Contents
One of the most cheerful thinkers of the XNUMXth century, Abraham Maslow, changed the world for the better by telling us about the motives that actually guide our actions and aspirations.
On a fun day on April 1, exactly 100 years ago, one of the most optimistic psychologists of the century, Abraham Maslow, or Abram Maslov, as he is sometimes called, was born, wanting to remind you that his parents moved to America from near Kiev a couple of years before the birth of their son. However, he himself felt like a XNUMX% American.
“Maslow’s pyramid” is known today by any middle manager. What Maslow himself would not have been happy about: he abandoned his first attempt to build a holistic model of human motivation quite soon, because it did not stand up to the test of facts. And he developed another, then a third … But only professionals know them, and even then not all. But the early experiments went “to the people.”
Maslow, like no one else, fit the comic definition of a genius: “This is a person who knows about his outstanding abilities and nevertheless continues to work.” Despite the worldwide fame that he won, barely celebrating his fiftieth birthday, he continued to revise and change his views all his life, carefully and thoughtfully responding to criticism. And he gushed with new and new ideas, laying the foundations of psychology for the future – sometimes very distant. Maslow was always several steps ahead of his time, and now, 38 years after his death, there are many ideas in his legacy that the main convoy of psychological science has not yet reached. Maslow was keenly aware of his mission to change the world for the better – at least in terms of the mentality of modern man and the face of modern psychology. And to say that nothing worked out for him, you can only do it on April 1 …
His dates
- April 1, 1908: Born in New York.
- 1928: entered the University of Wisconsin (USA); married his cousin Bertha, with whom he did not part until his death.
- 1937-1940: got a permanent job at Brooklyn College in New York; got acquainted with psychologists – emigrants from Europe (Adler, Horney, Fromm, Koehler, etc.) and leading cultural anthropologists; Participated in field research of Indian tribes.
- 1943: published the first version of his theory of motivation.
- 1954: Motivation and Personality is published.
- 1967: Elected President of the American Psychological Association.
- June 8, 1970: Died of a heart attack at his home in California.
Keys to Understanding
The structure of basic needs
In the first version of his theory of motivation, Maslow divided the basic needs into five groups: physiological, security needs, contact and love, respect and self-respect, and self-actualization. They form a hierarchy: lower needs are more urgent, and until they are closed, all forces are directed to their satisfaction; then the turn comes to the next levels. However, the idea of a sequential order of satisfaction of needs was soon refuted, and Maslow abandoned it.
Self-actualization
Maslow discovered among us a special type of people (there are no more than 1%) who most fully embody the highest human characteristics. He called them self-actualizing personalities, borrowing from the German psychologist Kurt Goldstein the concept of self-actualization – motivation to develop all the possibilities inherent in the body. The number of such people is small, because the majority of the needs of lower levels are not satisfied and it does not come to self-actualization. However, in a new version of his theory, Maslow recognized that self-actualization is available to everyone – even those who sometimes lack the necessary.
Peak experiences
In the life of every person there are the most acute sensations of happiness and ecstasy that can change our whole life. At the moments of these peak experiences, the picture of the world is transformed in such a way that an ordinary person becomes self-actualizing for a while. Everyone has such moments, but some accept them, while others are frightened and try to protect themselves from them.
Psychology of being
As a result of self-actualization, a mature personality enters a fundamentally different level of being, at which everything, and above all the person himself, changes so much that a new psychology must be created for him. There are completely different driving forces – not needs, but existential values. The question “To be or not to be?” takes on new meaning at this level.
Enlightened Management
People will work better if conditions are created for updating and expanding their capabilities. Maslow refuted the notion that a person is lazy and self-serving and needs to be forced with a carrot and a stick to do what the employer needs. Corporate practice has proven over time that this approach is fundamentally much more effective than the traditional one.
About it
Books by Abraham Maslow
- “Towards the psychology of being” Eksmo, 2002.
- “New frontiers of human nature” Smysl, 2008.
- “Maslow on Management” Peter, 2003.