On the Hierarchy of Needs

I studied Freudian psychology. Of course, Freud was a brilliant innovator and is considered the father of modern psychology, but I felt the need to create a complement to accompany Freud's theories. He treated and examined several patients during the Victorian Era. Most if not all of the patients that he studied were suffering from psychosis or neurosis or had psychological problems of some kind; why else would they seek out a doctor? The problem with that is not that Freud examined these patients, but that he used these case studies as a basis for generalizing information about the human condition and the human mind. In order to truly do that in a way that would make the information generalizable, one would have to study people with both healthy and unhealthy minds.

One cannot generalize facts about a human mind or human needs based only on unhealthy individuals. As I said in my book Motivation and Personality, "the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy"; it cannot tell us about the psychology or philosophy regarding healthy individuals. Basically, “it is as if Freud supplied us the sick half of psychology and we must now fill it out with the healthy half.”

I chose to study those healthy individuals, or in this case 100 healthy students and other exemplary human beings, and categorized their needs in terms of the most vital and important needs that human beings have. The bottom layer, the first set of needs, are the most basic needs for survival. These are all physical needs: breathing, food, water, sex, homeostasis, sleep, excretion. These needs must be met before any others can be considered. The next need is for safety, then love, then esteem, and then self-actualization. Humans must fulfill and maintain each level to be able to focus on or achieve the next level. The ultimate goal of humans is to achieve self-actualization, and Humanist Psychology encourages people to achieve the optimal healthy psychological state.

My theories have been applied in many fields beyond psychology, including education, religious studies, and business. Human curiosity and the quest for knowledge go beyond the scope of these needs. The desire to know and understand is part of what motivates people to do well in school and to seek higher education, although a need for safety may play a part in that desire, in that a better education can lead to a better career, etc. However, the implications of my hierarchy of needs in education is that the educator must consider that all of these basic needs must be fulfilled before a student can develop the desire to educate him or herself. A student who is not motivated may be lacking one of these essential needs. Other psychologists have used these basic needs as a framework and basis for their own experiments regarding education and curiosity.

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Maslow, Abraham (1954). Motivation and personality. New York: Harper. pp. 236.
Maslow, Abraham (1943). A Theory of Human Motivation Psychological Review, Vol. 50 #4, pp. 370–396.

Pyramid of Needs

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Allen, T. (2009). In CBC Radio 2 Blog. Retrieved Mar. 25, 2010, from http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/programs/maslow.png

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Pyramid

On My Professional Career

I studied psychology at the University of Wisconsin and Columbia University. From 1937 to 1951 I taught at Brooklyn College. In 1943 I published a paper called "A Theory of Human Motivation", in which can be found my theories on motivation and self-actualization, now more commonly known as "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs". In 1951 I left Brooklyn College to go to Brandies University to chair the psychology department. At that point I basically arrived at the top of my professional career; by 1959 I was famous not only nationally but also internationally because of my "Hierarchy of Needs". I am now considered the founder of Humanistic Psychology. I was at one time the president of the American Psychological Association. As I have become older, however, I have begun to find significance in other work and in my own personal life, which is why I chose to leave my more "prestigious" position and accepted the directorship of a research project in California. I wanted to be able to have more time to spend with my daughter and granddaughter.

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Mills, R. (2006). Leadership in higher education and the second half of life. Education, 127(2), 294-302. Retrieved from ERIC database.

On Life in Middle Age

I have found that now that I am older, "everything gets doubly precious, gets piercingly important. You get stabbed by things, by flowers and by babies and by beautiful things just the very act of living, of walking, and breathing and eating and having friends and chatting. Everything seems to look more beautiful rather than less, and one gets the much-intensified sense of miracles. I guess you could say that post mortem life permits a kind of spontaneity that's greater than anything else could make possible" (p.' 29).

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Mills, R. (2006). Leadership in higher education and the second half of life. Education, 127(2), 294-302. Retrieved from ERIC database.

On Keeping a Blog/Journal

"I'm reading Kierkegaard's journals and have recently finished Ruth Benedict's journal and am thinking of the advantages of keeping one myself. Also, the system I've been using is getting to the point of breaking down, what with carbon copies and cross-indexing and numberless headings under which to file. A journal system [or blog, in this case] should help on this score. . . . There are many other advantages, some of which Kierkegaard lists in his journal. For me another one, outside of the personal advantage of helping my thinking. I think so much more clearly on paper is the sad thought I've so often had: death for an intellectual usually means total loss of everything unfinished, all that is 1/3 or 1/2 done. Whenever I die it will be so many things left half done. The journal system is better for salvaging incomplete stuff for someone else to finish" (p. 3).

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Mills, R. (2006). Leadership in higher education and the second half of life. Education, 127(2), 294-302. Retrieved from ERIC database.

References

Allen, T. (2009). In CBC Radio 2 Blog. Retrieved Mar. 25, 2010, from http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/programs/maslow.png

Maslow, Abraham (1943). A Theory of Human Motivation Psychological Review, Vol. 50 #4, pp. 370–396.

Maslow, Abraham (1954). Motivation and personality. New York: Harper. pp. 236.

Mills, R. (2006). Leadership in higher education and the second half of life. Education, 127(2), 294-302. Retrieved from ERIC database.