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Maslow: Holistic- Dynamic Theory

The personality theory of Abraham Maslow has variously been called humanistic theory, transpersonal theory, the third force in psychology, the fourth force in per- sonality, needs theory, and self-actualization theory. However, Maslow (1970) re- ferred 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 po- tential to grow toward psychological health, that is, self-actualization. To attain self- actualization, people must satisfy lower level needs such as hunger, safety, love, and esteem. Only after they are relatively satisfied in each of these needs can they reach self-actualization.

Abraham Harold (Abe) Maslow had, perhaps, the most lonely and miserable child- hood of any person discussed in this book. Born in Manhattan, New York, on April 1, 1908, Maslow spent his unhappy childhood in Brooklyn. Maslow was the oldest of seven children born to Samuel Maslow and Rose Schilosky Maslow. As a child, Maslow’s life was filled with intense feelings of shyness, inferiority, and depression.

Maslow’s View of Motivation

Maslow’s theory of personality rests on several basic assumptions regarding motivation. 

First, Maslow (1970) adopted a holistic approach to motivation: That is, the whole person, not any single part or function, is motivated.

Second, motivation is usually complex, meaning that a person’s behavior may spring from several separate motives. For example, the desire for sexual union may be motivated not only by a genital need but also by needs for dominance, companionship, love, and self-esteem.

A third assumption is that people are continually motivated by one need or another. When one need is satisfied, it ordinarily loses its motivational power and is then replaced by another need.

Another assumption is that all people everywhere are motivated by the same basic needs. The manner in which people in different cultures obtain food, build shelters, express friendship, and so forth may vary widely, but the fundamental needs for food, safety, and friendship are common to the entire species.

A final assumption concerning motivation is that needs can be arranged on a hierarchy (Maslow, 1943, 1970).

A. 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. These needs, which Maslow often referred to as basic needs, can be arranged on a hierarchy or staircase, with each ascending step representing a higher need but one less basic to survival. Lower level needs have prepotency over higher level needs; that is, they must be satisfied or mostly satisfied before higher level needs become activated.

1. Physiological Needs - The most basic needs of any person are physiological needs, including food, water, oxygen, maintenance of body temperature, and so on. Physiological needs are the most prepotent of all. Perpetually hungry people are motivated to eat—not to make friends or gain self-esteem. They do not see beyond food, and as long as this need remains unsatisfied, their primary motivation is to obtain something to eat.

Maslow (1970) said: “It is quite true that man lives by bread alone—when there is no bread” (p. 38). When people do not have their physiological needs satis- fied, they live primarily for those needs and strive constantly to satisfy them. Starv- ing people become preoccupied with food and are willing to do nearly anything to obtain it (Keys, Brozek, Henschel, Mickelsen, & Taylor, 1950).

2. Safety Needs - When people have partially satisfied their physiological needs, they become motivated by safety needs, including 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 (Maslow, 1970). 

3. Love and Belongingness Needs - After people partially satisfy their physiological and safety needs, they become motivated by love and belongingness 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 nation. Love and belongingness also include some aspects of sex and human contact as well as the need to both give and receive love (Maslow, 1970).

People who have had their love and belongingness needs adequately satisfied from early years do not panic when denied love. These people have confidence that they are accepted by those who are important to them, so when other people reject them, they do not feel devastated.

4. Esteem Needs - To the extent that people satisfy their love and belongingness needs, they are free to pursue esteem needs, which include self-respect, confidence, competence, and the knowledge that others hold them in high esteem. Maslow (1970) identified two lev- els 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. 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”

5. Self-Actualization Needs - When lower level needs are satisfied, people proceed more or less automatically to the next level. 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 (Maslow, 1970). People who have reached the level of self-actualization 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.

Self-actualizing people maintain their feelings of self-esteem even when scorned, rejected, and dismissed by other people. In other words, 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.

B. Aesthetic Needs

Aesthetic needs are not universal, but at least some people in every culture seem to be motivated by the need for beauty and aesthetically pleasing experiences (Maslow, 1967). From the days of the cave dwellers down to the present time, 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 become sick in the same way that they be- come sick when their conative needs are frustrated. People prefer beauty to ugliness, and they may even become physically and spiritually ill when forced to live in squalid, disorderly environments (Maslow, 1970).

C. Cognitive Needs

Most people have a desire to know, to solve mysteries, to understand, and to be cu- rious. Maslow (1970) called these desires cognitive needs. When cognitive needs are blocked, all needs on Maslow’s hierarchy are threatened; that is, knowledge is nec- essary to satisfy each of the five conative needs. People can gratify their physiolog- ical needs by knowing how to secure food, safety needs by knowing how to build a shelter, love needs by knowing how to relate to people, esteem needs by knowing how to acquire some level of self-confidence, and self-actualization by fully using their cognitive potential.

Maslow (1968b, 1970) believed that healthy people desire to know more, to theorize, to test hypotheses, to uncover mysteries, or to find out how something works just for the satisfaction of knowing. However, people who have not satisfied their cognitive needs, who have been consistently lied to, have had their curiosity sti- fled, or have been denied information, become pathological, a pathology that takes the form of skepticism, disillusionment, and cynicism.

D. Neurotic Needs

The satisfaction of conative, aesthetic, and cognitive needs is basic to one’s physical and psychological health, and their frustration leads to some level of illness. How- ever, neurotic needs lead only to stagnation and pathology (Maslow, 1970).

By definition, neurotic needs are nonproductive. They perpetuate an unhealthy style of life and have no value in the striving for self-actualization. Neurotic needs are usually reactive; that is, they serve as compensation for unsatisfied basic needs. For example, a person who does not satisfy safety needs may develop a strong desire to hoard money or property. The hoarding drive is a neurotic need that leads to pathology whether or not it is satisfied.

E. General Discussion of Needs

Maslow (1970) estimated that the hypothetical average person has his or her needs satisfied to approximately these levels: physiological, 85%; safety, 70%; love and be- longingness, 50%; esteem, 40%; and self-actualization, 10%. The more a lower level need is satisfied, the greater the emergence of the next level need.

1. Reversed Order of Needs - Even though needs are generally satisfied in the hierarchical order, occasionally they are reversed. For some people, the drive for creativity (a self- actualization need) may take precedence over safety and physiological needs. An enthusiastic artist may risk safety and health to complete an important work. For years, the late sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski endangered his health and abandoned companionship to work on carving a mountain in the Black Hills into a monument to Chief Crazy Horse.

Reversals, however, 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.

2. Unmotivated Behavior - 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 (1970) called “expressive behavior” is unmotivated.

3. Expressive and Coping Behavior - Maslow (1970) 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 ef- fort. It has no goals or aim but is merely the person’s mode of expression. Expressive behavior includes such actions as slouching, looking stupid, being relaxed, showing anger, and expressing joy.

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 re- ceive 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 (Maslow, 1970).

4. Deprivation of Needs - Lack of satisfaction of any of the basic needs leads to some kind of pathology. De- privation of physiological needs results in malnutrition, fatigue, loss of energy, ob- session 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 pathol- ogy, or more accurately, metapathology. Maslow (1967) defined metapathology as the absence of values, the lack of fulfillment, and the loss of meaning in life.

5. Instinctoid Nature of Needs - Maslow (1970) 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 ex- pressed depends on learning. For most people, then, sex is an instinctoid need.

6. Comparison of Higher and Lower Needs - Differences between higher needs and lower ones are those of degree and not of kind. First, higher level needs are later on the phylogenetic or evolutionary scale. For instance, only humans (a relatively recent species) have the need for self- actualization. Also, 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.

Second, higher level needs produce more happiness and more peak experi- ences, although satisfaction of lower level needs may produce a degree of pleasure. Hedonistic pleasure, however, is usually temporary and not comparable to the qual- ity of happiness produced by the satisfaction of higher needs. Also, the satisfaction of higher level needs is more subjectively desirable to those people who have experienced both higher and lower level needs. In other words, a person who has reached the level of self-actualization would have no motivation to return to a lower stage of development (Maslow, 1970).

Self-Actualization

To Maslow, these two people represented the highest level of human development, and he called this level “self-actualization.”

A.  Criteria for Self-Actualization

            a.) First, they were free from psychopathology. They were neither neurotic nor psychotic nor did they have             a tendency toward psychological disturbances. This point is an important neg- ative criterion because some 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.

            b.) Second, 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. Also, they experienced love and had a well-rooted sense of self-worth. Because they had their lower level needs satisfied, self-actualizing people were better able to tolerate the frustration of these needs, even in the face of criticism and scorn. They are capable of loving a wide variety of people but have no obligation to love everyone.

            c.) Maslow’s third criterion for self-actualization was the embracing of the B- values. His self-actualizing people felt comfortable with and even demanded truth, beauty, justice, simplicity, humor, and each of the other B-values that we discuss later.

            d.) The final criterion for reaching self-actualization was “full use and exploitation of talents, capacities, potentialities, etc.” (Maslow, 1970, p. 150). In other words, his self-actualizing individuals fulfilled their needs to grow, to develop, and to increasingly become what they were capable of becoming.

B. Values of Self-Actualizers

Maslow (1971) held that self-actualizing people are motivated by the “eternal veri- ties,” what he called B-values. These “Being” values are indicators of psychological health and are opposed to deficiency needs, which motivate non-self-actualizers. 

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 (see Figure 10.2).

C. Characteristics of Self-Actualizing People

Maslow believed that all humans have the potential for self-actualization. Maslow (1970) listed 15 tentative qualities that characterize self-actualizing people to at least some degree.

1. More Efficient Perception of Reality - Self-actualizing people can more easily detect phoniness in others. They can dis- criminate between the genuine and the fake not only in people but also in literature, art, and music. 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.

2. Acceptance of Self, Others, and Nature - Self-actualizing people can accept themselves the way they are. They lack defensiveness, phoniness, and self-defeating guilt; have good hearty animal appetites for food, sleep, and sex; are not overly critical of their own shortcomings; and are not burdened by undue anxiety or shame.

3. Spontaneity, Simplicity, and Naturalness - Self-actualizing people are spontaneous, simple, and natural. They are unconven- tional but not compulsively so; they are highly ethical but may appear unethical or nonconforming. They usually behave conventionally, either because the issue is not of great importance or out of deference to others. But when the situation warrants it, they can be unconventional and uncompromising even at the price of ostracism and censure.

4. Problem-Centering - A fourth characteristic of self-actualizing people is their interest in problems outside themselves. Non-self-actualizing people are self-centered and tend to see all the world’s problems in relation to themselves, whereas self-actualizing people are task- oriented and concerned with problems outside themselves. This interest allows self- actualizers to develop a mission in life, a purpose for living that spreads beyond self- aggrandizement.

5. The Need for Privacy - Self-actualizing people have a quality of detachment that allows them to be alone without being lonely. They feel relaxed and comfortable when they are either with people or alone. Because they have already satisfied their love and belongingness needs, they have no desperate need to be surrounded by other people. They can find enjoyment in solitude and privacy.

6. Autonomy - Self-actualizing people 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. No one is born autonomous, and therefore no one is completely indepen- dent of people. Autonomy can be achieved only through satisfactory relations with others.

7. Continued Freshness of Appreciation - Maslow (1970) wrote that “self-actualizing people have the wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy” (p. 163). They are keenly aware of their good physical health, friends and loved ones, economic security, and political freedom.

8. The Peak Experience - As Maslow’s study of self-actualizers continued, he made the unexpected discovery that many of his people had had experiences that were mystical in nature and that somehow gave them a feeling of transcendence. Originally, he thought that these so- called peak experiences were far more common among self-actualizers than among non-self-actualizers. Later, however, Maslow (1971) stated that “most people, or al- most all people, have peak experiences, or ecstasies” (p. 175).

9. Gemeinschaftsgefühl - Self-actualizing people possess Gemeinschaftsgefühl, Adler’s term for social interest, community feeling, or a sense of oneness with all humanity. Maslow found that his self-actualizers had a kind of caring attitude toward other people. Although they often feel like aliens in a foreign land, self-actualizers nevertheless identify with all other people and have a genuine interest in helping others—strangers as well as friends.

10. Profound Interpersonal Relations - Related to Gemeinschaftsgefühl is a special quality of interpersonal relations that involves deep and profound feelings for individuals. Self-actualizers have a nurturant feeling toward people in general, but their close friendships are limited to only a few. They have no frantic need to be friends with everyone, but the few important inter- personal relationships they do have are quite deep and intense. They tend to choose healthy people as friends and avoid intimate interpersonal relationships with de- pendent or infantile people, although their social interest allows them to have a spe- cial feeling of empathy for these less healthy persons.

11. The Democratic Character Structure - Maslow found that all his self-actualizers possessed democratic values. They could be friendly and considerate with other people regardless of class, color, age, or gender, and in fact, they seemed to be quite unaware of superficial differences among people.

12. Discrimination Between Means and Ends - Self-actualizing people have a clear sense of right and wrong conduct and have lit- tle conflict about basic values. They set their sights on ends rather than means and have an unusual ability to distinguish between the two. What other people consider to be a means (e.g., eating or exercising), self-actualizing people often see as an end in itself.

13. Philosophical Sense of Humor - Another distinguishing characteristic of self-actualizing people is their philosophical, nonhostile sense of humor. Most of what passes for humor or comedy is basi- cally hostile, sexual, or scatological. The laugh is usually at someone else’s expense. Healthy people see little humor in put-down jokes. They may poke fun at themselves, but not masochistically so. They make fewer tries at humor than others, but their at- tempts serve a purpose beyond making people laugh. They amuse, inform, point out ambiguities, provoke a smile rather than a guffaw.

14. 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 self-actualizers are talented or creative in the arts, but all are creative in their own way. They have a keen perception of truth, beauty, and reality— ingredients that form the foundation of true creativity.

15. Resistance to Enculturation - A final characteristic identified by Maslow was resistance to enculturation. Self- actualizing people have a sense of detachment from their surroundings and are able to transcend a particular culture. They are neither antisocial nor consciously non- conforming. Rather, they are autonomous, following their own standards of conduct and not blindly obeying the rules of others.

D. Love, Sex, and Self-Actualization

Before people can become self-actualizing, they must satisfy their love and belong- ingness 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 (D- love) 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. In fact, it is un- motivated, expressive behavior. Self-actualizing people do not love because they ex- pect something in return. They simply love and are loved. Their love is never harm- ful. It is the kind of love that allows lovers to be relaxed, open, and nonsecretive (Maslow, 1970).

Philosophy of Science

Maslow (1966) argued for a Taoistic attitude for psychology, one that would be noninterfering, passive, and receptive. This new psychology would abolish pre- diction and control as the major goals of science and replace them with sheer fasci- nation and the desire to release people from controls so that they can grow and be- come less predictable. The proper response to mystery, Maslow said, is not analysis but awe.

Maslow insisted that psychologists must themselves be healthy people, able to tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty. They must be intuitive, nonrational, insightful, and courageous enough to ask the right questions. They must also be willing to flounder, to be imprecise, to question their own procedures, and to take on the im- portant problems of psychology. Maslow (1966) contended that there is no need to do well that which is not worth doing. Rather, it is better to do poorly that which is important.

Measuring Self-Actualization

Everett L. Shostrom (1974) developed the Personal Orientation Inventory (POI) in an attempt to measure the values and behaviors of self-actualizing people.

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 (Maslow, 1979). The Jonah com- plex 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.

Psychotherapy

To Maslow (1970), the aim of therapy would be for clients to embrace the Being- values, that is, to value truth, justice, goodness, simplicity, and so forth. To accom- plish this aim, clients must be free from their dependency on others so that their natural impulse toward growth and self-actualization could become active. Psy- chotherapy cannot be value free but must take into consideration the fact that every- one has an inherent tendency to move toward a better, more enriching condition, namely self-actualization.

The goals of psychology follow from the client’s position on the hierarchy of needs. Because physiological and safety needs are prepotent, people operating on these levels will not ordinarily be motivated to seek psychotherapy. Instead, they will strive to obtain nourishment and protection.

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Feist, Jess & Feist, Gregory J. 2008. Theories of Personality, 7th Edition. The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Publish in the United States of America.

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