From Abraham Maslow's Humanistic Approach To Psychology

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Abraham Maslow was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1908, to Jewish immigrants from Russia who had little to no education. He had a very sad and lonely childhood. His parents were verbally abusive towards him, calling him “ugly” and other degrading terms. Growing up hearing these things caused him to be very self conscious and have a negative image of himself. Maslow was the only Jewish boy in his neighborhood, so he could not really relate to any of the kids around him. He isolated himself from the other children and spent most of his recreational time in the library reading. There was no love in his household and he didn't have much a relationship with either of his parents. He used books in the library to escape his harsh reality.
He started …show more content…

His school of thought was that everyone human has certain physical and psychological needs they need to have to survive. He published many articles about his studies on human behavior and sexuality. In these articles he also wrote about the theories of his many mentors. One of Maslow's mentors was Harry Harlow. Maslow observed Harlow's many experiments involving the social behavior of monkeys of all ages.The results of the experiments greatly influenced his own theories.His studies he did by himself were based on observing his peers, Max Wertheimer and Ruth Benedict, while teaching at Brooklyn College. He questioned them each day on how they were feeling emotionally and physically, and why they think they feel that way. His assessments and observations from both his experiment and Harlow's experiments formed the foundation for his theories on human potential and psychological well-being. As a result, he developed his most notable theory known as the hierarchy of needs; which was his theory on the basic needs of humans. The hierarchy of needs is broken up into five sections, biological and physiological (air, food, water, shelter, sex, sleep), safety (security, order, law, stability, freedom), love and belongingness (friendship, intimacy, affection and love) Esteem (achievement, independence, status, dominance, self-respect, respect from others), and self-actualization (realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth experiences). Maslow became one of the leaders of the humanistic school of psychology in the 1950s due to his fascinating observations and

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