Existential Psychology
Existentialism is the part of philosophy that concerns itself with the question of human existence.
The being in the world idea of existentialism posits that the person cannot exist without the
world and the world cannot exist without a person to see it. Likewise, positivists focus on laws
that govern the behavior of entities and articles in the world, non-positivists focus on the
subjective nature of the world. They argue that nothing would exist if there were no individuals
to see it. Existentialism argues against the idea that people are ruled by some fixed material laws.
Because of this belief, the approach encourages theories that study the individual in terms of
creativity, ingenuity, and self-fulfillment.
Learn more about Existentialism as an approach and a framework for the study of
personality here.
Humanistic Approach
Humanism is the term in psychology that applies to an approach which studies the uniqueness,
worth and values of the entire person not only from the observer’s perspective but also from the
person’s perspective. As we noted in existentialism this system is called phenomenological.
Personality is studied from the individual’s particular slant on his experience. This humanistic
approach is sometimes called the third force, the first two being psychoanalysis and behaviorism.
The humanistic approach rejects the psychodynamic approach because of its reliance on the
unconscious, irrational and instinctive forces as determinants of human behavior and thoughts.
The humanists also deny the hypotheses of the behaviorist approach, which concentrates its
energies on reinforcement, the stimulus and response paradigm and its strong reliance on animal
research. Humanists view these perspectives as basically dehumanizing.
To sum up, the humanist believes in the existential concept of free will and the
exercise of free will. We make choices in life; we choose our paths and their
consequences. The humanist believes in the basic goodness of people. They view the
individual as having an inborn need to better himself and the world. The humanist
stresses the worth of each individual, the significance of human values and the
inventive and active nature of humans. This perspective is essentially an optimistic
one and focuses its lens on the human capacity to grow, change and rise above
adversity. Humanism is the groundwork for the human potential movement.
Humanistic Approach Continued
When we talk about the human potential movement we are talking about psychotherapies follow
the humanistic approach and stress the development of individuals through the methods of
encounter groups, meditation and sensitivity training, etc. Theorists associated with the
humanistic movement are Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and Gordon Allport to name a few.
There are some very important elements from existential and humanistic psychology.
ELEMENTS OF EXISTENTIAL AND HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY
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•
Erich Fromm always encouraged the importance of personal relationships and
commitment to the common good over submission to the state. He believed that
love was not something that just happened to the individual but needed
attention, knowledge, and struggle. He felt that love allows us to become less
alienated while we continue to maintain personal honor. Much of his work is
drawn from both religion and mysticism and he incorporates many of their
ideas into his understanding of personality.
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CONCEPT OF LOVE
NOTION OF RESPONSIBILITY
Carl Rogers believed that people have an innate tendency toward growing and
maturing. He felt that every person could realize their goals and desires in life
but they were responsible for these achievements. He believed that the person
who successfully did so achieved what he called self-actualization. He was also
careful to state that not all people are capable of reaching a state of selfactualization.
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
Instead of focusing on pathology or what goes wrong with people, Abraham Maslow was
interested in what goes right with people. Toward that end, he formulated what he called a
Hierarchy of Human Needs. It is usually displayed as a pyramid. At the very bottom of his
pyramid are the basic survival needs. As we fulfill these needs we work our way up the pyramid
to higher aspirations such as security, love and self-esteem needs. At the pinnacle of the pyramid,
we find self-actualization. At this point, the individual wants to realize his personal potential. He
seeks self-fulfillment, grows spiritually and achieves his greatest potential.
While both Jung and James spoke of self-actualization it is most closely associated with Maslow
mainly due to his work on the hierarchy of needs and the ideas of self-actualization, peak
experiences, and personal growth. The Personal Orientation Inventory is one scale that attempts
to assess self-actualization; it seems to capture at least some aspects of a healthy personality. One
parting thought is that later in his life Maslow came to the realization that people had a darker,
brittle side but he remained optimistic about the inherent good and potential of all people.
Learn more about Maslow's theory and other theories of personal motivation as a part of
personality and the human condition here.
Positive Psychology
WHO IS HAPPY?
This seems like a straightforward and even simplistic question and yet it is complex. Let’s take a
look at one thing it is not. It is not a function of being in fortunate situations. It appears to
symbolize a combination of personal qualities, optimistic cognitions such as things always work
out for the best, and internal psychological procedures.
Positive psychology focuses on enhancing the functioning of human beings from the standpoint
of mental wellness, not mental illness. It investigates, among other things, what makes
individuals happy. It explores the positive strengths of life such as hope, wisdom, inventiveness,
and spirituality.
American psychologist David G. Myers is concerned with what he calls the American Paradox.
He has found that even though Americans have more in the way of material goods they are less
likely to say they are happy. While on one hand, we have an abundance on the other we have
more adolescent violence, more people in prisons and more teen suicides, etc. This is often seen
as a moral decline.
The interpersonal theory of psychiatry revolves around the notion that personality is influenced
by the regular social experiences faced by the individual. Harry Stack Sullivan considered the
idea of chumship, and the adolescent social threats of rejection, loneliness, and isolation.
Sullivan called the idea that we have one fixed personality the illusion of individuality.
The Interactionist Approach
Any discussion of the interactionist perspective must center on the social circumstances that
surround an individual. The interactionist approach elicits from many other perspectives but in
the end, it crafts a more complex view of patterns of behavior.
Henry Murray is a principal founder of the interactionist approach to personality. He developed
his theory that he structured in terms of motives, presses, and needs. He was influenced by
Lewin’s idea of contemporaneous causation. This means that behavior occurs at the moment due
to a variety of influences in both the person and the environment.
In Murray’s lexicon, a press was an environmental push on the personality. He felt some needs
change and are transitory while other needs are more ingrained in us. He believed that the
psychogenic needs, though mostly unconscious in their operation, play a key role in our
personality. He called his theory a personological system because it focused on personality as a
vigorous process that integrated the individual’s responsiveness to the pressures of the
environment.
A combination of needs and presses are what Murray termed thema which he measured with the
Thematic Apperception Test or TAT. An outgrowth of Murray’s work can be seen in the work of
Dan P. McAdams. He and his colleagues try to study the entire person through biographies. His
ideas of internal needs and external presses work in harmony.
In summary, Murray took unconscious motivation proposed by Freud, Jung, and
Adler; environmental pressures of Lewin indicated by the equation B=f(P, E) or
behavior is a function of personality and environment; concepts of traits developed by
Gordon Allport; the idea of chums and the psychosocial threats of adolescence
proposed by Sullivan; Mead’s concept of the social self; and Sapir’s assessments of
the importance of culture and combined them into a study of personality and the
aspects that influence an individual’s life course.
TYPES OF NEEDS
•
First
The first he identified were primary needs. These are similar to Maslow’s survival
needs.
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Secondary
The secondary needs he felt were primarily psychological such as the need for love and
care, freedom and individuality, and accomplishment.
Walter Mishel
Walter Mischel’s argument that the idea of personality traits makes hardly any sense is
predicated on his notion that behavior varies so greatly by situation. He argued that correlations
involving traits predicting behavior had a correlation coefficient of .30 which he considered too
small to assume a personality/behavior relationship. He posits what is more important is the
situation. He believes that a person’s behavior is influenced by two factors; one of these is the
features of the situation the person is focusing on and the second is how the person perceives the
situation. He believes similarity in behavioral response is only likely when the behavior is likely
to produce the same results as happened in a similar situation.
Recently Mischel has looked at individual differences by looking at the meanings that people
give to stimuli and reinforcements. Since he posits that these different meanings are a result of
learning while experiencing various situations he called them strategies. The strategies are
encoding or how an individual categorizes external information; competencies which include
intelligence; expectancies or an individual’s prediction of outcomes of various behaviors; and
goals and values which provide the individual with behavior reliability.
Attribution Personality Theories
Attribution or Implicit Personality theories examine how people make inferences about other
people based on what they observe about their behavior. This type of attributional behavior tends
to simplify our world. Individuals, it has been found, tends to overestimate the consistency of
their own behaviors.
The power of situations is an interesting reason why personality can be such a weak predictor of
behavior. Sometimes the situation is so powerful that it supersedes our inclinations. A good
example of this type of situation would be a fire in a building. Although an individual is usually
quiet and calm, it would not be unusual for that person to be caught up in the hysteria of the
crowd trying to escape the flames and behave in a panicked or irrational way.
As we have seen previously, not all traits are similarly relevant to all people and certain
situations give individuals the opportunity to put forth certain traits. Consistency within
situations comes with the problem of how do we classify situations and where would we expect
behavioral consistency. We also look at the aggregation or average of behavior across situations.
If for example, a person is known to be an extrovert but we observe him at a party as quiet and
keeping to himself we might ask ourselves what is going on. There are at least two possible
answers. There is the issue of reliability. Is this one sample of behavior a good indicator of
personality? The issue of appropriateness of the situation to a particular trait has to also be
considered. Perhaps this is a very formal and low-key affair.
The Social Self
•
•
•
Have you ever wondered why when you see someone get hurt you feel bad, or when you
are watching an exciting sporting event you get excited? Or how about when you watch
someone tasting food and they wrinkle their nose at it and you feel disgusted?
Psychologists have also wondered about these things and now some researchers believe
that mirror neurons in the brain might hold the answers. Simply put, these brain neurons
fire in response to the actions or states that we observe in others and mirror or respond
equally in us whether or not we are performing the same action or are in the same state. It
seems to be a simple idea, but the implications are not simple at all. Researchers now
think that mirror neurons might account for autism, empathy and even the development
of language.
Developing a social self is one of the primary tasks of infancy and childhood. The child
learns that his hand is separate from another’s hand and begins to learn how to behave
appropriately in social situations. The social self is more dominant in some people and
some situations than others. Going back to Kurt Lewin’s ideas about field independence
and field dependence we can reasonably say that in social situations a person who has
high field independence may act more independently. Conversely, a person with high
field dependence may conform to situational demands.
•
•
DEVELOPING A SOCIAL SELF
SOCIAL IDENTITY VS. PERSONAL IDENTITY
When we consider social identity versus personal identity we can be talking
about low self-monitoring versus high self-monitoring. A low self-monitor is
less responsive to the expectations or reactions of others, thus his behavior is
fairly consistent across situations. A high self-monitor, on the other hand, is
sensitive to social influences that vary across situations and thus, it is more
difficult to perceive his personality. People tend to pursue those situations that
confirm our self-conceptions. This tends to create more personality
consistency.
•
•
•
JACK BLOCK
Psychologist Jack Block believes that we need to follow people over time to obtain the
longitudinal data necessary to understand personality. Psychologist Avshalom Caspi uses
the term life course approach. He suggests that individuals create the life course by
varying situations and how they interpret them and interact with them. Every experience
has its effects in the framework of previous experience. In other words, we are more
affected by certain milieus at certain times of our lives. Conrad Lorenz did much work in
this area. He talked about readiness and critical periods and imprinting in developmental
phases. However, we can experience these critical periods in a more transitory fashion
based on circadian rhythms, etc.
The interpersonal circumplex model is a way of theorizing and assessing interpersonal
behavior. It is defined by two axes. The vertical axis is concerned with dominance and
power and the horizontal axis with warmth and harmony. These are combined in a twodimensional circle.
Conclusion
In summary, the humanistic and existential perspectives involve theorists Abraham Maslow, Carl
Rogers, Erich Fromm and others. Their greatest strength is recognizing that humans have a
spiritual potential and struggle for dignity and self-fulfillment. One of their weaknesses as we
have noted in some of the other approaches, is that it shuns quantification and the principles of
the scientific method, which are needed in order to understand personality from a scientific
perspective.
References
Cherry, Kendra (updated January 21, 2016). Murray’s Theory of
Psychogenic Needs. Retrieved March 17, 2016, from
http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/a/psychogenic.htm
Myers, David G. (July 25, 2000). Resolving the American Paradox
Retrieved 3/15/16 from
http://www.davidmyers.org/Brix?pageID=72
McLeod, S.A. (2015). Humanism. Retrieved 3/14/16 from
www.simplypsychology.org/humanistic.html
Rank, J. (n.d.) Erich Fromm. Page 261. Retrieved 3/15/16 from
http://psychology.jrank.org/pages/261/Erich-Fromm.html
Sincero, Sarah Mae (July 19, 2012). Social Cognitive Theories of
Personality. Retrieved March 18, 2016 from Explorable.com
https://explorable.com/social-cognitive-theories-of-personality
Winerman, Lea.Monitor Staff (October 2005) The Minds Mirror. Vol 36,
No 9 Print Version: page 48.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/oct05/mirror.aspx
Personality Theory
In contrast to both the often dark, subconscious emphasis of the psychodynamic theorists
and the somewhat cold, calculated perspectives of behavioral/cognitive theorists, the humanistic
psychologists focus on each individual’s potential for personal growth and self-actualization. Carl
Rogers was influenced by strong religious experiences (both in America and in China) and his early
clinical career in a children’s hospital. Consequently, he developed his therapeutic techniques and
the accompanying theory in accordance with a positive and hopeful perspective. Rogers also
focused on the unique characteristics and viewpoint of individuals.
Abraham Maslow is best known for his extensive studies on the most salient feature of the
humanistic perspective: self-actualization. He is also the one who referred to humanistic
psychology as the third force, after the psychodynamic and behavioral/cognitive perspectives, and
he specifically addressed the need for psychology to move beyond its study of unhealthy
individuals. He was also interested in the psychology of the work place, and his recognition in the
business field has perhaps made him the most famous psychologist.
Henry Murray was an enigmatic figure, who seemingly failed to properly acknowledge the
woman who inspired much of his work, and who believed his life had been something of a
failure. Perhaps he felt remorse as a result of maintaining an extramarital affair with the
aforementioned woman, thanks in large part to the advice and help of Carl Jung! Murray extended a
primarily psychodynamic perspective to the study of human needs in normal individuals. His
Thematic Apperception Test was one of the first psychological tests applied outside of a therapeutic
setting, and it provided the basis for studying the need for achievement (something akin to a learned
form of self-actualization).
Carl Rogers and Humanistic Psychology
Carl Rogers is the psychologist many people associate first with humanistic psychology, but
he did not establish the field in the way that Freud established psychoanalysis. A few years older
than Abraham Maslow, and having moved into clinical practice more directly, Rogers felt a need to
develop a new theoretical perspective that fit with his clinical observations and personal
beliefs. Thus, he was proposing a humanistic approach to psychology and, more specifically,
psychotherapy before Maslow. It was Maslow, however, who used the term humanistic psychology
as a direct contrast to behaviorism and psychoanalysis. And it was Maslow who contacted some
friends, in 1954, in order to begin meetings that led to the creation of the American Association for
Humanistic Psychology. Rogers was included in that group, but so were Erich Fromm and Karen
Horney, both of whom had distinctly humanistic elements in their own theories, elements that shared
a common connection to Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology (Stagner, 1988). In addition, the
spiritual aspects of humanistic psychology, such as peak experiences and transcendence, have
roots in the work of Carl Jung and William James, and go even further back in time to ancient
philosophies of Yoga and Buddhism.
In at least one important way, Rogers’ career was similar to that of Sigmund Freud. As he
began his clinical career, he found that the techniques he had been taught were not very
effective. So, he began experimenting with his own ideas, and developing his own therapeutic
approach. As that approach developed, so did a unique theory of personality that aimed at
explaining the effectiveness of the therapy. Rogers found it difficult to explain what he had learned,
but he felt quite passionately about it:
…the real meaning of a word can never be expressed in words, because the real meaning would
be the thing itself. If one wishes to give such a real meaning he should put his hand over his mouth
and point. This is what I should most like to do. I would willingly throw away all the words of this
manuscript if I could, somehow, effectively point to the experience which is therapy. It is a process,
a thing-in-itself, an experience, a relationship, a dynamic… (pp. ix; Rogers, 1951)
Brief Biography of Carl Rogers
Carl Ransom Rogers was born on January 8, 1902, in Chicago, Illinois. His parents were
well-educated, and his father was a successful civil engineer. His parents loved their six children, of
whom Rogers was the fourth, but they exerted a distinct control over them. They were
fundamentalist Christians, who emphasized a close-knit family and constant, productive work, but
approved of little else. The Rogers household expected standards of behavior appropriate for the
‘elect’ of God: there was no drinking of alcohol, no dancing, no visits to the theater, no card games,
and little social life at all (DeCarvalho, 1991; Thorne, 2003).
Rogers was not the healthiest of children, and his family considered him to be overly
sensitive. The more his family teased him, the more he retreated into a lonely world of fantasy. He
sought consolation by reading books, and he was well above his grade level for reading when he
began school. In 1914 the family moved to a large farm west of Chicago, a move motivated
primarily by a desire to keep the children away from the temptations of suburban city life. The result
was even more isolation for Rogers, who lamented that he’d only had two dates by the end of high
school. He continued to learn, however, becoming something of an expert on the large moths that
lived in the area. In addition, his father encouraged the children to develop their own ventures, and
Rogers and his brothers raised a variety of livestock. Given these interests, and in keeping with
family tradition, Rogers enrolled in the University of Wisconsin-Madison to study scientific agriculture
(DeCarvalho, 1991; Thorne, 2003).
During his first year of college, Rogers attended a Sunday morning group of students led by
Professor George Humphrey. Professor Humphrey was a facilitative leader, who refused to be
conventional and who encouraged the students to make their own decisions. Rogers found the
intellectual freedom very stimulating, and he also began to make close friends. This increased
intellectual and emotional energy led Rogers to re-examine his commitment to Christianity. Given
his strong religious faith, he decided to change his major to history, in anticipation of a career as a
Christian minister. He was fortunate to be chosen as one of only twelve students from America to
attend a World Student Christian Federation conference in Peking, China. He traveled throughout
China (also visiting Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines, and Hawaii) for 6 months, surrounded
by other intelligent and creative young people. He kept a detailed journal, and wrote lengthy letters
to his family and Helen Elliott, a childhood friend whom he considered to be his “sweetheart.” His
mind was stretched in all directions by this profound cross-cultural experience, and the intellectual
and spiritual freedom he was embracing blinded him to the fact that his fundamentalist family was
deeply disturbed by what he had to say. However, by the time Rogers was aware of his family’s
disapproval, he had been changed, and he believed that people of very different cultures and faiths
can all be sincere and honest (Kirschenbaum, 1995; Thorne, 2003). As a curious side note, Rogers’
roommate on the trip was a Black seminary professor. Rogers was vaguely aware that it was
strange at that time for a Black man and a White man to room together, but he was particularly
surprised at the stares they received from the Chinese people they met, who had never seen a Black
person before (Rogers & Russell, 2002). After his return from China, Rogers graduated from
college, and 2 months later he married Helen. Again his family disapproved, believing that the
young couple should be more established first. But Rogers had been accepted to the Union
Theological Seminary in New York City, and both he and Helen wanted to be together. His family
may have wanted them to wait because Union Theological Seminary was, perhaps, the most liberal
seminary in America at the time (DeCarvalho, 1991; Rogers & Russell, 2002; Thorne, 2003).
Rogers spent 2 years at the seminary, including a summer assignment as the pastor of a
small church in Vermont. However, his desire not to impose his own beliefs on others, made it
difficult for him to preach. He began taking courses at nearby Teachers’ College of Columbia
University, where he learned about clinical and educational psychology, as well as working with
disturbed children. He then transferred to Teachers’ College, and after writing a dissertation in
which he developed a test for measuring personality adjustment in children, he earned his Ph.D. in
Clinical Psychology. Then, in 1928, he began working at the Rochester Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children (DeCarvalho, 1991; Thorne, 2003).
Rogers was immersed in his work in Rochester for 12 years. He found that even the most
elaborate theories made little sense when dealing with children who had suffered severe
psychological damage after traveling through the courts and the social work systems. So Rogers
developed his own approach, and did his best to help them. Many of his colleagues, including the
director, had no particular therapeutic orientation:
When I would try to see what I could do to alter their behavior, sometimes they would refuse
to see me the next time. I’d have a hard time getting them to come from the detention home to my
office, and that would cause me to think, “What is it that I did that offended the child?” Well, usually
it was overinterpretation, or getting too smart in analyzing the causes of behavior…So we
approached every situation with much more of a question of “What can we do to help?” rather than
“What is the mysterious cause of this behavior?” or “What theory does the child fit into?” It was a
very good place for learning in that it was easy to be open to experience, and there was certainly no
pressure to fit into any particular pattern of thought. (pg. 108; Rogers & Russell, 2002)
Eventually Rogers wrote a book outlining his work with children, The Clinical Treatment of
the Problem Child (Rogers, 1939), which received excellent reviews. He was offered a
professorship at Ohio State University. Beginning as a full professor gave Rogers a great deal of
freedom, and he was frequently invited to give talks. It has been suggested that one such talk, in
December 1940, at the University of Minnesota, entitled “Newer Concepts in Psychotherapy,” was
the official birthday of client-centered therapy. Very popular with his students, Rogers was not so
welcome amongst his colleagues. Rogers believed that his work was particularly threatening to
those colleagues who believed that only their own expertise could make psychotherapy
effective. After only 4 years, during which he published Counseling and Psychotherapy (Rogers,
1942), Rogers moved on to the University of Chicago, where he established the counseling center,
wrote Client-Centered Therapy (Rogers, 1951) and contributed several chapters to Psychotherapy
and Personality Change (Rogers & Dymond, 1954), and in 1956 received a Distinguished Scientific
Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association. Then, in 1957, he accepted a
joint appointment in psychiatry and psychology at the University of Wisconsin to study psychotic
individuals. Rogers had serious doubts about leaving Chicago, but felt that the joint appointment
would allow him to make a dramatic contribution to psychotherapy. It was a serious mistake. He did
not get along with his colleagues in the psychology department, whom he considered to be
antagonistic, outdated, “rat-oriented,” and distrustful of clinical psychology, and so he resigned. He
kept his appointment in the psychiatry department, however, and in 1961 published perhaps his
most influential book, On Becoming a Person (Rogers, 1961).
In 1963, Rogers moved to California to join the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute, at the
invitation of one of his former students, Richard Farson. This was a non-profit institute dedicated to
the study of humanistically-oriented interpersonal relations. Rogers was leery of making another
major move, but eventually agreed. He became very active in research on encounter groups and
educational theory. Five years later, when Farson left the institute, there was a change in its
direction. Rogers was unhappy with the changes, so he joined some colleagues in leaving and
establishing the Center for Studies of the Person, where he remained until his death. In his later
years, Rogers wrote books on topics such as personal power and marriage (Rogers, 1972,
1977). In 1980, he published A Way of Being (Rogers, 1980), in which he changed the terminology
of his perspective from “client-centered” to “person-centered.” With the assistance of his daughter
Natalie, who had studied with Abraham Maslow, he held many group workshops on life, family,
business, education, and world peace. He traveled to regions where tension and danger were high,
including Poland, Russia, South Africa, and Northern Ireland. In 1985 he brought together influential
leaders of seventeen Central American countries for a peace conference in Austria. The day he
died, February 4, 1987, without knowing it, he had just been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize
(DeCarvalho, 1991; Kirschenbaum, 1995; Thorne, 2003).
Placing Rogers in Context: A Psychology 2,600 Years in the Making
Carl Rogers was an extraordinary individual whose approach to psychology emphasized
individuality. Raised with a strong Christian faith, exposed to Eastern culture and spirituality in
college, and then employed as a therapist for children, he came to value and respect each person
he met. Because of that respect for the ability of each person to grow, and the belief that we are
innately driven toward actualization, Rogers began the distinctly humanistic approach to
psychotherapy that became known as client-centered therapy.
Taken together, client-centered therapy and self-actualization offer a far more positive approach
to fostering the growth of each person than most other disciplines in psychology. Unlike the existing
approaches of psychoanalysis, which aimed to uncover problems from the past, or behavior
therapies, which aimed to identify problem behaviors and control or “fix” them, client-centered
therapy grew out of Rogers’ simple desire to help his clients move forward in their lives. Indeed, he
had been trained as a psychoanalyst, but Rogers found the techniques unsatisfying, both in their
goals and their ability to help the children he was working with at the time. The seemingly hands-off
approach of client-centered therapy fit well with a Taoist perspective, something Rogers had studied,
discussed, and debated during his trip to China. In A Way of Being, Rogers (1980) quotes what he
says is perhaps his favorite saying, one which sums up many of his deeper beliefs:
If I keep from meddling with people, they take care of themselves,
If I keep from commanding people, they behave themselves,
If I keep from preaching at people, they improve themselves,
If I keep from imposing on people, they become themselves.
Lao Tsu, c600 B.C.; Note: This translation differs somewhat from the one
cited in the References. I have included the translation Rogers quoted,
since the difference likely influenced his impression of this saying.
Rogers, like Maslow, wanted to see psychology contribute far more to society than merely
helping individuals with psychological distress. He extended his sincere desire to help people learn
to really communicate, with empathic understanding, to efforts aimed at bringing peace to the
world. On the day he died, he had just been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Since a Nobel
Prize cannot be awarded to someone who has died, he was not eligible to be nominated again. If he
had lived a few more years, he may well have received that award. His later years were certainly
committed to peace in a way that deserved such recognition.
Basic Concepts
Rogers believed that each of us lives in a constantly changing private world, which he called
the experiential field. Everyone exists at the center of their own experiential field, and that field can
only be fully understood from the perspective of the individual. This concept has a number of
important implications. The individual’s behavior must be understood as a reaction to their
experience and perception of the field. They react to it as an organized whole, and it is their
reality. The problem this presents for the therapist is that only the individual can really understand
their experiential field. This is quite different than the Freudian perspective, in which only the trained
and objective psychoanalyst can break through the defense mechanisms and understand the basis
of the patient’s unconscious impulses. One’s perception of the experiential field is limited,
however. Rogers believed that certain impulses, or sensations, can only enter into the conscious
field of experience under certain circumstances. Thus, the experiential field is not a true reality, but
rather an individual’s potential reality (Rogers, 1951).
The one basic tendency and striving of the individual is to actualize, maintain, and enhance
the experiencing of the individual or, in other words, an actualizing tendency. Rogers borrowed the
term self-actualization, a term first used by Kurt Goldstein, to describe this basic striving.
The tendency of normal life is toward activity and progress. For the sick, the only form of selfactualization that remains is the maintenance of the existent state. That, however, is not the
tendency of the normal…Under adequate conditions the normal organism seeks further activity. (pp.
162-163; Goldstein, 1934/1995).
For Rogers, self-actualization was a tendency to move forward, toward greater maturity and
independence, or self-responsibility. This development occurs throughout life, both biologically (the
differentiation of a fertilized egg into the many organ systems of the body) and psychologically (selfgovernment, self-regulation, socialization, even to the point of choosing life goals). A key factor in
understanding self-actualization is the experiential field. A person’s needs are defined, as well as
limited, by their own potential for experience. Part of this experiential field is an individual’s
emotions, feelings, and attitudes. Therefore, who the individual is, their actual self, is critical in
determining the nature and course of their self-actualization (Rogers, 1951). We will examine
Maslow’s work on self-actualization in more detail below.
What then, is the self? In Rogers’ (1951) initial description of his theory of personality, the
experiential field is described in four points, the self-actualizing tendency in three points, and the
remaining eleven points attempt to define the self. First and foremost, the self is a differentiated
portion of the experiential field. In other words, the self is that part of our private world that we
identify as “me,” “myself,” or “I.” Beyond that, the self remains somewhat puzzling. Can the self
exist in isolation, outside of relationships that provide some context for the self? Must the self be
synonymous with the physical body? As Rogers’ pointed out, when our foot “goes to sleep” from a
lack of circulation, we view it as an object, not as a part of our self! Despite these challenging
questions, Rogers tried to define and describe the self.
Rogers believed the self is formed in relation to others; it is an organized, fluid, yet consistent
conceptual pattern of our experiential interactions with the environment and the values attached to
those experiences. These experiences are symbolized and incorporated into the structure of the
self, and our behavior is guided largely by how well new experiences fit within that structure. We
may behave in ways inconsistent with the structure of our self, but when we do we will not “own” that
behavior. When experiences are so inconsistent that we cannot symbolize them, or fit them into the
structure of our self, the potential for psychological distress arises. On the other hand, when our
concept of self is mature enough to incorporate all of our perceptions and experiences, and we can
assimilate those experiences symbolically into our self, our psychological adjustment will be quite
healthy. Individuals who find it difficult to assimilate new and different experiences, those
experiences that threaten the structure of the self, will develop an increasingly rigid selfstructure. Healthy individuals, in contrast, will assimilate new experiences, their self-structure will
change and continue to grow, and they will become more capable of understanding and accepting
others as individuals (Rogers, 1951).
The ability of individuals to make the choices necessary for actualizing their self-structure
and to then fulfill those choices is what Rogers called personal power (Rogers, 1977). He believed
there are many self-actualized individuals revolutionizing the world by trusting their own power,
without feeling a need to have “power over” others. They are also willing to foster the latent
actualizing tendency in others. We can easily see the influence of Alfred Adler here, both in terms of
the creative power of the individual and seeking superiority within a healthy context of social
interest. Client-centered therapy was based on making the context of personal power a clear
strategy in the therapeutic relationship:
…the client-centered approach is a conscious renunciation and avoidance by the therapist of
all control over, or decision-making for, the client. It is the facilitation of self-ownership by the client
and the strategies by which this can be achieved…based on the premise that the human being is
basically a trustworthy organism, capable of…making constructive choices as to the next steps in
life, and acting on those choices. (pp. 14-15; Rogers, 1977)
Discussion Question: Rogers claimed that no one can really understand your experiential
field. Would you agree, or do you sometimes find that close friends or family members seem to
understand you better than you understand yourself? Are these relationships congruent?
Personality Development
Although Rogers described personality within the therapist-client relationship, the focus of his
therapeutic approach was based on how he believed the person had arrived at a point in their life
where they were suffering from psychological distress. Therefore, the same issues apply to
personality development as in therapy. A very important aspect of personality development,
according to Rogers, is the parent-child relationship. The nature of that relationship, and whether it
fosters self-actualization or impedes personal growth, determines the nature of the individual’s
personality and, consequently, their self-structure and psychological adjustment.
A child begins life with an actualizing tendency. As they experience life, and perceive the
world around them, they may be supported in all things by those who care for them, or they may only
be supported under certain conditions (e.g., if their behavior complies with strict rules). As the child
becomes self-aware, it develops a need for positive regard. When the parents offer the
child unconditional positive regard, the child continues moving forward in concert with its
actualizing tendency. So, when there is no discrepancy between the child’s self-regard and its
positive regard (from the parents), the child will grow up psychologically healthy and welladjusted. However, if the parents offer only conditional positive regard, if they only support the
child according the desires and rules of the parents, the child will develop conditions of worth. As
a result of these conditions of worth, the child will begin to perceive their world selectively; they will
avoid those experiences that do not fit with its goal of obtaining positive regard. The child will begin
to live the life of those who set the conditions of worth, rather than living its own life.
As the child grows older, and more aware of its own condition in the world, their behavior will
either fit within their own self-structure or not. If they have received unconditional positive regard,
such that their self-regard and positive regard are closely matched, they will
experience congruence. In other words, their sense of self and their experiences in life will fit
together, and the child will be relatively happy and well-adjusted. But, if their sense of self and their
ability to obtain positive regard do not match, the child will develop incongruence. Consider, for
example, children playing sports. That alone tells us that parents have established guidelines within
which the children are expected to “play.” Then we have some children who are naturally athletic,
and other children who are more awkward and/or clumsy. They may become quite athletic later in
life, or not, but during childhood there are many different levels of ability as they grow. If a parent
expects their child to be the best player on the team, but the child simply isn’t athletic, how does the
parent react? Do they support the child and encourage them to have fun, or do they pressure the
child to perform better and belittle them when they can’t? Children are very good at recognizing who
the better athletes are, and they know their place in the hierarchy of athletics, i.e., their athletic selfstructure. So if a parent demands dominance from a child who knows they just aren’t that good, the
child will develop incongruence. Rogers believed, quite understandably, that such conditions are
threatening to a child, and will activate defense mechanisms. Over time, however, excessive or
sudden and dramatic incongruence can lead to the breakdown and disorganization of the selfstructure. As a result, the individual is likely to experience psychological distress that will continue
throughout life (Rogers, 1959/1989).
Discussion Question: Conditions of worth are typically first established in childhood, based on the
relationship between a child and his or her parents. Think about your relationship with your own
parents and, if you have children, think about how you treat them. Are most of the examples that
come to mind unconditional positive regard, or conditional positive regard? How has that affected
your relationship with your parents and/or your own children?
Another way in which Rogers approached the idea of congruence and incongruence was
based on an individual’s dual concept of self. There is, of course, the actual self-structure, or real
self. In addition, there is also an ideal self, much like the fictional finalism described by Adler or the
idealized self-image described by Horney. Incongruence develops when the real self falls far short
of the accomplishment expected of the ideal self, when experience does not match the expectations
of the self-structure (Rogers, 1951, 1959/1989). Once again, the relationship between parents and
their children plays an important role in this development. If parents expect too much, such as all
A’s every marking period in school, but the child just isn’t academically talented, or if the parents
expect their child to be the football team’s quarterback, but the child isn’t a good athlete, then the
ideal self will remain out of reach. Perhaps even worse, is when a child is physically or emotionally
abused. Such a child’s ideal self may remain at a relatively low standard, but the real self may be so
utterly depressed that incongruence is still the result. An important aspect of therapy will be to
provide a relationship in which a person in this unfortunate condition can experience the
unconditional positive regard necessary to begin reintegrating the self-structure, such that the gap
between the real self and the ideal self can begin to close, allowing the person to experience
congruence in their life.
What about individuals who have developed congruence, having received unconditional
positive regard throughout development or having experienced successful client-centered
therapy? They become, according to Rogers (1961), a fully functioning person. He also said they
lead a good life. The good life is a process, not a state of being, and a direction, not a destination. It
requires psychological freedom, and is the natural consequence of being psychologically free to
begin with. Whether or not it develops naturally, thanks to a healthy and supportive environment in
the home, or comes about as a result of successful therapy, there are certain characteristics of this
process. The fully functioning person is increasingly open to new experiences, they live fully in each
moment, and they trust themselves more and more. They become more able and more willing to
experience all of their feelings, they are creative, they trust human nature, and they experience the
richness of life. The fully functioning person is not simply content, or happy, they are alive:
I believe it will become evident why, for me, adjectives such as happy, contented, blissful,
enjoyable, do not seem quite appropriate to any general description of this process I have called the
good life, even though the person in this process would experience each one of these feelings at
appropriate times. But the adjectives which seem more generally fitting are adjectives such as
enriching, exciting, rewarding, challenging, meaningful. This process…involves the courage to
be. …the deeply exciting thing about human beings is that when the individual is inwardly free, he
chooses as the good life this process of becoming. (pp. 195-196; Rogers, 1961)
Discussion Question: Rogers described self-actualized people as fully functioning persons who
are living a good life. Do you know anyone who seems to be a fully functioning person? Are there
aspects of their personality that you aspire to for yourself? Does it seem difficult to be fully
functioning, or does it seem to make life both easier and more enjoyable?
Connections Across Cultures: Self-Realization as the
Path to Being a Fully Functioning Person
Rogers described an innate drive toward self-actualization, he talked about an ideal self, and he
said that a fully functioning person lived a good life. But what does this actually mean? In the
Western world we look for specific, tangible answers to such questions. We want to know what the
self-actualization drive is, we want to know which ideals, or virtues, are best or right, and we want to
define a “good life.” All too often, we define a good life in terms of money, power, and
possessions. The Eastern world has, for thousands of years, emphasized a very different
perspective. They believe there is a natural order to life, and it is important that we let go of our
need to explain the universe, and it is especially important that we let go of our need to own pieces
of the universe. In the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tsu (c. 600 B.C./1989) writes:
Something mysteriously formed,
Born before heaven and earth.
In the silence and the void,
Standing alone and unchanging,
Ever present and in motion.
Perhaps it is the mother of ten thousand things.
I do not know its name,
Call it Tao.
For lack of a better word, I call it great…
The greatest Virtue is to follow Tao and Tao alone…
Tao follows what is natural.
At about the same time, some 2,600 years ago, the Bhagavad Gita was also written down (Mitchell,
2000). In the second chapter one finds:
When a man gives up all desires
That emerge from the mind, and rests
Contented in the Self by the Self,
He is called a man of firm wisdom…
In the night of all beings, the wise man
Sees only the radiance of the Self;
But the sense-world where all beings wake,
For him is as dark as night.
In each of these sacred books, we are taught that there is something deeper than ourselves that
permeates the universe, but it is beyond our comprehension. It is only when we stop attempting to
explain it, our way of trying to control it, and be content to just be ourselves, that we can actually
attain that goal. To achieve this goal seems to require the absence of conditions of worth. If
someone has been given unconditional positive regard throughout their life, they will be content to
live that life as it is. Rogers was well aware of this challenge, and he described the good life as a
process, not something that you could actually get, but something that you had to “Be.” Still, is it
possible that a fully functioning person might have the insight necessary to understand the essence
of the universe? Not according to Swami Sri Yukteswar:
Man possesses eternal faith and believes intuitively in the existence of a Substance, of which the
objects of sense - sound, touch, sight, taste, and smell, the component parts of this visible world are but properties. As man identifies himself with his material body, composed of the aforesaid
properties, he is able to comprehend by these imperfect organs these properties only, and not the
Substance to which these properties belong. The eternal Father, God, the only Substance in the
universe, is therefore not comprehensible by man of this material world, unless he becomes divine
by lifting his self above this creation of Darkness or Maya. See Hebrews 11:1 and John 8:28.
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
“Then said Jesus unto them, When ye have lifted up the son of man, then shall ye know that I am
he.”
Jnanavatar Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri, 1894/1990
So whether we believe in God, Tao, an eternal Self, a mortal Self, or merely an actualizing
tendency, for thousands of years there has been the belief, amongst many people, that our lives are
about more than just being alive for a limited period of time. And it is in the recognition and
acceptance, indeed the embracing, of that something more, even if we can’t conceive it in our
conscious mind, that we find and live a good life. When Paramahansa Yogananda, a direct disciple
of Swami Yukteswar, came to the United States in 1920 to establish a permanent Yoga society, it
was suggested that he name his society God-Realization. However, since he believed life is about
realizing (or actualizing, in psychological terms) our selves, he established his organization as the
Self-Realization Fellowship (Yogananda, 1946).
Self-realization, in the context of Yoga, refers to becoming aware of one’s connection to the spark
of divinity that exists within us, which may well be the source of our actualizing tendency. It is not
the same as the sense of “I” or “me” that we normally think of. After all, are we our body or our
mind? Consider the body. Is it the body we were born with, or the body we have now? Is our mind
what we are thinking now, or what we were thinking 2 years ago? Both the body and the mind are
transient, but the Self continues. It is that Self that Yogis, Buddhists, and Taoists seek to realize,
and it may well be that Self which seeks its own actualization (separate from the consciousness
created by the brain underlying our mind; see Feuerstein, 2003; Kabat-Zinn, 1994). This is also the
Self of Being and transcendence, as described by Maslow.
Social Relationships and Marriage
Social and personal relationships were very important to Rogers, both in therapy and in
everyday life. During each moment, we have our awareness (or consciousness), our experience
(our perception of what is happening), and our communication (our relational behavior). For the fully
functioning person, there is congruence between each of these phenomena. Unfortunately, we tend
to be a poor judge of our own congruence. For example, if someone becomes angry with another
person at a meeting or in a therapy group, they may remain unaware of their anger, even though it
may be quite obvious to everyone else in the room. Thus, our relationship with others can reflect the
true nature of our own personality, and the degree to which we are congruent. If others are
congruent, and therefore are willing to talk to us openly and honestly, it will encourage us to become
more congruent and, consequently, more psychologically healthy (Rogers, 1961, 1980). Curiously,
the reason this became so important to Rogers was the lack of such meaningful relationships in his
own life. Because his family followed strict, fundamentalist rules, they discouraged relationships with
people outside their family. The consequences were rather disturbing for Rogers:
…the attitudes toward persons outside our large family can be summed up schematically in
this way: “Other persons behave in dubious ways which we do not approve in our family. Many of
them play cards, go to movies, smoke, dance, drink, and engage in other activities, some
unmentionable. So the best thing to do is to be tolerant of them, since they may not know better, but
to keep away from any close communication with them and to live your life within the family…”
I could sum up these boyhood years by saying that anything I would today regard as a close
and communicative interpersonal relationship with another was completely lacking during that
period…I was peculiar, a loner, with very little place or opportunity for a place in the world of
persons. I was socially incompetent in any but superficial contacts. My fantasies during this period
were definitely bizarre, and probably would be classed as schizoid by a diagnostician, but fortunately
I never came in contact with a psychologist. (pp. 28-30; Rogers, 1980)
As noted above, the development of healthy relationships takes place whenever one person
in the relationship is congruent. Their congruence encourages the other person to be more
congruent, which supports the continued open communication on behalf of the first person. This
interplay goes back and forth, encouraging continued and growing congruence in the
relationship. As we will see below, this is basically the therapeutic situation, in which the therapist is
expected to be congruent. However, it certainly does not require a trained therapist, since it occurs
naturally in any situation in which one person is congruent from the beginning of the relationship.
One of the most important, and hopefully meaningful, relationships in anyone’s life is
marriage. Rogers was married for 55 years, and as the end of his wife’s life approached he poured
out his love to her with a depth that astonished him (Rogers, 1980). As relationships became more
and more meaningful to him, he wanted to study the extraordinary relationships that become more
than temporary. Although this is not necessarily synonymous with marriage, it most typically is. So
he conducted a series of informal interviews with people who were, or had been, in lengthy
relationships (at least 3 years). In comparing the relationships that seemed successful, as
compared to those that were unhappy or had already come to an end, Rogers identified four factors
that he believed were most important for long-term, healthy relationships: dedication or
commitment, communication, the dissolution of roles, and becoming a separate self (Rogers, 1972).
Dedication, Commitment: Marriage is challenging: love seems to fade, vows are forgotten
or set aside, religious rules are ignored (e.g., “What therefore God has joined together, let no man
put asunder.”; Matthew 19:6; Holy Bible, 1962). Rogers believed that in order for a relationship to
last, each person must be dedicated to their partnership. They must commit themselves to working
together throughout the changing process of their relationship, which is enriching their love and their
life.
Communication: Communication encompasses much of human behavior, and it can be
both subtle and complex. Communication itself is not a good thing, since many negative and hurtful
things can be communicated. However, Rogers believed that we need to communicate persistent
feeling, whether positive or negative, so that they don’t overwhelm us and come out in inappropriate
ways. It is always important to express such communication in terms of your own thoughts and
feelings, rather than projecting those feelings onto others (especially in angry and/or accusatory
ways). This process involves risk, but one must be willing to risk the end of a relationship in order to
allow it to grow.
Dissolution of Roles: Culture provides many expectations for the nature of relationships,
whether it be dating or something more permanent like marriage. According to Rogers, obeying the
cultural rules seems to contradict the idea of a growing and maturing relationship, a relationship that
is moving forward (toward actualization). However, when individuals make an intentional choice to
fulfill cultural expectations, because they want to, then the relationship can certainly be actualizing
for them.
Becoming a Separate Self: Rogers believed that “a living partnership is composed of two
people, each of whom owns, respect, and develops his or her own selfhood” (pg. 206; Rogers,
1972). While it may seem contradictory that becoming an individual should enhance a relationship,
as each person becomes more real and more open they can bring these qualities into the
relationship. As a result, the relationship can contribute to the continued growth of each person.
Discussion Question: Consider Rogers’ criteria for a successful marriage, which begins with
commitment to the marriage. Given the divorce rate (which studies now place at over 60%), and
ongoing political debates about what marriage is or is not, what is your opinion of the status of
marriage in society today?
Client-Centered and Person-Centered Therapy
Central to Rogers’ view of psychotherapy is the relationship between the therapist and the
client, and we must again emphasize the distinction between a client and a patient. This involves
shifting the emphasis in therapy from a psychologist/psychiatrist who can “fix” the patient to the client
themselves, since only the client can truly understand their own experiential field. The therapist
must provide a warm, safe environment in which the client feels free to express whatever attitude
they experience in the same way that they perceive it. At the same time, the client experiences the
therapist as someone temporarily divested of their own self, in their complete desire to understand
the client. The therapist can then accurately and objectively reflect the thoughts, feelings,
perceptions, confusions, ambivalences, etc., of the client back to the client. In this open, congruent,
and supportive environment, the client is able to begin the process of reorganizing and reintegrating
their self-structure, and living congruently within that self-structure (Rogers, 1951).
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
In 1957, Rogers published an article entitled The Necessary and Sufficient Conditions of
Therapeutic Personality Change (Rogers, 1957/1989). The list is fairly short and straightforward:
The client and the therapist must be in psychological contact.
The client must be in a state of incongruence, being vulnerable or anxious.
The therapist must be congruent in the relationship.
The therapist must experience unconditional positive regard for the client.
The therapist must experience empathic understanding of the client’s frame of reference and
endeavor to communicate this experience to the client.
The client must perceive, at least to a minimal degree, the therapist’s empathic understanding and
unconditional positive regard.
According to Rogers, there is nothing else that is required; if these conditions are met over a period
of time, there will be constructive personality change. What Rogers considered more remarkable
are those factors that do not seem necessary for positive therapeutic change. For example, these
conditions do not apply to one type of client, but to all clients, and they are not unique to clientcentered therapy, but apply in all types of therapy. The relationship between the therapist and client
is also not unique, these factors hold true in any interpersonal relationship. And most surprisingly,
these conditions do not require any special training on the part of therapist, or even an accurate
diagnosis of the client’s psychological problems! Any program designed for the purpose of
encouraging constructive change in the personality structure and behavior of individuals, whether
educational, military, correctional, or industrial, can benefit from these conditions and use them as a
measure of the effectiveness of the program (Rogers, 1957).
Can any one of these conditions be considered more important than the others? Although
they are all necessary, Rogers came to believe that the critical factor may be the
therapist’s empathic understanding of the client (Rogers, 1980). The Dalai Lama (2001) has said
that empathy is an essential first step toward a compassionate heart. It brings us closer to others,
and allows us to recognize the depth of their pain. According to Rogers, empathy refers to entering
the private world of the client, and moving about within it without making any judgments. It is
essential to set aside one’s own views and values, so that the other person’s world may be entered
without prejudice. Not just anyone can accomplish this successfully:
In some sense it means that you lay aside your self; this can only be done by persons who are
secure enough in themselves that they know they will not get lost in what may turn out to be the
strange or bizarre world of the other, and that they can comfortably return to their own world when
they wish. (pg. 143; Rogers, 1980)
Finally, let us consider group therapy situations. Within a group, all of the factors described
above hold true. Rogers, who late in his career was becoming more and more interested in the
growth of all people, including those reasonably well-adjusted and mature to begin with, became
particularly interested in T-groups and encounter groups. These groups were developed following
the proposition by Kurt Lewin that modern society was overlooking the importance of training in
human relations skills (the “T” in T-group stands for “training”). Encounter groups were quite similar
to T-groups, except that there was a greater emphasis on personal growth and improved
interpersonal communication through an experiential process. Each group has a leader, or
facilitator, who fosters and encourages open communication. The group serves as a reflection of the
congruence, or lack thereof, in the communication of whoever is currently expressing
themselves. As a result, the group hopefully moves toward congruence, and the subsequent
personal growth and actualization of the individual (Rogers, 1970).
Given the usefulness of T-groups and encounter in a variety of settings, as well as the
importance of continued personal growth and actualization for the well-adjusted as well as those
suffering psychological distress, Rogers shifted his focus from simply client-centered therapy to a
more universal person-centered approach, which encompasses client-centered therapy, studentcentered teaching, and group-centered leadership (Rogers, 1980; see also Rogers & Roethlisberger,
1952/1993). Rogers believed that all people have within them vast resources for self-understanding
and for changing their self-concepts, attitudes, and behaviors. In all relationships, whether therapistclient, parent-child, teacher-student, leader-group, employer-employee, etc., there are three
elements that can foster personal growth: genuineness or congruence, acceptance or caring, and
empathic understanding. When these elements are fostered in any setting, “there is greater freedom
to be the true, whole person.” The implications go far beyond individual relationships. We live in
what seems to be an increasingly dangerous world. Globalism has brought with it global tension and
conflict. However, Rogers argued that a person-centered approach would help to ease intercultural
tension, by helping each of us to learn to appreciate and understand others. Whether the cultural
differences are political, racial, ethnic, economic, whatever, as more leaders become personcentered there is the possibility for future growth of intercultural understanding and cooperation
(Rogers, 1977).
Abraham Maslow and Holistic-Dynamic Psychology
Maslow stands alongside Rogers as one of the founders of humanistic psychology. Although
he began his career working with two of the most famous experimental psychologists in America, he
was profoundly influenced by the events that led into World War II. He became devoted to studying
the more virtuous aspects of personality, and he may be viewed as one of the founders of positive
psychology. Well-known primarily for his work on self-actualization, Maslow also had a significant
impact on the field of management. His fame in both psychology and business makes him a
candidate for being, perhaps, the best-known psychologist of all time (Freud is certainly more
famous, but remember that he was a psychiatrist). According to Maslow, his holistic-dynamic
theory of personality was a blend of theories that had come before his:
This theory is, I think, in the functionalist tradition of James and Dewey, and is fused with the
holism of Wertheimer, Goldstein, and Gestalt psychology, and with the dynamicism of Freud,
Fromm, Horney, Reich, Jung, and Adler. This integration or synthesis may be called a holisticdynamic theory. (pg. 35; Maslow, 1970)
Brief Biography of Abraham Maslow
Abraham H. Maslow was born on April 1, 1908 in Brooklyn, New York, the first of seven
children. His father, Samuel, had left Kiev, Russia at just 14 years old. When Samuel Maslow
arrived in America he had no money and did not speak English. Samuel Maslow spent a few years
in Philadelphia, doing odd jobs and learning the language, before moving to New York City, where
he married his first cousin Rose and began a cooperage business (a cooper builds and repairs
barrels). Samuel and Rose Maslow did not have a happy marriage, and Abraham Maslow was
particularly sensitive to this fact. Maslow resented his father’s frequent absences, and apparently
hated his mother. His mother was a superstitious woman, who severely punished Maslow for even
minor misbehavior by threatening him with God’s wrath. Maslow developed an intense distrust of
religion, and was proud to consider himself an atheist (Gabor, 2000; Hoffman, 1988; Maddi & Costa,
1972).
Maslow’s childhood was no better outside the home. Anti-Semitism was rampant in New
York. Many teachers were cruel, and he overheard them say nasty things about him. He had no
friends, and there were anti-Semitic gangs that would find and beat up Jewish children. At one point
he decided to join a Jewish gang for protection, but he didn’t have the “right” attitude:
I wanted to be a member of the gang, but I couldn’t: they rejected me because I couldn’t kill
cats…We’d stake out a cat on a [clothesline] and stand back so many paces and throw rocks at it
and kill it.
And the other thing was to throw rocks at the girls on the corner. Now I knew that the girls
liked it, and yet I couldn’t throw rocks at girls and I couldn’t kill cats, so I was ruled out of the gang,
and I could never be the gangster that I wanted to become. (pg. 4; Maslow, cited in Hoffman, 1988)
With six more children joining the family, one every couple of years, the family was
constantly moving and, following the troubling death of one of his little sisters (Maslow blamed her
illness, in part, on their mother’s neglect), Maslow became a very unhappy and shy child. He also
thought he was terribly ugly, something his father said openly at a large family gathering! Perhaps
worst of all, he felt profoundly strange and different than other children, largely because he was so
intellectual. Maslow reconciled with his father later in life. During the depression, Samuel Maslow
lost his business. By that time he had divorced Maslow’s mother, Rose, and he moved in with his
son. The two became close, and after Samuel Maslow died, his son remembered him
fondly. Maslow never forgave his mother, however. Some of the childhood stories he related were
shockingly cruel. Once, he had searched through second-hand record shops for some special 78RPM records. When he failed to put them away soon after returning home, his mother stomped
them into pieces on the living room floor. Another time, Maslow brought home two abandoned
kittens he had found. When his mother caught him feeding them a saucer of milk, she grabbed the
kittens and smashed their heads against a wall until they were dead! Later in life, he refused to even
attend her funeral.
What I had reacted to and totally hated and rejected was not only her physical appearance,
but also her values and world view…I’ve always wondered where my utopianism, ethical stress,
humanism, stress on kindness, love, friendship, and all the rest came from. I knew certainly of the
direct consequences of having no mother-love. But the whole thrust of my life-philosophy and all my
research and theorizing also has its roots in a hatred for and revulsion against everything she stood
for. (pg. 9; Maslow cited in Hoffman, 1988)
Maslow spent much of his childhood reading, and despite the treatment he received from
many of his prejudiced teachers, he loved to learn. After high school Maslow won a scholarship to
Cornell University, but encountered pervasive anti-Semitism throughout his first year. So he
transferred to City College, where he first studied the work of behavioral scientists like John B.
Watson. He was impressed by Watson’s desire to use the newly created science of behaviorism to
fight social problems, such as racial and ethnic discrimination. At the same time, however, Maslow
had fallen in love with his first cousin Bertha Goodman, a relationship his parents strongly
opposed. So Maslow left for the University of Wisconsin (Gabor, 2000; Hoffman, 1988; Maddi &
Costa, 1972). Bertha Goodman followed, and they were soon married. Marriage boosted Maslow’s
self-esteem, and provided him with a sense of purpose in life. He later said that “life didn’t really
start for me until I got married and went to Wisconsin” (pg. 128; cited in Maddi & Costa, 1972).
In Wisconsin, Maslow studied the behavior of primates under the supervision of the
renowned Harry Harlow (most famous for his studies on contact comfort). One day, while watching
some monkeys seemingly enjoy munching on peanuts and other treats, Maslow recognized that
appetite and hunger are two different things. Thus, motivation must be comprised of separate
elements as well. In another study, Maslow tried to address the different aspects of Freud and
Adler’s psychodynamic perspectives by observing dominance behavior amongst the monkeys. His
colleagues and professors, however, had little interest in the psychoanalytic science that they
considered to be a European endeavor. Maslow completed his Ph.D. at Wisconsin in 1934, and
then returned to New York. He earned a position at Columbia University with the renowned Edward
Thorndike, and began studying the relative contributions of heredity and environment on social
behavior, as part of a project to study factors involved in poverty, illiteracy, and crime. As a curious
side note, Thorndike had also developed an IQ test; Maslow scored 195 on this test, one of the
highest scores ever recorded. During this time at Columbia University, Maslow also began
relationships with many of the psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists who had fled Nazi
Germany. He was very impressed with Max Wertheimer, one of the founders of Gestalt psychology,
and who helped to lay the foundation for positive psychology:
“Are there not tendencies in men and in children to be kind, to deal sincerely [and] justly with the
other fellow? Are these nothing but internalized rules on the basis of compulsion and fear?” he
asked rhetorically. (pg. 159; Wertheimer, cited in Gabor, 2000)
Maslow was one of the first students to study with Alfred Adler in America, being particularly
impressed with Adler’s work helping academically-challenged children to succeed despite their low
IQ scores. Maslow also studied with Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Ruth Benedict. Benedict was
an anthropologist who encouraged Maslow to gain some field experience. She sponsored a grant
application that Maslow received to study the Blackfoot Indians. During the summer of 1938,
Maslow examined the dominance and emotional security of the Blackfoot Indians. He was
impressed by their culture, and recognized what he believed was an innate need to experience a
sense of purpose in life, a sense of meaning. A few years later, shortly after the beginning of World
War II, Maslow had an epiphany regarding psychology’s failure to understand the true nature of
people. He devoted the rest of his life to the study of a hopeful psychology (Gabor, 2000; Hoffman,
1988; Maddi & Costa, 1972).
Maslow taught for a few years at Brooklyn College, and also served as the plant manager for
the Maslow Cooperage Corporation (from 1947-1949). In 1951 he was appointed Professor and
Chair of the Department of Psychology at Brandeis University, where he conducted the research and
wrote the books for which he is most famous. By the late 1960s, Maslow had become disillusioned
with academic life. He had suffered a heart attack in 1966, and seemed somewhat disconnected
from the very department he had helped to form. In 1969, however, he accepted a four year grant
from the Laughlin Foundation, primarily to study the philosophy of democracy, economics, and
ethics as influenced by humanistic psychology. He had been troubled by what he viewed as a loss
of faith in American values, and he was greatly enjoying his time working in California. He also
attended management seminars at the Saga Corporation, urging the participants to commit
themselves to humanistic management. One day in June, 1970, he was jogging slowly when he
suffered a massive heart attack. He was already dead by the time his wife rushed over to him
(Gabor, 2000; Hoffman, 1988; Maddi & Costa, 1972). He was only 62 years old. Shortly after his
death, the International Study Project of Menlo Park, CA published a memorial volume in tribute to
Abraham Maslow (International Study Project, 1972).
Placing Maslow in Context: Beyond Humanistic Psychology
Whereas Carl Rogers is often thought of as the founder of humanistic psychology, in large part
because of his emphasis on psychotherapy, it was Maslow who studied in great detail the most
significant theoretical aspect of it: self-actualization. In addition to studying self-actualization, he
applied it both in psychology and beyond. His application of self-actualization to management
continued the classic relationship between psychology and business (which began with John B.
Watson and his application of psychological principles to advertising). Unfortunately, Maslow died
just as he was beginning to study his proposed fourth force: transpersonal
psychology. Transpersonal psychology offered a connection between psychology and many of the
Eastern philosophies associated with Yoga and Buddhism, and also provided a foundation for the
study of positive psychology.
Maslow’s interest in business and management has quite possibly led to his being the most
famous psychologist of all time, since he is well-known in both psychology and business. If he had
continued being a vocal advocate for transpersonal psychology (if not for his untimely death at an
early age), given today’s growing interest in Eastern philosophy and psychology and the
establishment of positive psychology as a goal for the field of psychology by former APA President
Martin Seligman, Maslow may well have become even more famous. It is interesting to note that
someone so truly visionary seems to have become that way as a result of studying people whom he
felt were themselves self-actualized. If positive psychology, the psychology of virtue and values,
becomes the heir of Maslow’s goal, it should become a significant force in the field of
psychology. That will be Maslow’s true legacy.
The Importance of Values in the Science of Psychology
A common criticism leveled against many personality theorists is that they have not
confirmed their theories in a strict, scientific manner. When one goes so far as to consider values,
which are typically associated with religious morality, there is even greater resistance on the part of
those who would have psychology become “truly” scientific to consider such matters worthy of
examination. However, Maslow felt that:
Both orthodox science and orthodox religion have been institutionalized and frozen into a
mutually excluding dichotomy…One consequence is that they are both pathologized, split into
sickness, ripped apart into a crippled half-science and a crippled half-religion…As a result…the
student who becomes a scientist automatically gives up a great deal of life, especially its richest
portions. (pg. 119; Maslow, 1966)
Consequently, Maslow urged that we need to be fully aware of our values at all times, and
aware of how our values influence us in our study of psychology. Although people approach the
world in common ways, they also pay selective attention to what is happening, and they reshuffle the
events occurring around them according to their own interests, needs, desires, fears,
etc. Consequently, Maslow believed that paying attention to human values, particularly to an
individual’s values, actually helps the psychological scientist achieve the goal of clearly
understanding human behavior (Maslow, 1970). In a similar vein, when Maslow co-authored an
abnormal psychology text early in his career, he included a chapter on normal psychology. His
description of the characteristics of a healthy, normal personality provides an interesting
foreshadowing of his research on self-actualization (Maslow & Mittelmann, 1941).
Maslow felt so strongly about the loss of values in our society that he helped to organize a
conference and then served as editor for a book entitled New Knowledge in Human Values (Maslow,
1959). In the preface, Maslow laments that “…the ultimate disease of our time is
valuelessness…this state is more crucially dangerous than ever before in history…” (pg. vii; Maslow,
1959). Maslow does suggest, however, that something can be done about this loss of values, if only
people will try. In the book, he brought together an interesting variety of individuals, including: Kurt
Goldstein, a well-known neurophysiologist who studied the holistic function of healthy vs. braindamaged patients and who coined the term self-actualization; D. T. Suzuki, a renowned Zen
Buddhist scholar; and Paul Tillich, a highly respected existential theologian (who had a direct and
significant influence on the career of Rollo May). There are also chapters by Gordon Allport and
Erich Fromm. In his own chapter, Maslow concludes:
If we wish to help humans to become more fully human, we must realize not only that they try
to realize themselves but that they are also reluctant or afraid or unable to do so. Only by fully
appreciating this dialectic between sickness and health can we help to tip the balance in favor of
health. (pg. 135; Maslow, 1959)
Discussion Question: Maslow believed that values are very important, not only in the study of
psychology, but in society as well. Do you agree? When politicians or religious leaders talk about
values, do you think they represent meaningful, true values, or do they just support the values that
are an advantage to their own goal or the goals of their political party or church?
The Hierarchy of Needs
Maslow’s is undoubtedly best known for his hierarchy of needs. Developed within the
context of a theory of human motivation, Maslow believed that human behavior is driven and guided
by a set of basic needs: physiological needs, safety needs, belongingness and love needs,
esteem needs, and the need for self-actualization. It is generally accepted that individuals must
move through the hierarchy in order, satisfying the needs at each level before one can move on to a
higher level. The reason for this is that lower needs tend to occupy the mind if they remain
unsatisfied. How easy is it to work or study when you are really hungry or thirsty? But Maslow did
not consider the hierarchy to be rigid. For example, he encountered some people for whom selfesteem was more important than love, individuals suffering from antisocial personality disorder seem
to have a permanent loss of the need for love, or if a need has been satisfied for a long time it may
become less important. As lower needs are becoming satisfied, though not yet fully satisfied, higher
needs may begin to present themselves. And of course there are sometimes multiple determinants
of behavior, making the relationship between a given behavior and a basic need difficult to identify
(Maslow, 1943/1973; Maslow, 1970).
The physiological needs are based, in part, on the concept of homeostasis, the natural
tendency of the body to maintain critical biological levels of essential elements or conditions, such as
water, salt, energy, and body temperature. Sexual activity, though not essential for the individual, is
biologically necessary for the human species to survive. Maslow described the physiological needs
as the most prepotent. In other words, if a person is lacking everything in life, having failed to
satisfy physiological, safety, belongingness and love, and esteem needs, their consciousness will
most like be consumed with their desire for food and water. As the lowest and most clearly
biological of the needs, these are also the most animal-like of our behavior. In Western culture,
however, it is rare to find someone who is actually starving. So when we talk about being hungry,
we are really talking about an appetite, rather than real hunger (Maslow, 1943/1973; Maslow,
1970). Many Americans are fascinated by stories such as those of the ill-fated Donner party,
trapped in the Sierra Nevada mountains during the winter of 1846-1847, and the Uruguayan soccer
team whose plane crashed in the Andes mountains in 1972. In each case, either some or all of the
survivors were forced to cannibalize those who had died. As shocking as such stories are, they
demonstrate just how powerful our physiological needs can be.
The safety needs can easily be seen in young children. They are easily startled or frightened
by loud noises, flashing lights, and rough handling. They can become quite upset when other family
members are fighting, since it disrupts the feeling of safety usually associated with the
home. According to Maslow, many adult neurotics are like children who do not feel safe. From
another perspective, that of Erik Erikson, children and adults raised in such an environment do not
trust the environment to provide for their needs. Although it can be argued that few people in
America seriously suffer from a lack of satisfying physiological needs, there are many people who
live unsafe lives. For example, inner city crime, abusive spouses and parents, incurable diseases
like HIV/AIDS, all present life threatening dangers to many people on a daily basis.
One place where we expect our children to be safe is in school. However, as we saw in the
last chapter (in the section on the martial arts), 160,000 children each day are too frightened to
attend school (Nathan, 2005). Juvonen et al. (2006) looked at the effects of ethnic diversity on
children’s perception of safety in urban middle schools (Grade 6). They surveyed approximately
2,000 students in 99 classrooms in the greater Los Angeles area. The ethnicity of the students in
this study was 46 percent Latino (primarily of Mexican origin), 29 percent African American, 9
percent Asian (primarily East Asian), 9 percent Caucasian, and 7 percent multiracial. When a given
classroom, or a given school, is more ethnically diverse, both African American and Latino students
felt safer, were harassed less by peers, felt less lonely, and they had higher levels of self-worth
(even when the authors controlled for differences in academic engagement). Thus, it appears that
ethnic diversity in schools leads toward satisfaction of the need for safety, at least in one important
area of a child’s life. Unfortunately, most minority students continue to be educated in schools that
are largely ethnically segregated (Juvonen, et al., 2006).
Throughout the evolution of the human species we found safety primarily within our family,
tribal group, or our community. It was within those groups that we shared the hunting and gathering
that provided food. Once the physiological and safety needs have been fairly well satisfied,
according to Maslow, “the person will feel keenly, as never before, the absence of friends, or a
sweetheart, or a wife, or children” (Maslow, 1970). Although there is little scientific confirmation of
the belongingness and love needs, many therapists attribute much of human suffering to society’s
thwarting of the need for love and affection. Most notable among personality theorists who
addressed this issue was Wilhelm Reich. An important aspect of love and affection is sex. Although
sex is often considered a physiological need, given its role in procreation, sex is what Maslow
referred to as a multidetermined behavior. In other words, it serves both a physiological role
(procreation) and a belongingness/love role (the tenderness and/or passion of the physical side of
love). Maslow was also careful to point out that love needs involve both giving and receiving love in
order for them to be fully satisfied (Maslow, 1943/1973; Maslow, 1970).
Maslow believed that all people desire a stable and firmly based high evaluation of
themselves and others (at least the others who comprise their close relationships). This need for
self-esteem, or self-respect, involves two components. First is the desire to feel competent, strong,
and successful (similar to Bandura’s self-efficacy). Second is the need for prestige or status, which
can range from simple recognition to fame and glory. Maslow credited Adler for addressing this
human need, but felt that Freud had neglected it. Maslow also believed that the need for selfesteem was becoming a central issue in therapy for many psychotherapists. However, as we saw in
Chapter 12, Albert Ellis considers self-esteem to be a sickness. Ellis’ concern is that self-esteem,
including efforts to boost self-esteem in therapy, requires that people rate themselves, something
that Ellis felt will eventually lead to a negative evaluation (no one is perfect!). Maslow did
acknowledge that the healthiest self-esteem is based on well-earned and deserved respect from
others, rather than fleeting fame or celebrity status (Maslow, 1943/1973; Maslow, 1970).
When all of these lower needs (physiological, safety, belongingness and love, and esteem)
have been largely satisfied, we may still feel restless and discontented unless we are doing what is
right for ourselves. “What a man can be, he must be” (pg. 46; Maslow, 1970). Thus, the need for
self-actualization, which Maslow described as the highest of the basic needs, can also be referred to
as a Being-need, as opposed to the lower deficiency-needs (Maslow, 1968). We will examine selfactualization in more detail in the following section.
Although Maslow recognized that humans no longer have instincts in the technical sense, we
nonetheless share basic drives with other animals. We get hungry, even though how and what we
eat is determined culturally. We need to be safe, like any other animal, but again we seek and
maintain our safety in different ways (such as having a police force to provide safety for us). Given
our fundamental similarity to other animals, therefore, Maslow referred to the basic needs
as instinctoid. The lower the need the more animal-like it is, the higher the need, the more human
it is, and self-actualization was, in Maslow’s opinion, uniquely human (Maslow, 1970).
In addition to the basic needs, Maslow referred to cognitive needs and aesthetic
needs. Little is known about cognitive needs, since they are seldom an important focus in clinic
settings. However, he felt there were ample grounds for proposing that there are positive impulses
to know, to satisfy curiosity, to understand, and to explain. The eight-fold path described by the
Buddha, some 2,600 years ago, begins with right knowledge. The importance of mental stimulation
for some people is described quite vividly by Maslow:
I have seen a few cases in which it seemed clear to me that the pathology (boredom, loss of
zest in life, self-dislike, general depression of the bodily functions, steady deterioration of the
intellectual life, of tastes, etc.) were produced in intelligent people leading stupid lives in stupid
jobs. I have at least one case in which the appropriate cognitive therapy (resuming part-time
studies, getting a position that was more intellectually demanding, insight) removed the symptoms.
I have seen many women, intelligent, prosperous, and unoccupied, slowly develop these
same symptoms of intellectual inanition. Those who followed my recommendation to immerse
themselves in something worthy of them showed improvement or cure often enough to impress me
with the reality of the cognitive needs. (pg. 49; Maslow, 1970)
There are also classic studies on the importance of environmental enrichment on the
structural development of the brain itself (Diamond et al., 1975; Globus, et al., 1973; Greenough &
Volkmar, 1973; Rosenzweig, 1984; Spinelli & Jensen, 1979; Spinelli, Jensen, & DiPrisco,
1980). Even less is known about the aesthetic needs, but Maslow was convinced that some people
need to experience, indeed they crave, beauty in their world. Ancient cave drawings have been
found that seem to serve no other purpose than being art. The cognitive and aesthetic needs may
very well have been fundamental to our evolution as modern humans.
Self-Actualization
Maslow began his studies on self-actualization in order to satisfy his own curiosity about
people who seemed to be fulfilling their unique potential as individuals. He did not intend to
undertake a formal research project, but he was so impressed by his results that he felt compelled to
report his findings. Amongst people he knew personally and public and historical figures, he looked
for individuals who appeared to have made full use of their talents, capacities, and potentialities. In
other words, “people who have developed or are developing to the full stature of which they are
capable” (Maslow, 1970). His list of those who clearly seemed self-actualized included Abraham
Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jane Addams, William James, Albert
Schweitzer, Aldous Huxley, and Baruch Spinoza. His list of individuals who were most-likely selfactualized included Goethe (possibly the great-grandfather of Carl Jung), George Washington,
Benjamin Franklin, Harriet Tubman (born into slavery, she became a conductor on the Underground
Railroad prior to the Civil War), and George Washington Carver (born into slavery at the end of the
Civil War, he became an agricultural chemist and prolific inventor). In addition to the positive
attributes listed above, Maslow also considered it very important that there be no evidence of
psychopathology in those he chose to study. After comparing the seemingly self-actualized
individuals to people who did not seem to have fulfilled their lives, Maslow identified fourteen
characteristics of self-actualizing people (Maslow, 1950/1973, 1970), as follows:
More Efficient Perception of Reality and More Comfortable Relations with It: Selfactualizing people have an ability to recognize fakers, those who present a false persona. More
than that, however, Maslow believed they could recognize hidden or confused realities in all aspects
of life: science, politics, values and ethics, etc. They are not afraid of the unknown or people who
are different, they find such differences to be a pleasant challenge. Although a high IQ may be
associated with this characteristic, it is not uncommon to find those who are seemingly intelligent yet
unable to be creative in their efforts to discover new phenomena. Thus, the perception of reality is
not simply the same as being smart.
Acceptance (Self, Others, Nature): Similar to the approach Albert Ellis took with REBT
(and his hypothesized dangers inherent in self-esteem), Maslow believed that self-actualizing people
accept themselves as they are, including their faults and the differences between their personal
reality and their ideal image of themselves. This is not to say that they are without guilt. They are
concerned about personal faults that can be improved, any remaining habits or psychological issues
that are unhealthy (e.g., prejudice, jealousy, etc.), and the shortcomings of their community and/or
culture.
Spontaneity: The lives of self-actualizing people are marked by simplicity and a natural
ease as they pursue their goals. Their outward behavior is relatively spontaneous, and their inner
life (thoughts, drives, etc.) is particularly so. In spite of this spontaneity, they are not always
unconventional, because they can easily accept the constraints of society and find their own way to
fit in without being untrue to their own sense of self.
Problem-Centering: Self-actualizing individuals are highly problem-centered, not egocentered. The problems they focus on are typically not their own, however. They focus on problems
outside themselves, on important causes they would describe as necessary. Solving such problems
is taken as their duty or responsibility, rather than as something they want to do for themselves.
The Quality of Detachment; the Need for Privacy: Whereas social withdrawal is often
seen as psychologically unhealthy, self-actualizing people enjoy their privacy. They can remain
calm as they separate themselves from problematic situations, remaining above the fray. In
accordance with this healthy form of detachment, they are active, responsible, self-disciplined
individuals in charge of their own lives. Maslow believed that they have more free will than the
average person.
Autonomy, Independence of Culture and Environment: As an extension of the preceding
characteristics, self-actualizing individuals are growth-motivated as opposed to being deficiencymotivated. They do not need the presence, companionship, or approval of others. Indeed, they may
be hampered by others. The love, honor, esteem, etc., that can be bestowed by others has become
less important to someone who is self-actualizing than self-development and inner growth.
Continued Freshness of Appreciation: Self-actualizing people are able to appreciate the
wonders, as well as the common aspects, of life again and again. Such feelings may not occur all
the time, but they can occur in the most unexpected ways and at unexpected times. Maslow offered
a surprising evaluation of the importance of this characteristic of self-actualization:
I have also become convinced that getting used to our blessings is one of the most important
nonevil generators of human evil, tragedy, and suffering. What we take for granted we undervalue,
and we are therefore too apt to sell a valuable birthright for a mess of pottage, leaving behind regret,
remorse, and a lowering of self-esteem. Wives, husbands, children, friends are unfortunately more
apt to be loved and appreciated after they have died than while they are still available. Something
similar is true for physical health, for political freedoms, for economic well-being; we learn their true
value after we have lost them. (pp. 163-164; Maslow, 1970)
The “Mystic Experience” or “Oceanic Feeling;” Peak Experiences: The difference
between a mystic experience (also known as an oceanic feeling) and a peak experience is a
matter of definition. Mystic experiences are viewed as gifts from God, something reserved for
special or deserving (i.e., faithful) servants. Maslow, however, believed that this was a natural
occurrence that could happen for anyone, and to some extent probably did. He assigned the
psychological term of peak experiences. Such experiences tend to be sudden feelings of limitless
horizons opening up to one’s vision, simultaneous feelings of great power and great vulnerability,
feelings of ecstasy, wonder and awe, a loss of the sense of time and place, and the feeling that
something extraordinary and transformative has happened. Self-actualizers who do not typically
experience these peaks, the so-called “non-peakers,” are more likely to become direct agents of
social change, the reformers, politicians, crusaders, and so on. The more transcendent “peakers,”
in contrast, become the poets, musicians, philosophers, and theologians.
Maslow devoted a great deal of attention to peak experiences, including their relationship to
religion. At the core of religion, according to Maslow, is the private illumination or revelation of
spiritual leaders. Such experiences seem to be very similar to peak experiences, and Maslow
suggests that throughout history these peak experiences may have been mistaken for revelations
from God. In his own studies, Maslow found that people who were spiritual, but not religious (i.e.,
not hindered by the doctrine of a specific faith or church), actually had more peak experiences than
other people. Part of the explanation for this, according to Maslow, is that such people need to be
more serious about their ethics, values, and philosophy of life, since their guidance and motivation
must come from within. Individuals who seek such an appreciation of life may help themselves to
experience an extended form of peak experience that Maslow called the plateau
experience. Plateau experiences always have both noetic and cognitive elements, whereas peak
experiences can be entirely emotional (Maslow, 1964). Put another way, plateau experiences
involve serene and contemplative Being-cognition, as opposed to the more climactic peak
experiences (Maslow, 1971).
Gemeinschaftsgefuhl: A word invented by Alfred Adler, gemeinschatfsgefuhl refers to the
profound feelings of identification, sympathy, and affection for other people that are common in selfactualization individuals. Although self-actualizers may often feel apart from others, like a stranger
in a strange land, becoming upset by the shortcomings of the average person, they nonetheless feel
a sense of kinship with others. These feelings lead to a sincere desire to help the human race.
Interpersonal Relations: Maslow believed that self-actualizers have deeper and more
profound personal relationships than other people. They tend to be kind to everyone, and are
especially fond of children. Maslow described this characteristic as “compassion for all mankind,” a
perspective that would fit well with Buddhist and Christian philosophies.
The Democratic Character Structure: Self-actualizing people are typically frie...
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