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Essay on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
Maslow seemed to sense, that aside from the people with emotional limitations and problems, there were times when man was at his best. Although Maslow avoided the word "spiritual", he did introduce psychology to truth, goodness, beauty, unity, transcendence, aliveness, uniqueness, perfection, justice, order and simplicity. These values he called "B-values".
In the late 1960's Abraham Maslow developed a hierarchical theory of human needs. Maslow was a humanistic psychologist who believed that people are not controlled by mechanical forces (the stimuli and reinforcement forces of behaviorism) or unconscious instinctual impulses of psychoanalysis alone.
Maslow focused on human potential, believing that humans strive to reach the highest levels of their capabilities.
Some people reach higher levels of creativity, of consciousness and wisdom. People at this level were labeled by other psychologists as "fully functioning" or possessing a "healthy personality". Maslow had a more appropriate term for these people "self-actualizing".
Maslow set up a hierarchical theory of needs in which all the basic needs are at the bottom, and the needs concerned with man's highest potential are at the top. The hierarchic theory is often represented as a pyramid, with the larger, lower levels representing the lower needs, and the upper point representing the need for self-actualization. Each level of the pyramid is dependent on the previous level. For example, a person does not feel the second need until the demands of the first have been satisfied.
Abraham Maslow was a humanistic psychologist who proposed a five tiered hierarchy to explain the motivations behind behavior. Maslow's contribution was two-fold:
1) Arranging human needs into a hierarchy, and
2) Separating out self-actualization needs and placing them at the pinnacle.
According to Maslow, in general, lower (or more basic) needs must be satisfied to at least a reasonable level before the higher level needs can even manifest themselves...................
