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Chap 9: Maslow: Holistic-Dynamic Theory
Background
Abraham Harold (Abe) Maslow
- Born: April 1, 1908 (Manhattan, New York)
- Unhappy childhood in Brooklyn
- Oldest of 7 children
- Intense feelings of Shyness inferiority and
depression
- Not close with parents
- Father: Samuel Maslow
o Russian-Jewish immigrant
o Prepared barrels
o Often absent
- Mother: Rose Schilosky
o Felt hatred and deep-seated animosity
o Hated mother until the day she died
o Refused to attend her funeral
o Even though he hates her, she is the
root of his research
o Edward Hoffman (1988): Abe brought
home kittens, and cared for them in
the basement. Mother saw the kittens,
was furious and smashed the kittens
heads to death
o Very religious
Threatened Abe with punishment of
God
He tested her threats intentionally
no divine retribution. Threats
were not scientific committed
atheist
- Sting of anti-Semitism
o Childhood Adulthood
- Defense against anti-Semitic attitude of
classmates turned to books
- Avoided anti-Semitic gangs while going to
the library
- Boys High School (Brooklyn): slightly above
average grades
- Will Maslow
o Cousin
o Close friend
o Outgoing, socially active person
o Because of Will, developed some
social skills and became involved
- Will encouraged Abe to apply to Cornell
university but lacked the confidence
- Selected City College of New York instead
- Parents divorced became less
emotionally distant with father
- Father wanted Abe to be a lawyer
- Enrolled in Law School
- Walked out of Law
o People were evil
o Not sufficiently concerned with the
good
o Father was disappointed but accepted
it
- Philo & other subjects he like
- Subjects he didnt like (academic
probation)
- After 3 sems, transferred to Cornell
University
o Closer to Will
o distance to Bertha Goodman
fallen in love with
- after 1 sem, returned to the City College of
New York to be close to Bertha
- Married Bertha. His parents objected
o Ages: Abe 20, Bertha 19
o They were 1st cousins: might result to
hereditary defects
o Irony: Abes parents were also first
cousins
- University of Wisconsin: BA Philo
- Interested in John B. Watsons Behaviorism
o Took enough psych courses to meet
prereq for PhD in Psych
- Grad student:: worked closely with Harry
Harlow
o Doing monkey research
- Maslows dissertation: dominance and
sexual behavior of monkeys
o Social dominance was a more powerful
motive than sex, at least among
primates
- 1934: received doctorate, couldnt get an
academic position
o Great Depression
o Anti-Semitic prejudice
- Taught in Wisconsin
- Enrolled in Med School
o Disturbed and bored
o Quit Med School
- NY: E. L. Thorndikes RA (Teachers College,
Columbia University)
o Scored 195 in Thorndike IQ test
o Free to do what he wants
- Left Columbia to join faculty of Brooklyn
College
o Students: bright, young adolescents
from working-class homes, like Abe
 - 1930-1940: contact with European
psychologists who escaped Nazi rule
o Fromm, Horney, Wertheimer, &
Goldstein
o Adler
Abe was a frequent visitor of
Adlers at home seminars
- Ruth Benedict
o Anthropologist (Columbia University)
o Abes Mentor
o Northern Blackfoot Indians of Alberta,
Canada
1st: people 2nd: Blackfoot Indians
- 1946;age 38: strange illness left him weak,
faint, & exhausted
- Took medical leave
- Abe, Bertha, & 2 daughters Pleasanton,
California
o Plant manager of a branch of the
Maslow Cooperage Corporation (by
name only)
o Light work sched
Read biographies and histories in
search for information on self-
actualizing people
- 1951: Chairman of Psych dept. in Brandeis
University (Waltham, Massachusetts)
o Wrote journals
- 1960s: students demand experiential
involvement & intellectual & scientific
approach
- Dec 1967: severe nonfatal heart attack
o Strange illness before: undiagnosed
heart attack
- Saga Administrative Corporation (Menlo
Park, California)
o No particular job
o Free to think & write
- June 8, 1970; Age 62: collapse and died of
a massive heart attack
- 1967-1968: President of APA
- Known in: business management,
marketing, theology, counseling, education,
nursing, & other health-related fields
- Abes life: filled with physical &
psychological pain
- Adolescence, shy unhappy, isolated, & self-
rejecting
- Last journal entry (May 7, 1970),
complained about people expecting him to
be a courageous leader and spokesperson.
His courage is overcoming shyness that
stressed him
Views on Motivation
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
Hierarchy of needs
Conative need
- Striving or motivational character
Basic needs
Prepotency
Self-
actualization
Esteem
Love & belongingness
Safety
Physiologic
al
Physiological needs
- Most basic needs
o Food, water, O2, homeostasis
- Most proponent of all
- 2 important differences
o Can be completely or overly satisfied
o Recurring nature
Safety needs
- Physical security, stability, dependency,
freedom from threatening forces
- Needs for law, order and structure
- Cannot be over satiated
- Not satisfied Basic anxiety
Love and belongingness needs
- Friendship, family, sexual intimacy
- Satisfied confident
- No love incapable of giving love
- Little love stronger need for affection
Esteem needs
- Respect, confidence, competence,
knowledge other hold them in high esteem
- 2 levels
o Reputation
Prestige, recognition, or fame
perceived by others
o Self-esteem
Own feelings of worth & confidence
Based on real competence & not
merely on others opinion
Self-actualizing needs
 - Self-fulfillment, realization of ones Deprivation of needs
potential, & desire to be creative
- Lack of satisfaction pathology
- Maintain feelings of self-esteem even when
rejected by others - Deprivation of self-actualization
metapathology
Instinctoid nature of needs
Other categories of needs
- Human needs are innately determined
- Could threaten the hierarchy of needs even though they can be modified by
learning
Aesthetic needs
- Not universal
- Beauty and aesthetically pleasing
experiences

Cognitive needs
- Desire to know, to solve mysteries, to Instinctoid needs Noninstinctoid needs
understand, & to be curious
- Frustration of - Frustration of
- Pathology: skepticism, disillusionment and
cynicism need need no
pathology pathology
Neurotic needs - Persistent - Temporary
- For psychological - Not prereq for
- Leads to stagnation and pathology
health health
- Nonproductive - Species-specific
- Can be molded,
- Reactive
inhibited, or
General discussion of needs altered by
environmental
- low level need satisfied = emergence
influences
of next level need
- Many needs are
- May emerge gradually weaker than
cultural forces
- Simultaneous motivation of needs
Reverse order of needs
- Need are satisfied in reversed order Comparison of higher and lower needs
- May look reversed but unconscious needs - Similarities
are in orders
o Both higher and lower needs are
Unmotivated behavior Instinctoid
- Not all behaviors are motivated o Both biological
- Reflexes, maturation, or drugs - Differences
- Expressive behavior o Higher level needs are later on the
phylogenetic of evolutionary scale
Expressive and coping behavior
o Higher level needs produce more
- Expressive behavior
happiness and more peak experiences
o Unmotivated
Self-actualization
o Unconscious
Maslows quest for the self-actualizing person
o Mode of expression - Good human Beings
o No goal or aim - self-actualizing person
o Compulsive personality - Wertheimer & Benedict
o Unlearn, spontaneous, & determined - His student volunteered but none of them
by forces within the person matched the 2
- Coping behavior - Tried to find a vague personality syndrome
o Conscious effortful, learned, & - People believed to be self-actualizing
determined by the external refused to participate in his research
environment
- Began to read biographies
o Attempts to cope with environment
- What makes Wertheimer & Benedict self-
o Serves some goal or aim (may be actualizing? why are we all not self-
unconscious) actualizing
 - Finding the characteristics to be self- - Satisfy other needs
actualizing why are we all not self-
actualizing - Embrace B-values

- Went through a cycle 1. More efficient perception of reality

o Questions 2. Accepting of self, others, and nature

3. Spontaneity, simplicity, naturalness
o Identified a syndrome
4. Problem-centering
o Selected individuals
5. The need for privacy
o Refined his definition
6. Autonomy
Criteria for self-actualization
7. Continued freshness of appreciation
- They were free from psychopathology
8. The peak experience
- Self-actualizing people had progressed
through the hierarchy of needs 9. Gemeinschaftsgefhl
- Embrace the B-values 10.Profound Interpersonal Relations
- Fulfilled their needs to grow, to develop, & 11.The democratic character Structure
to increasingly become what they are
capable of becoming 12.Discrimination Between means and ends

Values of Self-actualizers 13.Philosophical sense of humor

B-values 14.Creativeness)

- Being values 15.Resistance to enculturation

1. Truth Love, Sex, and Self-actualization

2. Goodness Self-actualizer

3. Beauty - Not motivated D-love)

4. Wholeness / the transcendence of - Capable of b live

dichotomies - Enjoys sex but can tolerate the absence of
5. Aliveness / spontaneity sex

6. Uniqueness Measuring self-actualization

7. Perfection
8. Completion The Jonah Complex

9. Justice & order - Blocks ones growth towars self-

actualization
10.Simplicity
Psychotherapy
11.Richness / totality
- Aim : Embrace B-values
12.Effortlessness
- Free dependence from others
13.Playfulness / humor
- Interpersonal process
14.Self-sufficiency / autonomy
- Healthy relationship between client and
Characteristics of self-actualizing people therapist
- We all have the potential to be self- - Satisfy love and belongingness need
actualizing people