Maslow: Holistic- Dynamic Theory

Overview of Holistic-
1 Dynamic Theory

2 Biography

Maslow’s View of
3 Motivation

4 Self-Actualization

5 The Jonah Complex

6 Psychotherapy
I. Overview of Holistic-Dynamic Theory
 Humanistic theory, transpersonal theory, the third force
in psychology, the fourth force in personality, needs theory,
and self-actualization theory

 Holistic Dynamic Theory - 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.

 Criticized both psychoanalysis and behaviorism for their

limited views of humanity and their inadequate understanding
of the psychologically healthy person
II. Biography: Abraham Harold (Abe) Maslow
 Born in Manhattan, New York, on April 1, 1908
 Oldest of seven children born to Samuel Maslow and Rose Schilosky Maslow
 Father – often-absent father, a Russian-Jewish immigrant; Mother – hateful feelings
 Married to his first cousin, Bertha Goodman at age 20
 Received BA degree in Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin
 Received his Doctorate in 1934
 He become E. L. Thorndike’s research assistant at Teachers College, Columbia University
 He suffered a strange illness in 1946 at age 38
 He became the chairman of the psychology department at the recently established Brandeis University
in
Waltham, Massachusetts in 1951
 He suffered a severe but nonfatal heart attack in December of 1967
 He suddenly collapsed and died of a massive heart attack on June 8, 1970 at age 62
 III. Maslow’s View of Motivation
Basic Assumptions
1. Holistic approach to motivation.
2. Motivation is usually complex.
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.

A. Hierarchy of Needs:
 “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
 Lower level needs have prepotency over higher level needs

1 2 3 4 5
Physiological Safety
Love and Belongingness Esteem Self-Actualization
 A.1 Physiological Needs:

 The most basic needs of any person including food, water, oxygen, maintenance
of body temperature.
 Most prepotent of all.
 It differs from other needs in at least two important respects:
oFirst, they are the only needs that can be completely satisfied or even
overly satisfied.
oSecond, they are recurring to Self-Actualization
nature.
Esteem

Love and
Belongingness

Safety

Physiological
 A.2 Safety Needs:

 physical security, stability, dependency, protection, and

freedom from threatening forces such as war,
terrorism, illness, fear, anxiety, danger, chaos, and
natural disasters, law, order and structure.
Self-Actualization

Esteem

Love and
Belongingness

Safety

Physiological
 A.3 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.
 A first group of people consists of those who have had their love and belongingness
needs adequately satisfied from early years do not panic when denied love.
 A second group of people consists of those who have never experienced love and belongingness, and,
therefore, are incapable of giving love.
 A third category includes those people who have received love and belongingness only in small doses.
Self-Actualization

Esteem

Love and
Belongingness

Safety

Physiological
 A.4 Esteem Needs:

 include self-respect, confidence, competence, and the

knowledge that others hold
them in high esteem

 2 Levels of Esteem Needs:

o Reputation Self-Actualization
o Self-esteem
Esteem

Love and
Belongingness

Safety

Physiological
 A.5 Self-Actualization Needs:

 include self-fulfillment, the realization of all one’s

potential, and a desire to become
creative
 People who highly respect such values as truth,
beauty, justice, and the other B-
values.
Self-Actualization

Esteem

Love and
Belongingness

Safety

Physiological
 B. Aesthetic Needs:
 are not universal
 People prefer beauty to ugliness, and they may even become
physically and spiritually ill when forced to live in squalid,
disorderly environments

C. 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

D. Neurotic Needs:
 they perpetuate an unhealthy style of life and have no value in
the striving for self-actualization
 they are reactive
 E. General Discussion of Needs:
E.1 Reversed Order of Needs:
 For some people, the drive for creativity self-actualization need) may take
(a precedence over safety and physiological needs.

E.2 Unmotivated Behavior:

 Maslow believed that even though all behaviors have a cause, some behaviors are not
motivated.

E.3 Expressive and Coping Behavior:

 Expressive behavior – unconscious; no goals; unmotivated
 Coping behavior – conscious, effortful, learned, and determined by
the external
environment
E.4 Deprivation of Needs:
 Lack of satisfaction of any of the basic needs leads to some kind of pathology.
 Metapathology – as the absence of values, the lack of fulfillment, and the loss of meaning in
life

E.5 Instinctoid Nature of Needs:

 Some human needs are innately determined even though they can be modified by learning
 Onecriterion for separating instinctoid needs from noninstinctoid needs is the level
of
pathology upon frustration.
 A second criterion is that instinctoid needs are persistent and their satisfaction leads
to psychological health.
 A third distinction is that instinctoid needs are species-specific.
 Fourth, instinctoid needs can be molded, inhibited, or altered by environmental influences
E.6 Comparison of Higher and Lower Needs:
 Higher needs are similar to lower ones in that they are instinctoid.
 Differences between higher needs and lower ones are those of degree and not of kind.
 IV. Self-Actualization
A. Criteria for Self-Actualization:
1. they were free from psychopathology
2. self-actualizing people had progressed through the hierarchy of needs
3. they embrace the B-values
4. full use and exploitation of talents, capacities, potentialities

B. Values of Self-Actualizers:
 Maslow termed B-values “metaneeds” to indicate that they are the ultimate level of needs
 The values of self-actualizing people include truth, goodness, beauty, wholeness or the
transcendence of dichotomies, aliveness or spontaneity, uniqueness, perfection, completion, justice
and order, simplicity, richness or totality, effortlessness, playfulness or humor, and self- sufficiency or
autonomy

C. Love, Sex, and Self-Actualization:

 Self-actualizing people are capable of B-love
 Self-actualizers are capable of a deeper level of love, Maslow believed that sex between two
B-lovers often becomes a kind of mystical experience
 V. The Jonah Complex

 The fear of being one’s best

 Fear of success,a fear of beingone’sbest, and a
feeling of
awesomeness in the presence of beauty and perfection

Why do people run away from greatness and self-fulfillment?

 First, the 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.
 Second, most people have private ambition to be great, to
write a great novel, to be a movie star, to become a world-
famous scientist, and so on.
 VI. Psychotherapy
 The aim of therapy would be for clients to embrace the
Being values, that is, to value truth, justice, goodness,
simplicity, and so forth.

 The goals of psychology follow from the client’s position on

the hierarchy of needs.

 Most people who seek therapy have the two lower level
needs (physiological and safety needs) relatively well satisfied
but have some difficulty achieving love and belongingness
needs.
Thank You