Abraham Maslow: Life, Challenges and Beliefs

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Abraham Harold Maslow was born in April 1st 1908 and was raised in Brooklyn New York. He was the oldest of seven children of Rose and Samuel Maslow, Jewish immigrants from Russia. His family was poor and not highly educated and they were also verbally abusive toward him. He was degraded and attacked by them because of his physical appearance; and was often called ugly and skinny by his mother. She often reminded him of his physical limitations and the hatred that he felt toward her, developed into a general antipathy for everything she represented including the Jewish religion practice. To him “Judaism was a nonsensical religion and all people who were religious were either hypocrites or feeble minded,” (Maslow 1960). Additionally, despite …show more content…

He believed that behaviorism did not place enough emphasis on the difference between humans and animals and psychoanalysis placed too much emphasis on the sick individuals in psychology and not enough on the healthy individuals. As a result, he gave rise to humanistic psychology which became the third force of psychology. Humanistic psychology gained influence for its “appreciation of the fundamental inviolability of the human experience,” Bugental 1963. Under the came the idea that human beings were more than just the sum of their parts and that understanding a person would take more than just understanding each part of a person. This was referred to as Gestalt …show more content…

To him, psychological, security, social and esteem needs arise due to deprivation thus making them deficiency needs; whereas physiological needs involved nutritional requirements, air, temperature regulation, shelter, clothing and sexual reproduction. Safety and security needs become primary in the second level. It involves financial security, health and wellness, and even safety against accidents and injury. Together, physiological and safety needs are referred to as basic needs. Social needs however, incudes love, belonging and acceptance. At this level, human behavior is driven by the need for emotional relationships. Esteem needs involves the needs for appreciation and respect. This plays a more prominent role in motivating behavior when the bottom three levels have been satisfied. Self-actualization needs come at the peak of the hierarchy. Maslow defined self-actualization as the full use and exploitation of talents, capabilities potentials, etc. Self-actualized people tend to be doing best at what they are capable of doing and they have developed into the full state that only they are capable of

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