common to
other people. Self-actualizing people are capable of B-love, that is,
love for the essence or “Being” of the other. B-love is mutually felt
and shared and not motivated by a deficiency or incompleteness
within the lover. 31
6) The Jonah
Complex
THE JONAH COMPLEX
Another obstacle that often blocks people’s growth toward self-
actualization is the Jonah complex, or the fear of being one’s best.
The Jonah complex is characterized by attempts to run away from
one’s destiny just as the biblical Jonah tried to escape from his fate.
The Jonah complex, which is found in nearly everyone, represents
a fear of success, a fear of being one’s best, and a feeling of
awesomeness in the presence of beauty and perfection.
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