Lynda Taylor
Prof. Ganter
EDUC 1300
21 November, 2014
A man once said you should acknowledge your desires and realize your full potential, which every person wants to positively strive towards self-actualization. That man was Abraham Maslow, his life started in 1908, in New York in an unstable home environment with many shortcomings. His Parents were from Russia and were Jewish immigrants when they came to the U.S and lived in an anti-Semitism neighborhood, and though they were parents of seven kids, their fondness and care was not evident. In 1931 Maslow earned his master’s degree in psychology and spent a great deal of his life being a professor for college’s i.e., Brooklyn College and Brandeis University. “These are the very satisfactions that we seek for good human relationships of any kind. And it is precisely these gratifications . . . the productions of good human beings, which. . . Goal of all psychotherapy”. (249) Before every great idea there is a beginning of basic needs that every person needs to function to pursue higher desires, to emphasize your self-worth you start out with needing food, sex, water, etc... On to safety the body, family, and employment is met, to love you must sustain friends, family, and intimacy, along with esteem of confidence, and respect of others, and lastly to self-actualize is the acceptance of facts, analytical thinking, and creativity.
In the 1960’s Maslow would lend his hand to the humanistic psychology orientations, he also supported the IAAHP alongside with other colleagues who helped spread his positive theories. Through horrors of war in Vietnam Maslow inspired a new way of thinking, a vision of peace that influenced Maslow’s psychological ideas and helped him develop the discipline of humanistic psychology. Along with the psychologist Max Wertheimer and anthropologist Ruth Benedict, colleagues and advisors to Maslow whose persona help form the basis for his research about mental health and human potential, and later the theory of hierarchy of needs, along with self-actualization theory and peak experiences theory.
“It is necessary apparently to stress not what was consciously said or done, but what unconsciously done and unconsciously perceived.” (247) Maslow believed psychology had closed its doors and filled itself with psychoanalysis and pessimisms, his ideas were to open that door and be a positive influence to incoming psychologist, and with his extensive interest was his recognition of the non-linear system, in comparison had favorable attributes and procedures Maslow acknowledged. Works like Motivation and Personality that began as his foundation for later papers.
Religion, values and peak-experiences has extended its reach with questions everyone must ask themselves, how should you know what is a peak experience because this too was ground breaking research since before his time. “Like scientist . . . When suddenly through a microscope he sees things in a very different way, the moments of . . . insight, understanding.
Toward a psychology being involves more than just volunteers, but also his colleagues and pupils. To retract from basic needs and moving on to complications, the body will find itself stressed when facing dominating needs and, or wants that the philosophy of your future tends to change. And with that serves gratification or deprivation based on the road you take.
During Maslow’s life time he was never challenged on his theory till after his heart attack in 1970. Psychologist and Professor Ed Diener of the University of Illinois took it upon himself to research Maslow’s theory and modernize it. The results were sustainable but what was intriguing was even without an experiment, Maslow nearly right. "Our findings suggest that Maslow's theory is largely correct. In cultures all over the world the fulfillment of his proposed needs correlates with happiness," Diener explained. "However, an important departure from Maslow's theory is that we found
