Needs: a way of dialogue with the world

Happiness constantly eludes us. “Everything seems to be fine: family, children, work. Everything is there, but I don’t feel happy.” Our readers write about dissatisfaction with their lives, clients tell our experts about it, sometimes we ourselves feel like that … Our desires and aspirations are contradictory, we always want what we don’t have, and easily lose interest in what we finally achieved in life . We feel we need something different, something else. We don’t really know what we want. And such ambiguity is frightening, causing a feeling of guilt, as if we are not perfect enough to understand ourselves.

The inability to live in a state of peace arises primarily due to internal contradictions that prompt us to seek balance, a new harmony instead of the lost harmony of the animal with nature, – explained the founder of humanistic psychoanalysis, Erich Fromm*. After satisfying animal needs (hunger, thirst, procreation), we are driven by human needs. “While the body tells what to eat and what to avoid, the conscience of a person would have to tell him what needs should be cultivated and satisfied, and which should be allowed to be exhausted and wither away. But hunger and appetite are functions of the body inherent in a person from birth, while the conscience inherent in him potentially needs guidance from people, as well as principles, the formation of which occurs only in the process of cultural development.

Theory of motivation

Abraham Maslow was the first to talk about our higher human needs (before that, psychologists, explaining what drives us, used concepts from the animal world: instincts and drives). In the late 30s, this American psychologist identified seven groups of needs: in addition to physiological needs, we have needs for security, for contacts and love, for respect and self-respect, for knowledge, for beauty, for self-actualization. Needs form a hierarchy: the lower ones are more urgent, and we satisfy them first of all. However, Maslow later rejected the idea of ​​sequential satisfaction of needs: a starving person (as well as a well-fed one) needs respect and love.

From this moment on, most psychologists speak first of all about the highest human needs – physiology remains in them, but as a background. In the 1950s, Erich Fromm published his theory of existential needs; in the 1960s and 70s, psychologist Joseph Nuttin suggested that we have only one (and innate) motivation – to interact with the world. Already in the XNUMXst century, self-determination came to the fore. Psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan (Edward Deci, Richard Ryan) believe that this need is made up of competence, connectedness with other people and autonomy (freedom). “Today it can be argued that we interact with the world on three levels,” sums up Dmitry Leontiev. – As a biological organism (“interact with the world, and come what may”), as a social unit (“integrate with the group, and come what may”) and as an individual (“make your own choice, and come what may”). Here everyone finds himself alone and interacts with the world in his own special way in search of personal identity, the meaning of life, worldview.

Life is not about happiness

The feeling of satisfaction is a feedback signal: the deviation of the actual from the desired is small and life happens approximately the way we want. But if we begin to fix our attention only on these signals and build our lives in such a way that there is a maximum of positive emotions in it, we will take care that the signals are correct, and not about how we actually live. “When talking about life satisfaction, the emphasis is usually placed on the first part,” says Dmitry Leontiev. – I propose to consider all combinations: after all, there is not only dissatisfaction with life, but also, for example, satisfaction with unlife. The most direct way to get pleasure bypassing life is drugs. But life is much more interesting and more important than satisfaction: I know people who see meaning in life and enjoy it, although they do not have worldly well-being, but there are problems and suffering.

In this Dossier, we wanted to understand our basic needs, without taking into account which we can hardly hope for the fullness of being. Trying on our lives five correct answers to the main question of our existence, let’s not forget that “one cannot live one’s life by simply repeating the patterns of behavior characteristic of the species; man must live by himself.

* E. Fromm “Healthy Society” (AST, 2005).