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
World-famous scientist and one of the founders humanistic psychology Abraham Maslow 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 heavily, and his mother turned to religion and became a real fanatic. In addition, the boy was constantly faced with 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.
IN adolescence he partly benefited from the knowledge that Abraham Maslow managed to independently master by that time. And if childhood short biography psychologist describes 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 received wide application 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 it comes to 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 Maslow's personalities 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
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 in New York. According to Mr. Abraham, until the age of twenty he was a nervous, neurotic young man. At school, he becomes the best student, because he spends all his free time in the library, hiding from classmates and home 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 a difficult relationship with his mother, who raised her son in a tough, 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 term paper.
Maslow's vision of human psychology
Long 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 scientific publication about cross-cultural studies on an Indian reservation.
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 Maslow's editorial staff 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 hierarchical theory needs that form 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.
A visionary and revolutionary in the science of the past century, one of the brightest and most influential psychologists Abraham Maslow fundamentally changed our worldview to human nature and our capabilities, convincing us that we are .
Biography of Abraham Maslow deserves special attention.
“I am an anti-doctriner. I am against that which closes doors for us and cuts off opportunities.”
A. Maslow
In the footsteps of my childhood in Brooklyn
The outstanding psychologist and psychotherapist Abraham Harold Maslow was born on April 1, 1908 in Brooklyn, in a not very representative area of New York. His parents were uneducated Jews who emigrated from Russia. Maslow was the firstborn in a family of seven children. His parents had high hopes for him and really wanted him to become a literate and intelligent person.
Maslow, by his own admission, recalls his childhood years without any enthusiasm and admiration, because he was very lonely and unhappy: “It is strange that with such a childhood I did not fall ill with psychosis or neurosis. I was small Jewish boy between non-Jewish people. This is reminiscent of a similar situation when the first black man attends a white school. I was unhappy and lonely. I grew up among books in libraries, without comrades and friends. Such years of Maslow would be an excellent subject for a psychoanalytic essay.
The relationship between Maslow and his mother was quite tense and hostile. One of the authors describes in Maslow's biography that his hatred for his mother lasted until the end of her days, and he did not even come to her funeral.
She was a very strict religious woman and often threatened her children that God would punish them for all their wrong doings. This attitude forced Maslow to hate religion and not believe in God.
Maslow's father was far from being an exemplary family man. A man who “loved whiskey, women and fighting,” Abraham recalls. Furthermore, the father convinced his son that he was stupid and ugly.
Some time later, Maslow was able to forgive his father, unlike his mother, and often spoke of him with pride and love. Despite such a paternal reputation, the family business developed successfully and quite safely provided for the family.
Later, Maslow himself, who was already a certified psychologist, participated in the management of his father's barrel business.
Young years
It is worth noting that Maslow was far from handsome. In his youth, he was very complex about the shortcomings of his appearance. Attempts to improve his puny body through enhanced sports were unsuccessful. After that, he seriously delved into science.
At the age of 18, at the request of his father, Maslow entered City College in New York to study law and law. However, a career in law did not interest the young Maslow, and he began taking a more eclectic course at Cornell University.
In his penultimate year of college, Maslow became interested in psychology. As a result, this young man entered the University of Wisconsin. In 1931 he received the title of Master of Arts, and in 1934 - a doctorate. Maslow devoted his doctoral dissertation to the study of dominant and sexual behavior in a colony of monkeys.
IN school years he passionately loved his cousin Bertha Goodman. Parents did not bless this love, because they feared that children might be born with genetic defects.
But in spite of all related prohibitions, they got married shortly before moving to Wisconsin (he was 20, and she was 19). He later said, "Life didn't really start for me until I went to Wisconsin and got married."
mature years
With receipt doctoral degree, Maslow returns to New York to collaborate with famed learning theorist E. L. Thorndike of Columbia University. Then over the next 14 years, Maslow moved to Brooklyn College.
He described his years in New York as the center of the psychological universe. Psychotherapist consultations, psychological counseling, psychological services at that time in New York were sufficiently represented.
It was during this period that he met the elite of European intellectuals - Erich Fromm, Alfred Adler, Karen Horney, Ruth Benedict and Max Wertheimer. These are just some of the people Maslow turned to to uncover and study human behavior.
Informal communication with such famous scientists made it possible to form intellectual basis future humanistic views of Maslow, who was simultaneously studying psychoanalysis at that moment.
From 1951 to 1961, Maslow held the position of head of the department of psychology at Brandeis University, after which he became a professor of psychology.
In 1969, Maslow retired from Brandeis and devoted himself to an academic post at charitable foundation W.P. Laughlin in Menlo Park, California. This direction gives him the freedom to be passionate about the philosophy of democratic politics, ethics and economics.
1970 Maslow dies at the age of 62 from a heart attack, which was a consequence of a chronic heart disease.
Maslow has been a member of many honorary and professional societies. As a member of the American Psychological Association, Maslow was head of the Division of Aesthetics and the Division of Personality and social psychology and also was appointed president of the entire Association for the year 1967-1968.
Maslow was the founding editor of The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology and The Journal of Humanistic Psychology. He has also been a consulting editor for many scientific periodicals.
He studied age psychology, and on last step his life was supported by the Issalen Institute, California, and similar groups that studied human capabilities.
Maslow has written the bulk of his books in the last 10 years.
The volume was compiled with the assistance of his wife and was published posthumously in 1972 under the title "In Memory of Abraham Maslow". Biography of Abraham Maslow it is quite capable of inspiring any person, because this great scientist actually made himself.
Of all the classics Maslow psychology most fits the definition of a genius due to his deep passion for his work. The now known one is named in his honor, which personifies the distribution of human needs from low physiological to higher, spiritual.
Abraham Maslow is a prominent American psychologist, the founder of humanistic psychology.
The so-called Maslow's Pyramid, sometimes attributed to Maslow, is widely known - a diagram that hierarchically represents human needs. 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 is most dependent 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 important place in constructing theories of motivation and behavior of consumers.
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 that his positive influence on the 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 upset by 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 still intended to do, Abraham replied that he would like to “study everything.” An interest in psychology arose in his penultimate year of college, and he chose a purely psychological topic for his term paper. This happened under the influence of the bright speeches of the father of American behaviorism, John Watson. For many 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 not without interest that, unlike the handsome, lively Watson, who deserved many reproaches for licentiousness, 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, they 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 taught 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. In Maslow's words, it was something "unspeakably dull 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. His supervisor Harry Harlow, who became famous for his unique experiments on baby monkeys, performed. 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 studies 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, that 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 trend 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 a 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 the behaviorist orientation. Although Maslow's students were almost idolized, the editors of the leading psychological journals for a number of years rejected any of his manuscripts without consideration.
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 of needs was formulated, building a pyramid with a base of basic needs 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. In this way, 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 abilities. 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 life successes. 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 works of Maslow the word subjects means by no means subjects, 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 Reach 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.
Nevertheless, for several decades, attempts have been made to use it in practice, 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 you, I warn you that you will be deeply unhappy all your life." He himself, apparently, was a happy man.
American psychologist, known thanks to Maslow's humanistic pyramid, which has long migrated to the political and economic sphere of determining human needs, born April 1, 1908 in New York.
Abraham Maslow there was also a family of an artisan, where, besides him, there were 6 more children. Abraham was the eldest. The Jewish roots of the family encouraged parents - Samuel and Rosa Maslow (nee Shilovskaya) move out Kiev province Russian Empire in the 20th century in the USA. Despite the fact that the work of the potter was hard, and the parents often sorted things out, there was no money, the family moved, the boy was trampled on by his origin, Abraham later recalls that he had the strength to "stay afloat" and "not go crazy."
Abraham Maslow about his childhood:
- “I wonder how I didn’t turn into a mentally ill - a little boy from a Jewish environment who knew all the “charms” of anti-Semitism and the difficult situation in the house. I was unhappy, lonely and alienated, so I brought myself up in the library, among the only friends - books.
Abraham Maslow's Self-Study, as we can see, was not in vain - the boy was one of best students in the classroom, then at the City College of New York though higher education never finished.
In 1928, A. Maslow transferred to university in madison, where he worked closely with Harry Harlow, the young man's supervisor at that time, as well as a primate researcher. In 1930, A. Maslow received a bachelor's degree, after a year a master's degree, and in 1934 he defended his doctoral degree on the topic behavioral behavior- the direction that determined the future of the psychologist.
Since 1934, work as an assistant to E. Thorndike at the Columbia and later with John Watson. Since 1937 he worked as a professor at Brooklyn College. He remained in office for 14 years.
Among the famous friends of A. Maslow were:
- E.Fromm.
- C. Horney.
- M. Mead.
- A. Adler.
- R. Benedict.
- M. Wertheimer.
Partly due to the environment, A. Maslow began to study the theory of self-actualizing personalities.
A. Maslow on self-actualization: "The study, which was not originally planned, as such, quickly grew into an attempt to understand thinking person in terms of its uniqueness. I worshiped the highest intellect of man, sought to understand why two identical from the point of view of biology, people are different from each other.
- Maslow's self-actualization is an attempt by a person to most fully reveal his personal capabilities.
A. Maslow's pyramid of needs
The idea of the pyramid of need arose just after the theory of self-actualization - it made it possible to form a humanistic view of human nature. Before, psychoanalysis studied only deviations, and A. Maslow tried to identify healthy personality patterns in order to collect complete data about human nature.
Pyramid or Hierarchy of Needs - this a scale that allows you to reveal your abilities. Each of the steps, after actualization, pushes a person to the next one. Without a solid foundation, it will not be possible to reach a step higher.
Maslow's pyramid (base to top):
- Physiological Needs
- Security Needs
- Family/love needs
- Needs for respect/fixation in society
- Needs cognitive
- aesthetic needs
- The need for self-actualization
Traits of self-actualizing personalities: effective perception of reality and the formation of comfortable relations with it; acceptance of self and others; simplicity, openness, curiosity; focus on the problem, not on yourself; the need for privacy; independence; mystical experience; a feeling of connection with others, but not attachment; deep relationships; the ability to set goals and recognize, rank good and bad; philosophical humor; creativity; non-conformity or not belonging to any particular culture.
Who did A. Maslow refer to as self-actualized personalities:
- Abraham Lincoln
- Aldous Huxley
- Spinoza
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