Comprehensive information and links about Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow (April 1, 1908 – June 8, 1970) was an American psychologist. He is mostly noted today for his proposal of a hierarchy of human needs.

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Biography

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Maslow was the first of seven children of Jewish immigrants from Russia. His parents were uneducated, but they insisted that he study law. At first, Abraham acceded to their wishes and enrolled in the City College of New York. However, after three semesters he transferred to Cornell, then back to CCNY. After he married, he moved to Wisconsin to attend the University of Wisconsin from which he received his B.A. (1930), his M.A. (1931), and his Ph.D. (1934) in psychology. While in Wisconsin, Maslow studied with Harry Harlow, who was known for his studies of rhesus monkeys and attachment behavior. A year after graduation, Maslow returned to New York to work with E. L. Thorndike at Columbia.

Maslow began teaching full time at Brooklyn College. During this time he met many leading European psychologists, including Alfred Adler and Erich Fromm. In 1951, Maslow became the chairman of the psychology department at Brandeis University, where he began his theoretical work. There, he met Kurt Goldstein, who introduced him to the idea of self-actualization.

He retired to California, where he died of a heart attack in 1970 after years of ill health.

Maslow's primary contribution to psychology is his Hierarchy of Human Needs, which he often presented as a pyramid, with self-actualization at the top as the highest of those needs (or conflicts or tensions) in ones life. The base of the pyramid is the physiological needs, which are necessary for survival. Once these are taken care of (resolved), an individual can concentrate on the second layer, the need for safety and security. The third layer is the need for love and belonging, followed by the need for esteem. Finally, self-actualization forms the apex of the pyramid.

The idea of the pyramid came to his mind after an inspiration on visiting the Great Pyramids of Egypt.

In this scheme, the first four layers are what Maslow called or D-needs. If they are not filled, you feel anxiety and attempt to fill them. If they are filled, you feel nothing; you feel only the lack. Each layer also takes precedence over the layer above it; you do not feel the lack of safety and security until your physiological needs are taken care of, for example. In Maslow's terminology, a need does not become until the needs below it are met.

Needs beyond the D-needs are "growth needs", "being values" or B-needs. When fulfilled, they do not go away, rather, they motivate further. He outlines about 14 of these values or B-needs, including beauty, meaning, truth, wholeness, justice, order, simplicity, richness, etc.

Maslow also proposed that people who have reached self-actualization will sometimes experience a state he referred to as "transcendence," in which they become aware of not only their own fullest potential, but the fullest potential of human beings at large. He described this transcendence and its characteristics in an essay in the posthumously published . In the essay, he describes this experience as not always being transitory, but that certain individuals might have ready access to it, and spend more time in this state. He makes a point that these individuals experience not only ecstatic joy, but also profound, "cosmic-sadness," (Maslow, 1971) at the ability of humans to foil chances of transcendence in their own lives, and in the world at large.