Abraham Maslow Research Paper

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Abraham Maslow was born in 1908 in Brooklyn, New York. Maslow was the oldest of seven children to immigrant parents who had very little education. His father wanted to reach the United States so badly that he walked and hitchhiked from Russia across Western Europe. His father’s intense drive was instilled in Abraham at a very young age. Maslow felt very alone in his childhood. He had a miserable family and believed his mother was a horrible person. His mother was very unaccepting of him, and she favored the younger siblings. She was so awful to him that when she died, Maslow refused to go to the funeral. His work in psychology is closely tied to the mistreatment from his mother, and also to the hatred he felt towards his mother. Maslow said that a lot of his work has its roots in hatred against everything his mother believed in. Maslow had a very large nose and a very skinny figure, which made him have an inferiority complex when he was a kid. He tried to compensate for his inferiority feelings by working his hardest in sports. However, when he couldn’t succeed in sports, he turned to studying and reading. Maslow read any book he could get his hands on. The library was a huge part of his childhood and adolescence. He started out studying law, but he realized through college that he wanted to study everything. His childhood and adolescent years really come out in his hierarchy of five innate needs, which are physiological, safety, belongingness and love, esteem, and self-actualization needs. He believed these needs were instinctoid, but he also said that the heredity could be overridden by learning and the fear of disapproval. He wrote that physiological and safety needs arise in infancy, which tie into his unstable childhood and... ... middle of paper ... ... Maslow’s theory does explain my personality development fairly well. I didn’t have a wonderful childhood. I grew up in what I would consider a broken home. A lot of fighting and yelling is what marked my childhood. However, I still had good relationships with both my parents. My mom and I didn’t get along at all for the greater part of two years from my junior year of high school and into college. I never felt accepted, and I never felt sufficient enough. Maslow experienced this earlier than I did, but we share that common bond of needing a sense of belonging, especially from mom. Even though these past events affected my life and my esteem, I have grown a lot and am happy with the man I am. My relationship with my mom is a lot better now, and I have chosen to not dwell on the rough times of my past, but I have chosen to grow from them and use them for good.

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