There is a paradoxical point of view: «The degree of a person’s genius is determined by how much he slowed down the development of the following specialists.» So, A. Maslow is a genius, because the idea of a “self-developing seed” has become a dogma for a huge number of psychologists for many decades.
The metaphor of a tree growing from a single seed overshadowed the development of the theory of activity, where it was convincingly shown that the development of a child is not an isolated process, that a child grows in a dyad with an adult who develops him, that the influence of adults is predominantly developing, positive, and not negative and oppressive. .
Without a scientific basis, but bright and beautifully written, Maslow’s works overshadowed Uri Bronfenbrenner’s most serious scientific developments under the name «human development ecology». In this theory, the mutual influences of the child and the social environment surrounding him are much more plausibly shown.
In general, it seems that as a theory of personality development, the theory of Uri Bronfenbrenner is more solid, and as a working metaphor for us, the metaphor of soil and seeds as the basis for the idea of personality as an ecosystem is more promising.