The Study of Maslow Hierarchy of Needs

The Study of Maslow Hierarchy of Needs

This essay study is about Maslow’s school of thought. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is often depicted as a pyramid consisting of five levels. I liked the way he differed from traditional psychologists. For example, he studied happy, high performing people to learn more about what they had in common. Maslow’s main contributions to psychology were the founding of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology in 1961. There were many occurrences during his lifetime that may have influenced his perspectives. Motivation is the key to performance improvement; Maslow demonstrated this in his theories of positive reinforcement, effective discipline and punishments, treating people fairly and satisfying employee’s needs.

Abraham Maslow, perhaps worthy of being called the “father of humanistic psychology” began his life in Brooklyn, New York. During his early childhood, he devoted himself to amassing knowledge with an attempt to fulfill his father’s wishes and become a lawyer. Finally abandoning law school, he transferred to Cornell University where his first exposure to psychology began during a class taught by Edward Titchener. (Boeree, 2006)

Later moving to Wisconsin with his wife Bertha, he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin where he received his doctorate in 1934. Their Maslow became a student of the famous psychologist, Harry Harlow. Maslow’s work there concerned the establishment of dominance in colonies of monkeys. There he noticed that dominance was found amongst those with “inner confidence” rather than actual strength. He also noticed that sexual behavior was also appeared related to dominance and subservience.

Maslow studied exemplary people such as Albert Einstein, Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Frederick Douglass rather than mentally ill or neurotic people. . Maslow felt he saw such qualities in such notables as Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jane Adams, William James, Albert Schweitzer, and Aldous Huxley.

Abraham Maslow attempted to synthesize a large body of research related to human motivation, Prior to Maslow, his research generally focused on such factors as biology, achievement, power to explain what energizes, directs, and sustains human behavior. Maslow posited a hierarchy of human needs based on two groups: deficiency needs and growth needs.

Within the deficiency needs, Maslow, directed his attention on each lower need that must be met before moving to the next higher need level. Once each of these needs has been satisfied, Maslow would classify each at some future time a deficiency is detected, and how an individual would act to remove the deficiency. According to Maslow, an individual is ready to act upon the growth needs if and only if the deficiency needs are met, and determinations are made.

(Huitt, 2004)

In 1962, Abraham Maslow published a book called, “Toward a Psychology of Being”, in which he described humanistic psychology as the “third force” in psychology. The first and second forces were behaviorism and psychoanalysis. Some of occurrences in Maslow life that help to influence his views and perspectives come form his early childhood experiences. Maslow felt handicapped by the lack of nurturing from his parents. Maslow mother was the type of person that's called most people schizophrenogenic in the literature form. Maslow also stated that his mother was a person that could drive anyone crazy, as Maslow descripts his mother personality. Maslow was awfully curious to find out why he didn't go insane from his childhood experiences.

Maslow was certainly neurotic, extremely neurotic, during all his first twenty years he was depressed, terribly unhappy, lonely, isolated, and self-rejecting. Maslow himself became a prolific writer, concentrating on his work with regarded to classics in psychology, including his writing of the books “Principles of Abnormal Psychology”, in (1955); “Toward a Psychology of Being”, in (1962); “Values and Peak Experiences”, in (1964); and “The Psychology of Science”, in (1969). Maslow many books and articles continue to be instrumental information and an inspiration to which one can return again and again for additional knowledge.

Maslow died in 1970 of his third heart attack at the age of 62. Let's turn now to some major themes in Maslow's writings and themes, which came to be known as the Third Force of Psychology. The first two forces were Freudianism and Behaviorism. The term Third Force of Psychology has also been used as a synonym for humanistic psychology. Readers can now begin to know more about the philosopher Maslow and his now famous theory of basic needs, usually portrayed visually as needs layered within a pyramid drawing. (Huitt, 2004)

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