A. Maslow's personality theory - Basic principles of humanistic psychology

In 1943, Abraham Maslow's article "A Theory of Individual Motivation" was published in Psychological Review. His views differed from the popular concepts of psychoanalysis and behaviorism at that time, which were based on the behavior of animals and were speculative. Maslow's theory was based on experiments with people conducted in hospital settings.

In addition, Maslow's research allowed for the first time to formulate a positive view of human nature. Traditional psychology studied people with mental disorders, while Abraham Maslow studied the behavior of healthy and fulfilled individuals. He paid special attention to such manifestations of personality as altruism, love, and creativity.

Maslow's pyramid

Images of Maslow's pyramid of needs are very common. This diagram simplifies the theory of motivation. It should be noted that Abraham Maslow is not the author of the picture. It first appears in German-language literature from the 1970s.

Typically, Maslow's theory of motivation includes five types of needs.

1. Organic (physiological): hunger, thirst, sleep.
2. Need for safety: protection from the cold, comfortable housing, getting rid of fears, confidence in the future, stability of life, trust in people.
3. Social: communication, joint activities, friendship, love, acceptance, mutual understanding, affection, caring for others.
4. Needs for respect and prestige: social status, career, self-esteem, approval, recognition.
5. Spiritual and moral: self-expression through creativity, self-actualization, knowledge.

The two lower levels of the hierarchy, including organic needs and the need for safety, are collectively called physiological or basic. They form a behavioral dominant. These needs are inevitable , they ensure human survival, so they are satisfied first. Only by realizing basic needs will a person be able to think about higher-order goals. It is obvious that people realize their desires gradually, as if rising from one step to another, therefore another name for the theory of motivation is Maslow’s ladder.

The short list of needs consists of five points, but there is also a more detailed breakdown of Maslow’s pyramid.

1. Physiological.
2. Security needs.
3. Need for belonging: communication, love, friendship, affection.
4. Respect needs: approval, recognition, desire for success.
5. Cognitive: desire to acquire knowledge and skills, research interest.
6. Aesthetic: the desire for harmony and order, a sense of beauty.
7. The need for self-actualization: self-development, realization of one’s talents.

In a detailed classification, the spiritual and moral needs of the individual are divided into three groups (cognitive, aesthetic and needs for self-actualization).

Violated needs

If some needs are not satisfied to a sufficient extent for a given person, they are considered violated and can cause big problems. The examples are as follows: the lack of normal sleep prevents a person from working, learning to think, he only wants to sleep, hunger provokes him to look for food and not think about anything else, physical injuries force him to suffer and seek salvation from his problem, everything else does not bother a person. Sometimes, even if a person does not have banal respect in the team, but has money, a position, and lower needs are satisfied, he can suffer even because of this one violated need.

Self-actualization

Abraham Maslow identified the characteristics of people who are close to self-actualization:

• adequate perception of reality, a feeling of comfort in reality;
• acceptance of oneself and others, the ability to build deep relationships;
• the ability to follow your desires;
• spontaneity of actions, naturalness and simplicity;
• ability to focus on a task;
• need for privacy;
• independence;
• the ability to create, the ability to give a fresh assessment of what is happening;
• mysticism, can be in higher states;
• democracy;
• the ability to distinguish between ends and means, good and evil;
• sense of humor.

According to Maslow, not everyone succeeds in achieving self-actualization. People often do not see their potential, they are afraid of their talents and possible success. Sometimes the environment hinders the development of abilities. Development requires a safe and friendly environment.

Two lifestyles - deficit and meta-image

Based on the presence of two different types of motivation, it was logical to assume that the behavior of people oriented towards each of these types will differ, and throughout their lives they will try to implement different behavioral strategies.

These two different paths are embodied in the concept of two fundamentally different ways of being, by analogy with defining motivations, these are deficit and existential ways of life.

A deficit lifestyle means that the main motivation of such a person is aimed at reducing psychological stress and satisfying impulsive needs.

As Maslow argued, such a person is a normal responder who, more or less automatically, responds to stimuli - positive and negative reinforcements. Such an individual, as a rule, bows to circumstances - the requirements of the social environment and lives an everyday routine life, considering this to be the perfect norm (everyone lives like this). Typical behavior of the d-respondent is the lack of a serious attitude towards anything, the desire for pleasant things and events, the rejection of the unpleasant, the formal performance of one’s work, the lack of real inspiration in any type of activity, a consumerist attitude towards people around him, etc. Well-being here consists of feeling secure and satisfied with your life. Such people always prefer the bird in their hands and are sincerely perplexed when they encounter other types of behavior.

Unlike D-life, B-life can be defined as a conscious effort to realize the maximum of one’s abilities and talents; the characteristic features of such a life are personal creativity, constant search, willingness to take risks and discomfort in order to achieve a goal. The reward for such a lifestyle is new and deeper experiences of happiness, a deep meaning of existence, and unity with the world.

A very important part of Maslow's life is his concept of the SUMMARY EXPERIENCE.

This is a special type of emotional experience experienced by the individual as delight, ecstasy and awe. Such experiences often cause profound changes in a person's personality and can lead to radical changes in life and attitude.

One of the results of such an experience can be a state of completion, when a person feels complete completion in everything and no longer wants to go towards any goals or personal achievements, finding happiness and peace in simple human activities.

Undoubtedly, in this idea one can discern obvious similarities with religious (mystical) experience and its results.

According to Maslow, such experiences and the path to them are characteristic features of authentic being, to which any person should strive, and only this can give the individual a true reward in the form of experiencing the unity of all things and realizing oneself in this unity.

Similar ideas and concepts, in more or less explicit form, are inherent in all areas of humanistic psychology, but, more importantly, in addition to only theoretical implementation, these ideas largely formed the basis of the concepts of the humanistic approach to working with clients.

For example, a system such as Carl Rogers' client-centered therapy.

NEXT ARTICLE – CARL ROGERS' THEORY OF PERSONALITY

Flexibility of Maslow's theory

Initially, the theory of motivation stated that further advancement is impossible until basic needs are satisfied. It was believed that, first of all, a person uses all opportunities to provide himself and his family with food, clean water, safe housing, and so on.

Abraham Maslow later said that the process of realizing an individual’s needs is not always progressive, and the usual order may be disrupted. Often the satisfaction of higher desires begins when the lower ones have not yet been realized. Moreover, Maslow said that some needs can arise simultaneously. For example, a person may need security, love, and self-esteem. Not everyone’s basic needs are fully satisfied, but this does not prevent people from having a desire to be useful to society or to love. It is not necessary to satisfy the needs of the lower level completely in order to move to a higher level of Maslow's pyramid.

Brief background

Until the beginning of the twentieth century, all psychology boiled down to locking patients in certain institutions and calling priests (optionally exorcists). Then Grandfather Freud appeared.

He stated that somewhere inside a person sits It - the unconscious , and you can help with mental problems by pulling out this unconscious, experiencing it and comprehending it.

Where it came from was not specified, so psychologists actively used the method of psychoanalysis, but could not substantiate it. But science prefers clear explanations.

In addition, in Freud, most of the disorders are explained by repressed sexual experiences, and people really did not want to be those who are guided only by sexual instinct.

The theory of behaviorism, which soon appeared - behavioral psychology - did not go far. Her followers believed that the human psyche is a set of reactions to stimuli (fortunately, not only sexual ones). An explanation was required that would make a person a little more humane.

It became the humanistic theory. Carl Rogers said that a person has a unique experience - a “phenomenal field”, which distinguishes him from others.

Problems begin when this field does not coincide with reality. Maslow developed these ideas.

How does Bert Hellinger's constellation method work? Read about it here.

Application of Maslow's theory

Motivation theories are often used by managers who seek to improve the performance of their employees. The work of Abraham Maslow was of great importance in the creation of modern theories of motivation.

Leaders must understand that an individual's motivation is determined by many needs. To motivate an employee, the manager needs to give him the opportunity to satisfy existing needs.

• Social: team spirit in the workplace, periodic meetings, stimulation of social activity of employees.
• The need for respect: interesting and meaningful work, encouragement of achieved results, career advancement, professional training and retraining.
• Self-expression needs: to allow subordinates to use their full potential and develop their abilities.

Economic incentives alone are not enough for many people. Increasing earnings helps to satisfy only basic needs. It is believed that only the poorest and most powerless sections of the population are guided by the needs of the lower levels.

Life path

Abraham Maslow was born in 1908 in New York, in the Brooklyn area, into a Jewish family. His parents emigrated from Russia. His father came to the United States as a very young man and was engaged in making barrels for sale. Later, Maslow Sr. called his future wife from Russia. As a young man, Abraham was very shy and very nervous. He was a bright, unhappy and lonely boy who was so convinced of his ugliness that he climbed into empty subway cars so as not to be looked at.

At age 18, Maslow entered City College in New York. His father wanted Abraham to become a lawyer, but the thought of law school was too much for his son to bear. When asked by his father what he was going to do, Abraham replied that he wanted to continue studying “everything.”

As a young man, Maslow fell in love with his cousin and made an excuse to spend some time with his family. While he was there, he continued to give his cousin a passionate look, but did not dare to touch her. At 19, he finally hugged his cousin and experienced his first kiss in his life. Maslow later described this moment as one of the peak experiences of his life. The fact that his cousin didn't reject him as he feared was a huge boost to his still insecure self-esteem. A year later they got married, she was 19 and he was 20. The marriage and his passion for psychology became a new turn in Maslow's life.

During his long illness, Maslow, in addition to his professional activities, became involved in the family barrel business. His interest in business and applied psychology eventually led him to found Eupsychical Management (1965), a work that collected thoughts and articles on management and industrial psychology. He wrote this work during a summer spent as a guest worker at a small electronics factory in Del Mar, California.

In 1951, Maslow was invited to the newly opened Brandeis University near Boston. Maslow accepted the offer and remained there until 1968, occupying the chair of the first department of psychology and contributing through his activities to the development of the entire university.

During Maslow's career, his pioneering work was almost always dismissed as unscientific and inconsistent with mainstream psychology. But Maslow himself was popular among his colleagues, and gradually his work began to be appreciated more. In 1967, Maslow was elected president of the American Psychological Association, which surprised Maslow himself. He remained in this position for a year.

Maslow felt that the names given to the various schools of psychology were too limited by the idea of ​​the direction of the discipline. “Humanistic psychology does not have to be said. There is no need for an adjective. Don't think that I am against behaviorism. I am against the doctrinaire... I am against that which closes our doors and cuts off our opportunities” (Maslow in: Hall, 1968, p. 57).

In January 1969, Maslow retired from Brandeis University; membership in the scientific society gave him the opportunity to devote himself entirely to scientific activities. In June 1970, at the age of 62, Maslow died of a heart attack.

“I am a Freudian, I am a behaviorist, I am a follower of humanistic psychology” (Maslow, 1974, p. 144).

Disadvantages of Maslow's theory

Maslow's concepts have attracted both supporters and critics. The latter believed that the study samples were too small and no generalizations could be made from them. Compiling a list of personality traits moving along the path of self-actualization, Abraham Maslow chose active and healthy people such as Abraham Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, Albert Einstein. Such people, in his opinion, were successful. Some great people, such as Richard Wagner, were not included in the study because they did not possess the personality traits that Maslow valued.

The main problem with the theory of the hierarchy of personal needs is that there is no way to quantify how satisfied a person’s needs are. Maslow's theory is not universal; it does not take into account individual characteristics of personality development. For some people, the order of the hierarchy of needs changes.

Due to the fact that the theory of motivation is built in accordance with a certain hierarchy, it is often associated with a pyramid of power. The more material assets a person has, the more his needs are satisfied and the more power he has. This theory is especially popular among people with hierarchical thinking. They are convinced that individual success is based on competition. Closer to the top of the pyramid and, accordingly, happier is the one who actively and successfully competes with others.

Such an outlook on life leads to the fact that people strive to get as many generally accepted things as possible, such as a prestigious job, expensive housing, social status. Many people believe that a large number of achievements leads to happiness.

In modern theories of human and social development, competition is viewed as an unproductive path. Social development can be more effective if competition is abandoned and the uniqueness of the individual and his ability to demonstrate his talents are put in the foreground.

Basic principles of humanistic psychology

The term "humanistic psychology" was coined by a group of personologists who came together under Maslow's leadership in the early 1960s to form a viable theoretical alternative to the two major intellectual movements in psychology, psychoanalysis and behaviorism. Humanistic psychology is not a strictly organized theoretical system—it is better thought of as a movement (i.e., a specific group of theoretical approaches to personality and clinical psychology).

Maslow called his approach third force psychology. Despite the fact that the views of the supporters of this movement represent a fairly wide spectrum, they share certain basic concepts about human nature. Almost all of these concepts have deep roots in the history of Western philosophical thought (Durant, 1977). Humanistic psychology is deeply rooted in existential philosophy developed by European thinkers and writers such as Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Karl Jaspers (1883-1969), Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980). Several prominent psychologists were also influential in the development of the humanistic approach to personality. The most famous of them are Erich Fromm, Gordon Allport, Carl Rogers, Viktor Frankl and Rollo May.

The existentialist view of man stems from a concrete and specific awareness of the uniqueness of the existence of an individual person existing at a certain point in time and space. Existentialists believe that each of us lives as a “being in the world” and is consciously and painfully aware of our existence and ultimate non-existence (death). We do not exist outside the world, and the world has no meaning if we do not live in it. Rejecting the idea that a person is a product of either hereditary (genetic) factors or environmental influences (especially early ones), existentialists emphasize the idea that each of us is ultimately responsible for who and what we become.

Of course, the unique human experience of freedom and responsibility to make sense of one's life is not a given. Sometimes freedom and responsibility can be a heavy and even frightening burden. From an existentialist point of view, people realize that they are responsible for their own destiny, and therefore experience the pain of despair, loneliness and fear. Only the people themselves, thrown into the whirlpool of life at a certain time and place, are responsible for the choices they make.

For existentialists, the question is whether it is possible to live an authentic (honest and sincere) life in the conscious sequence of its contingencies and uncertainties. Because existential philosophy holds that each person is responsible for his own actions, it turns to humanistic psychology... Humanistic theorists also emphasize that each person is the main architect of his own behavior and life experiences. Humans are thinking beings who experience, decide, and freely choose their actions. Therefore, humanistic psychology assumes a responsible person who freely chooses from the options offered. How about.

The most important concept that humanistic psychologists took from existentialism is the concept of becoming. A person never stands still, he always becomes. The senior college student is decidedly different from the cross-dressing, giggling teenager he was four years ago. And in another four years, he may be very different from others as he learns a new way of life, such as becoming a parent or pursuing a professional career. Thus, as a free being, man is responsible for realizing as many possibilities as possible; only when he fulfills this condition does he live a truly authentic life. From an existential-humanistic point of view, the search for authentic existence requires more than the satisfaction of biological needs and sexual or aggressive impulses.

People who refuse to become refuse to grow? they deny that they themselves contain within themselves all the possibilities of full human existence. For a humanistic psychologist, such a view is a tragedy and a perversion of what people can be, since it limits their possibilities for life. Simply put, it is a mistake for people to give up the opportunity to make every moment of their existence as fulfilling as possible and to make the most of their abilities. Those who refuse to accept the challenge of creating a life worth living are committing what existentialists call treason.

Even though humanistic psychologists acknowledge that the search for an authentic and meaningful life is not easy. This is especially true in times of profound cultural change and conflict, when traditional beliefs and values ​​are no longer an adequate guide to life and the search for meaning in human existence. In a bureaucratic society, a person tends to become depersonalized and disappear into the group. Thus, many people become alienated and distant—strangers to themselves and others. Others lack the “courage to be”—to break away from old patterns, insist on what they have, and look for new and effective ways to better self-realization.

People must take responsibility for choosing and directing their destiny, because whether they wanted it or not, they came into this world, and they are responsible for human life - their own. To shirk freedom and responsibility means to be inauthentic (inauthentic), to behave treacherously and, ultimately, to live in despair from hopelessness. Finally, existentialists argue that the only “reality” that everyone knows is a subjective or personal reality, not an objective one. This view can be summarized as a phenomenological or “here and now” tendency. Both existentialists and humanistic psychologists emphasize the importance of subjective experience as a fundamental phenomenon in the study and understanding of man.

Theoretical constructs and external behavior are secondary to the direct experience and its unique meaning for the person experiencing it. Thus, Maslow reminded: “Nothing replaces experience, absolutely nothing” (Maslow, 1966, p. 45). In various theoretical works, Maslow outlined his interpretation of what constitutes a humanistic theory of personality. As will soon become clear, his personological perspective is very different from the theories that have dominated the last 50 years, particularly psychoanalysis and behaviorism. But before we look in detail at what this approach to personality entails, let's look at the key elements of Maslow's humanistic psychology.