Abraham Harold Maslow and Self-Actualization

Abraham Harold Maslow and Self-Actualization

Abraham Harold Maslow was born on April 1, 1908 in Brooklyn, New York. He was the oldest of seven children born to his parents, who were uneducated Jewish immigrants from Russia. His parents, wanting the best for their children in the “new world”, pushed him hard in his academic studies. He was smart but shy, and remembered his childhood as being lonely and rather unhappy. He sought refuge in his books and studies. His father hoped he would study as a lawyer, and Maslow enrolled in the City College of New York. After three semesters at CCNY, he transferred to Cornell and then back to CCNY again. He married his first cousin Bertha, against his parent’s wishes and moved to Wisconsin, where he would attend the University of Wisconsin for graduate school. Here he met his chief mentor Professor Harry Harlow, and became interested in psychology, and his schoolwork began to improve dramatically. He pursued a new line of research, investigating primate dominance behavior and sexuality. He received his BA in 1930, his MA in 1931, and his PhD in 1934, all in the field of psychology, all from the University of Wisconsin. A year after he graduated he returned to New York to work with E.L. Thorndike at Colombia, where he studied similar topics. From 1937 to 1951, Maslow worked full-time on staff at Brooklyn College. In NY he found two more mentors, anthropologist Ruth Benedict and Gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer, whom he admired both professionally and personally. These two people were so accomplished in what they did and such “wonderful human beings”, that Maslow began taking notes about them and their behavior. This would be the foundation for his life long research and thinking about me...

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...ten seems difficult to attain. The last level is a bit different. Maslow used a variety of terms to describe this level. The most widely used term is self-actualization. These are needs that do not involve balance. Once engaged, they do not go away, they continue to be felt. In fact, they are likely to become stronger as we feed them or stimulate them. They involve the continuous desire to fulfill potentials, “to be all you can be”. They are a matter of becoming the most complete, the fullest, “you”, hence the term, self-actualization. If you truly want to be self-actualizing, you need to have all your lower needs at least mostly fulfilled. This makes sense, if you are hungry you are trying to get food; if you are unsafe, you have to be continuously on guard; etc. When lower needs aren’t met, you can’t fully devote your time and energy to fulfilling your potentials.