His hierarchy of needs model found wide application in economic theory, ranking important place in constructing theories of motivation and behavior of consumers.
| Abraham Maslow | |
|---|---|
| Abraham Maslow | |
| Date of Birth | April 1(1908-04-01 ) |
| Place of Birth | Brooklyn, New York |
| Date of death | June 8(1970-06-08 ) (62 years old) |
| Place of death | Menlo Park, California |
| The country | USA USA |
| Scientific sphere | psychology, founder of humanistic psychology |
| Place of work | |
| Alma mater | |
| Academic degree | Ph.D |
| supervisor | Harlow, Harry Frederick |
| Notable students | Steve Andreas[d] |
| Awards and prizes | |
| Abraham Maslow at Wikimedia Commons | |
Biography
Maslow was the eldest of the seven children of the cooper Samuil Maslov and Roza Shilovskaya, who emigrated from the Kyiv province to the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. He was born in the Jewish area of Brooklyn. Father worked as a cooper; parents often quarreled. When he was nine years old, the family moved from the city's Jewish section to a non-Jewish one, and because Maslow had a pronounced Jewish appearance, he learned what anti-Semitism was. Abraham was a lonely, shy and depressed young man.
Given my childhood, one can only be surprised that I am not mentally ill. I was small Jewish boy in a non-Jewish environment. Kind of like being the first black in an all-white school. I was lonely and unhappy. I grew up in libraries, among books, without friends.
Maslow was one of the best students in the school. After graduating in 1926, on the advice of his father, he entered the City College of Law in New York, but did not even finish his first year. Maslow was first introduced to psychology at Cornell University, where E. B. Titchener was professor of psychology.
At the University of Wisconsin, he became a bachelor (), master () and doctor of science (). Maslow received a classical behavioral education, and his first scientific work, which promised him a bright future, was devoted to the relationship of sexuality and social behavior in primates.
It was Watson's excellent program that got me into psychology. But its fatal weakness is that it is only good for the laboratory and in the laboratory, you can put it on and take it off like a lab coat... It does not create an idea of a person, a philosophy of life, a concept of human nature. It does not create guidelines for life, values, choice. It's just a way of collecting behavioral data, what you can see, touch, and hear through your senses.
My research into self-actualization was not planned as a study and did not start as a study. They began as an attempt by a young thinking person to understand my two teachers, extraordinary people whom he loved and admired. It was a kind of worship to the highest intellect. It was not enough for me to simply adore them, I sought to understand why these two people are so different from ordinary people with which the world is full. These two people were Ruth Benedict and Max Wertheimer.
But Maslow's first attempts to announce his new ideas caused backlash in American psychological community dominated by the behaviorists. Even his faculty colleagues shunned him, leading psychological journals refused to publish scientific papers. In 1951 Maslow became the first dean Faculty of Psychology the newly established Brandeis University. He worked there until 1969. It was during this period that the recognition of his ideas began, and humanistic psychology began to take shape as a separate direction.
In the 1960s, Maslow became popular, and in 1967 he was elected president of the American Psychological Association, which surprised him.
I must admit that I came to the conclusion that the humanistic trend in psychology is a revolution in the most authentic, original sense of the word, in the sense in which Galileo, Darwin, Einstein and Marx made a revolution, that is, a revolution in the way of thinking and perceptions, in ideas about a person and society, in the concepts of ethics and values, in guidelines for moving forward.
A. Maslow died suddenly from acute myocardial infarction at the age of 62 years.
Sister - anthropologist and ethnographer Ruth Maslow Lewis (1916-2008), wife of anthropologist Oscar Lewis.
Scientific views of Maslow
Maslow was one of the first to study positive sides human behavior. His studies of self-actualizing personalities allowed him to formulate a positive, humanistic view of human nature. If before psychology, especially psychoanalysis, studied people with various mental disorders and on the basis of this personality theories were formulated, then Maslow took healthy and self-fulfilling people as samples, as a result, he received new data about human nature.
There are three stages in the development of this theory. At the first stage, Maslow moves away from a rigidly defined hierarchy of needs and divides all motives into two groups: scarce and existential. The first group is aimed at filling the deficit, such as the need for food or sleep. These are unavoidable needs that ensure human survival. The second group of motives serves development, these are existential motives - activity that does not arise to satisfy needs, but is associated with obtaining pleasure, satisfaction, with the search for more high purpose and her achievement. At the third stage, the concepts of metamotivation and metaneeds appear in Maslow's theory, which are associated with the existential values of a person, such as truth, goodness, beauty, and others. This existential layer of a person’s existence can be revealed to a person in the so-called “peak experiences” (peak-experience), which are an experience of delight, aesthetic pleasure, strong positive emotions.
Developing these ideas, Maslow begins to consider the scope of humanistic psychology limited and in last years life participates in an attempt to create a new, "fourth force" - transpersonal psychology, which received, however, a very limited scientific recognition.
Maslow's ideas attracted great attention both supporters and critics. The latter argued that study samples were too small for such generalizations. Maslow was especially hard hit for the subjectivity of the criteria for choosing self-actualizing personalities, as well as for the lack of accounting in his theories social factors, the surrounding context.
Maslow believed that all self-actualized people have common characteristics:
Maslow referred to the number of such self-actualized people
Psychology as a science has a long history of development, which was created by the work and research of various scientists around the world. Therefore, at present, we have the opportunity to use all the accumulated information to study mental life people and patterns of their interaction with the environment.
And one of the greatest scientists who contributed huge contribution in the development of this industry, is Abraham Maslow. An outstanding professor, ideologist, theorist and psychologist, he worked all his life to study the nature of man and the possibilities of the individual.
His theories and works made it possible to make a big breakthrough in the development of psychology. In particular, thanks to his work, she was able to overcome several rounds of development at once. About the biography and achievements of the great American researcher you can find out from this article.
About the life of the great scientist, thinker and ideologist
Abraham Maslow, a world-famous scientist and one of the founders of humanistic psychology, is a Native American. His biography begins in 1908, when the first-born was born in a Jewish family. Once immigrated to America, the parents of the newborn baby lived in Brooklyn.
Thanks to the efforts of his parents, little Abraham studied well, went in for sports and read a lot. At the same time, his relationship with the older generation left much to be desired: his father began to drink too much, and his mother turned to religion and became a real fanatic. In addition, the boy constantly faced nagging peers about the behavior of his parents and the physical clumsiness of the boy himself. But he kept on trying best results in sports while reading books from the local library one by one.
AT adolescence he partly benefited from the knowledge that Abraham Maslow managed to independently master by that time. And if a short biography of a psychologist describes childhood years in a few phrases, then youth and mature age A. Maslow is full of various events.
And the first place of work where Abraham Maslow began to apply the acquired knowledge in practice was his native institute. After receiving a master's degree, the young scientist began to study the behavioral patterns of macaques. Investigating representatives of this species of monkeys, he made certain conclusions about the sexual and dominant relations of males within the colony, about which he wrote his doctoral dissertation.
Around the same time, Maslow Abraham Harold was in contact with various scientists whose views on life and human psychology became the main foundation on which the famous humanistic theory was subsequently created. Maslow's theory.
At the age of 20, Abraham, who had already declared himself in wide scientific circles, got married. Berte Rudman became his chosen one. But since she was a cousin of Abraham Maslow, the older generation on both sides was extremely negative about this marriage. Despite this, young people legalized their relationship, which subsequently resulted in the birth of two girls - Ann and Ellen Maslow (the second is known as a very successful psychotherapist).
Published and unpublished works of the scientist
Simultaneously with the study of monkey behavior patterns and the study of human nature, Abraham Maslow wrote books. And readers could see the first results of his work in 1954, when the scientist was already over 40.
The pyramid of needs compiled by Abraham partly touched on another concept that appears in humanistic psychology and was also identified by Abraham Maslow - the “Jonah complex”. Maslow explained this by the relationship between the uncontrolled resistance to the realization of needs inherent in nature and the conscious desire of a person to reveal his talents. That is, in terms of satisfaction with their current state(stable-limited) a person seeks to maintain control over the situation, ignoring the opportunities that fate provides him daily.
8 years after the publication of the first book, another publication by Abraham Maslow was published - "On the Psychology of Being" (1962). In this work, the scientist defined in more detail and clearly what needs people experience, and divided them into groups. The professor himself considered this work unfinished, like the book " Far beyond human nature”, which the world saw a few years after the death of the psychologist, and he died in 1970.
The significant discovery of the scientist
According to Abraham, in the table of the most important life values main pressing needs person, which should be placed from top to bottom in order of importance of each of them. Thus, the pyramid of needs of Abraham Maslow was drawn up, in which the needs physical nature acted as the basis, and closer to the top were the moral and spiritual needs of man.
If you present it not in the form of a table, then Maslow's pyramid will include the following positions:
- Needs associated with human life. These are food and water, sexual satisfaction and various material resources.
- Security. Each individual strives for a sense of security, confidence in the future.
- Interaction with society. This point of the pyramid includes the need to belong to some kind of social community, maintain friendship, create relationships and a family.
- Recognition in narrow circles. One of the main human needs Maslow considered the need to feel respect for his person from the people around him.
- Self-realization/self-actualization. A person feels a desire to develop, reveal his potential, improve and hone his skills and knowledge.
The pyramid proposed by Maslow, which embodies the model of the main, according to the American scientist, human needs, perfectly reflects the meaning of the systematized provisions on motivation in the study of human nature.
By the way, the ideas of the psychologist and thinker A. Kh. Maslow, set forth as part of the study of the role and significance of motivation in human life, have been widely used in management theory.
More detailed diagram
According to Maslow, psychology can consider the hierarchy (pyramid) of human needs in more detail, based on a seven-level classification. In this case, the lowest priorities, as in the previous case, will be equated with the physiological needs of a person and his desire for self-preservation:
- Food, water, sex drive.
- Security.
- Love and desire to be needed.
- The desire to achieve recognition in society (respect, approval, success).
- The need for knowledge of the environment (knowledge and experience).
- An aesthetic component that beauty and harmony can satisfy.
- The relevance of self-development: revealing one's potential, achieving goals.
In both the first and second cases, the demand for a certain position increases as the previous one is 100% satisfied. But at the same time, these models are not fixed, so the same pattern may not be preserved when we are talking about different personalities.
Humanistic psychology, to the development of which Maslow made a significant contribution (in particular, he developed with a group of psychologists this term), was originally supposed to become an alternative direction of psychology, opposed, as well as.
And fundamental theory Personality Maslow considers all aspects of personality development, including the degree of self-actualization, its priorities and the mechanisms of development involved. Thus, Abraham Maslow pointed out the need to develop a new approach to the consideration of the psyche, since in the course of his research he was able to identify significant shortcomings of psychoanalysis. From the point of view of the American ideologist and psychologist Maslow, the basis for the development of the individual and society is the tendency of people to self-actualization and self-development, as well as the desire for personal growth. Author: Elena Suvorova
Abraham Maslow - prominent American psychologist founder of humanistic psychology.
Widely known is sometimes attributed to Maslow, the so-called " Maslow's pyramid» - a diagram representing human needs hierarchically. However, there is no such scheme in any of his publications; on the contrary, he believed that the hierarchy of needs is not fixed and in most depends on individual characteristics each person. The "pyramid of needs", introduced probably to simplify the idea of a hierarchy of needs, is found for the first time in the German-language literature of the 1970s, for example, in the first edition of the textbook by U. Stopp (1975). His theory of needs has found wide application in economics, occupying an important place in the construction of theories of motivation and consumer behavior.
Abraham Harold Maslow was born on April 1, 1908. We should probably pronounce such a strange-sounding surname for an American in the usual manner - Maslov. This surname was borne by the father of the future psychologist, a native of the southern provinces Russian Empire, who, like tens of thousands of his Jewish compatriots, shocked by the ruthless pogroms of the beginning of the century, moved to New World. There he opened a workshop for the manufacture of barrels, "got on his feet" and discharged his bride from his homeland. So their firstborn, who in other circumstances could be our compatriot and be called Abram Grigorievich Maslov, was already born in Brooklyn, not the most respectable area of New York. Maslow's childhood years would make an excellent subject for a psychoanalytic essay. His father turned out to be far from being an ideal family man, more precisely, a drunkard and a womanizer. He disappeared from the house for a long time, so his positive influence on children (there were three of them in the family) was determined mainly by his absence. One can only be surprised that the family business developed quite successfully and allowed the family to exist quite safely. And later, Abraham himself, already a certified psychologist, took part in managing the production of barrels.
Abraham's relationship with his mother developed badly and was colored by mutual hostility. Mrs. Maslow was a quarrelsome person and severely punished children for the slightest offense. In addition, she openly preferred the two younger children, and did not like the first-born. The scene was imprinted in the boy’s memory for the rest of his life: the mother smashes the heads of two cats against the wall, which her son brought from the street.
He never forgot or forgave. When his mother died, Maslow didn't even show up for her funeral. In his notes you can find the following words: “All my life philosophy and my studies have one common source - they feed on hatred and disgust for what she (mother) embodied.
It is important to note that Abraham was not at all handsome. His small build and huge nose made him repulsively comical. He was so worried about the shortcomings of his appearance that he even avoided taking the subway, waiting for an empty car for a long time, where he could not catch anyone's eye. It can even be said that in childhood and youth he was tormented by a severe inferiority complex in connection with his appearance. Perhaps that is why he was subsequently so interested in the theory of Alfred Adler, whom he even met personally when he moved to America. For Maslow himself was the living embodiment of this theory. In full accordance with Adler's ideas (with which, of course, he was not yet familiar with in his youth), he sought to compensate for his thinness and awkwardness by intensive sports. When he failed to realize himself in this field, he took up science with the same zeal.
At the age of 18, Abraham Maslow entered New York City College. The father wanted his son to become a lawyer, but the young man was absolutely not attracted to the legal career. When his father asked what he did intend to do, Abraham replied that he would like to "learn everything." He became interested in psychology in his penultimate year of college, and term paper he chose purely psychological. This happened under the influence of the bright speeches of the father of American behaviorism, John Watson. Long years Maslow remained committed to behavioral psychology and the belief that only a natural-scientific approach to human behavior opens the way to solving all the world's problems. Only over time, the limitations of the mechanistic interpretation of behavior, characteristic of behaviorism, became not only obvious to him, but also unacceptable.
It is interesting that, unlike the handsome, lively Watson, who deserved many reproaches for promiscuity, the plain Maslow was distinguished by a rare constancy in intimate relationships. In his youth, he passionately fell in love with his cousin, but, tormented by complexes, he did not dare to open up to her for a long time, fearing to be rejected. When his timid display of affection was unexpectedly reciprocated, he experienced the first peak experience in his life (this concept later became one of cornerstones his systems). Mutual love became a huge support for his unsettled self-esteem. A year later, the young people got married (he was 20, she was 19) and, as they say in the novels, lived happily ever after.
Maslow began systematic studies in psychology by entering Cornell University, and this almost extinguished his nascent interest in this science. The fact is that the first psychology course he took at Cornell was read by Wundt's student, the structuralist Edward Titchener.
Against the background of Watson's irresistible charm and the growing popularity of his behavioral ideas, Titchener's academic reasoning sounded a dull anachronism. By according to Maslow, it was something "inexpressibly boring and completely lifeless, having nothing to do with the real world and therefore I fled from there with a shudder.”
He transferred to the University of Wisconsin, where he was actively engaged in experimental studies animal behavior. Here he received a bachelor's degree in 1930, a master's degree in 1931, and in 1934, at the age of 26, a Ph.D. Harry Harlow, who became famous for his unique experiments on baby monkeys, acted as his supervisor. Under his leadership, Maslow carried out research work on the problems of dominance and sexual behavior in primates.
In those years, the problem of sexuality, despite the rapid flowering of psychoanalysis, continued to be frighteningly piquant for the public, and few scientists dared to approach it. Because of this, Maslow turned out to be one of the few who could, with a certain stretch, be called an expert on this problem. Therefore, it was to him that Alfred Kinsey subsequently turned, who was to revolutionize the American public consciousness publishing the results of their sociological research on sexual topics.
Interestingly, Maslow rejected the offer of cooperation. Subsequently, he was repeatedly accused of neglecting scientific methods and general scientific criteria. But he did not agree with Kinsey just on the grounds that he considered his research to be inconsistent with the criteria of scientific character. According to Maslow, Kinsey's sample of respondents cannot be considered representative, since only those who voluntarily agreed to participate in the surveys participated. To draw conclusions on such a delicate issue as the characteristics of sexual behavior, according to Maslow, it would be permissible only taking into account the opinions of those who reject the very possibility of discussing this topic. Since this is impossible, the conclusions are hardly reliable.
Maslow's article on the subject appeared in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology in 1951, but went largely unnoticed and is not remembered today. But in vain! The idea is correct. After all, even today we grieve about the sexual promiscuity of young people, watching its most "outrageous" representatives and forgetting about those who behave delicately and modestly.
Maslow actually did not neglect scientific experimentation and approached this matter with all seriousness. It's just that the results obtained were involuntarily lost against the background of his inherently philosophical reasoning. So, for example, few people know his remarkable work, completed already in the mid-sixties and devoted to the problem of social perception.
Maslow asked his subjects to evaluate the presented photographs according to the attractiveness parameter (it should be noted that the most ordinary faces are usually chosen for this purpose). This was required to be done in different conditions, more precisely, in differently decorated rooms - in the room "beautiful and cozy", "ordinary" and "ugly". The result turned out to be easily predictable: the more pleasant to perceive Environment, especially appreciated in terms of attractiveness, perceived faces deserve it. An interesting experiment, there is something to think about. By at least, for another psychologist, one such experience would be enough for lifetime glory. Maslow made his fame in another area.
His first scientific publication was published in 1937 as a chapter on cross-cultural research in the collection The Psychology of Personality, edited by Ross Stagner. This publication reflects the experience gained by Maslow during research work on an Indian reservation. Even with the most careful analysis, no hints of his subsequent theoretical constructions can be seen in this work, and only a few historians of science know about it today.
In the second half of the thirties, Maslow managed to personally meet many eminent psychologists who were forced by historical cataclysms to move from Europe to America. From the enumeration of these brilliant names, one could make a fairly representative table of contents of an anthology on the history of psychology of the twentieth century - in addition to the already mentioned Adler, these were Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, Kurt Koffka, Kurt Goldstein, Max Wertheimer.
The latter had a special effect on Maslow. big influence- not only as a scientist, but also as a person. It was under the influence of reverent delight in front of Wertheimer that Maslow began to study the mental healthy people who managed to achieve self-actualization in life. It was Wertheimer, as well as another acquaintance of Maslow - the famous American anthropologist Ruth Benedict, who served him as examples of the most complete embodiment of best qualities human nature. However, one has to admit with regret that even Maslow, a true humanist and optimist, numbered very few such examples.
The beginnings of Maslow's theory, which served as the basis for a whole area of scientific thought - humanistic psychology, were formulated by him in general view in two short articles published in the Psychological Review in 1943 (their content in an expanded form was later included in his famous book"Motivation and personality"). Even then, Maslow made an attempt to formulate new approach to human nature, radically different from traditional psychological views.
In his opinion, psychoanalysis impoverishes our understanding of a person, focusing on sick people and painful manifestations of personality. Behaviorism actually reduces life activity to manipulation and thereby reduces a person to the level of a stimulus-reactive mechanism. And where is the actual human in man? This is exactly what Maslow called for studying.
In 1951 he received an invitation to open university Bredais near Boston. Maslow accepted the invitation and worked at this university until 1968, heading the Department of Psychology.
It should be noted that Maslow's attempts to humanize psychology met with a fierce rejection by most colleagues who adhered to a behaviorist orientation. Although Maslow's students were almost idolized, the editors of the leading psychological journals rejected any of his manuscripts without consideration for a number of years.
In fact, the students carried him into the chair of the president of the American Psychological Association. But this happened in another era, in the late 60s - in the era of Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol, Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey. Perhaps when they say that the youth of the 60s changed the face of America, there is some truth in this. At least this is true for psychology.
The first truly significant work of Maslow, now rightfully occupying an honorable place in the gold fund of the world psychological thought, - "Motivation and Personality" - was published in 1954. It was in it that the hierarchical theory needs, building a pyramid with basic needs at the base and with the need for self-actualization at the top.
From Maslow's point of view, each person has an innate desire for self-actualization, and this desire for the maximum disclosure of one's abilities and inclinations is the highest human need. True, in order for this need to manifest itself, a person must satisfy the entire hierarchy of underlying needs.
The higher nature of man relies on his lower nature, needs it as a foundation, and collapses without this foundation. Thus, most of humanity cannot show its higher nature without satisfying the basic lower nature.
An extremely interesting aspect of Maslow's theory is his postulation of the so-called Jonah complex, which for some reason is less known even to professionals than, say, the notorious castration complex, although in real life it is much easier to notice the first than the second.
Maslow's Jonah Complex refers to the unwillingness of a person to realize his natural ability. Just as the biblical Jonah tried to shirk responsibility as a prophet, many people also shirk responsibility for fear of reaching their full potential. They prefer to set themselves small, insignificant goals, do not strive for serious ones. life success. This "fear of greatness" is perhaps the most dangerous barrier to self-actualization. rich, full-blooded life many find it unbearably difficult.
The roots of the Jonah complex can be seen in the fact that people are afraid to change their uninteresting, limited, but well-established existence, they are afraid to break away from everything familiar, to lose control over what they already have. Involuntarily, a parallel arises with the ideas of Fromm, which he expressed in his famous book"Escape from freedom". However, the explicit and implicit influence of European colleagues on the formation of Maslow's ideology has already been discussed.
By the way, speaking about the term “self-actualization”, it should be noted that it was used by K.-G. Jung, although this is rarely noted by humanist psychologists. According to Jung, self-actualization meant ultimate goal development of the individual, the achievement of unity by it on the basis of the most complete differentiation and integration of its various aspects. Very close in their content to the idea of self-actualization are also the concepts of "striving for excellence" and "creative self" by A. Adler.
In the 50s and especially in the 60s, in an era of radical reassessment of many values, Maslow's theory gained considerable popularity and recognition. Although even then in scientific circles reproaches against her continued to be heard.
From a scientific, more precisely, from a natural-scientific point of view, Maslow's position is very vulnerable to criticism. His most important theoretical judgments were the result of everyday observations and reflections, not supported by experiment. In Maslow's works, the word subjects does not mean subjects at all, but simply people who came into the author's field of vision and attracted his attention; at the same time, the author does not give any statistical calculations, on the contrary, he constantly operates with vague formulas “probably”, “probably”, “apparently” ...
However, Maslow himself seemed to be aware of this and emphasized that he considered his approach not an alternative to the mechanistic, natural-science approach, but an addition to it.
In his later works Toward a Psychology of Being (1962) and The Far Limits of Human Nature (published posthumously in 1971), Maslow significantly modified his concept of motivation and personality, effectively abandoning the multi-level pyramid of needs that today's students continue to diligently memorize.
He divided all human needs into lower, “deficient”, dictated by the lack of something and therefore saturable, and higher, “existential”, focused on development and growth, and therefore unsatisfied. (Again, one involuntarily recalls Fromm's "To have or to be"). However, the author himself considered these works as preliminary, hoping that in the future they would receive some kind of confirmation.
He did not live to realize his hopes - he died suddenly of a heart attack on June 8, 1970. True, it must be said that even if he lived to be a hundred years old, his aspirations were not destined to come true. For even today the verdict pronounced by the authors of the American History modern psychology"- by the Schultz spouses: "The theory of self-actualization lends itself laboratory research rather weakly, and in most cases - not confirmed at all.
However, for decades, attempts have been made to practical use, in particular - in management practice. And what is most interesting - these attempts for the most part are quite successful. How can one not recall the words of an out-of-fashion classic about the most reliable criterion of truth!
Thirty years ago, Abraham Maslow wrote, "If you are deliberately going to become less important than your ability allows, I warn you that you will be deeply unhappy all your life." He himself, apparently, was a happy man.
1908 in New York (USA). He owes his surname, pronounced as “Maslov” in Russian, to his father, a native of the southern provinces of the Russian Empire.
At school, Maslow was one of the best students, and after graduating in 1926, he entered the City College of Law in New York, but just two weeks later he left it and moved to Cornell University, where he began to study psychology.
In 1928, Maslow transferred to the University of Winconsis, where he actively engaged in experimental studies of animal behavior. Here he received a bachelor's degree in 1930, a master's degree in 1931, and in 1934, at the age of 26, a Ph.D. Maslow received a classical behavioral education, and his first scientific work, which promised him a bright future, was devoted to the problems of dominance and sexual behavior of primates.
In 1934, he began working at Columbia University as a research assistant with the well-known behaviorist Edward Thorndike, and three years later he accepted an offer to become a professor at Brooklyn College, where he worked for 14 years. At the same time, his first scientific publication saw the light, which was a chapter on cross-cultural research in the collection Psychology of Personality (1937).
At this time, Maslow met a galaxy of famous European psychologists who emigrated to the United States from Nazi Germany, including Alfred Adler, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, Margaret Mead, Max Wertheimer and Ruth Benedict. The last two became not only Maslow's teachers and friends, but also those people, thanks to whom the idea of studying self-actualizing personalities arose.
Maslow was one of the first to study the positive aspects of human behavior. His studies of self-actualizing personalities allowed him to formulate a positive, humanistic view of human nature. If before psychology, especially psychoanalysis, studied people with various mental disorders, and on the basis of this, personality theories were formulated, then Maslow took healthy and realized people As a result, he received new data about the nature of man.
However, Maslow's attempts to announce his new ideas caused a backlash in the American psychological community, which was dominated by the ideas of behaviorism.
In 1951, Maslow received an invitation to the post of dean of the psychology department at the newly opened Brandeis University near Boston. Here he worked until 1969. It was during this period that his ideas were recognized, he became popular, and humanistic psychology took shape as a separate direction.
Maslow's first truly significant work, which now rightfully occupies an honorable place in the golden fund of world psychological thought, Motivation and Personality, was published in 1954. It formulated a hierarchical theory of needs, building a pyramid with basic needs at the base and with the need for self-actualization at the top.
It is Maslow's Pyramid, a diagram that represents human needs in a hierarchical way, that is best known from scientific heritage scientist.
His theory of the hierarchy of needs has found wide application in economics, occupying an important place in the construction of theories of motivation and consumer behavior. Maslow's Pyramid generally reflects evolutionary development personality as satisfaction from physiologically determined needs to intellectual. In the 1950s and especially in the 1960s, in an era of radical reassessment of many values, Maslow's theory gained considerable popularity and recognition, although even then reproaches against it continued to be heard in scientific circles.
In his later works Toward a Psychology of Being (1962) and The Far Limits of Human Nature (published posthumously in 1971), Maslow significantly modified his concept of motivation and personality, effectively abandoning the multi-level pyramid of needs that today's students continue to diligently memorize.
He divided all human needs into lower, “deficient”, dictated by the lack of something and therefore saturated, and higher, “existential”, focused on development and growth, and therefore unsatisfied. However, the author considered these works as preliminary, hoping that in the future they will receive some kind of confirmation.
Abraham Maslow wrote: If you are deliberately going to become a less significant person than your abilities allow you, I warn you that you will be deeply unhappy all your life.».
Abraham Maslow dies suddenly of a heart attack
Psychologist and psychotherapist Abraham Harold Maslow(real name Abram Maslov) was born in New York on April 1, 1908. Abraham's parents were Russian Jews who emigrated from Kyiv to America.
Maslow received his secondary education in free schools New York. According to Mr. Abraham, until the age of twenty he was a nervous, neurotic young man. At school he becomes best student because everything free time spends in the library, hiding from classmates and domestic problems.
On the advice of his parents, after graduating from school, Maslow enters City College of Law. Interest in studies disappeared quickly, the career of a lawyer did not attract him at all. Therefore, he dropped out of school without finishing his first year.
Maslow's development as a research psychologist was directly influenced by complicated relationship with a mother who raised her son in a hard, authoritarian style. It was negative childhood memories that became the impetus for the study of the human psyche. In his memoirs, Maslow wrote: "My studies have one common source - they feed on hatred and disgust for what the mother embodied."
At the age of twenty, Abraham married his cousin Bertha Goodman and moved to Wisconsin. In 1928 they entered the university together.
Marriage and a new place of residence significantly increased Maslow's self-esteem and self-esteem, who always had complexes about his appearance, therefore he avoided public places.
At Maslow University, he took up science with zeal. In the penultimate year of university, he develops an interest in psychology. Influenced by the ideas of John Watson, the father of American behaviorism, he chooses psychological theme for course work.
Maslow's vision of human psychology
For many years, Maslow believed that the way to solve the world's problems lies through a natural science approach to human behavior. But over time, this interpretation became unacceptable for him.
At the University of Wisconsin, he begins to engage in experimental research on animal behavior. Under the guidance of Harry, Harlow did work on the dominance and sexual behavior of monkeys. The topic of sexuality in those days was sensitive for society, so few dared to touch it.
In 1937, the first scholarly publication on cross-cultural research on an Indian reservation was published.
Maslow - Founder of Humanistic Psychology
Under the influence of Max Wertheimer, Maslow begins to study people who have achieved self-actualization in life. He calls to study the human in man.
Mr. Abraham tried to humanize psychology, but was misunderstood by his colleagues, and the editors of the journals ignored Maslow as a scientist, not accepting any of his manuscripts for publication.
But the student environment, on the contrary, was loyal to the views of their teacher. It was the students who contributed to the fact that he became president of the American Psychological Association in the late 60s.
Scientific works of Maslow
Maslow's first work Motivation and personality was published in 1954. It sets out a hierarchical theory of needs that forms a pyramid. At the base of the pyramid are basic needs, and at the top is the need for self-actualization. But in order for this need to manifest itself, it is necessary to satisfy the entire underlying hierarchy of needs.
In the 1960s, Maslow's theory gained popularity and recognition. Then came his book New frontiers of human nature».
In later works Towards the psychology of being" (1962) and " Far beyond human psyche
” (published after his death, in 1971) Maslow practically abandons the multi-level pyramid of needs.
Maslow divided all human needs into lower ones, which arose due to a lack of something and therefore are filled, and higher needs, leading to growth and development, and therefore - insatiable. The author considered this theory preliminary, hoping for its further confirmation. But he did not live up to this moment, on June 8, 1970, Maslow died.
