Toward the end of his life, he inaugurated what he called the fourth force in psychology: Freudian and other “depth” psychologies constituted the first force; Behaviorism was the second force; His own humanism, including the European existentialists, were the third force. The fourth force was the transpersonal psychologies which, taking their cue from Eastern philosophies, investigated such things as meditation, higher levels of consciousness, and even parapsychological phenomena. Perhaps the best known transpersonalist today is Ken Wilber, author of such books as The Atman Project and The History of Everything.
Maslow has been a very inspirational figure in personality theories. In the 1960’s in particular, people were tired of the reductionistic, mechanistic messages of the behaviorists and physiological psychologists. They were looking for meaning and purpose in their lives, even a higher, more mystical meaning. Maslow was one of the pioneers in that movement to bring the human being back into psychology, and the person back into personality!
At approximately the same time, another movement was getting underway, one inspired by some of the very things that turned Maslow off: computers and information processing, as well as very rationalistic theories such as Piaget’s cognitive development theory and Noam Chomsky’s linguistics. This, of course, became the cognitive movement in psychology. As the heyday of humanism appeared to lead to little more than drug abuse, astrology, and self indulgence, cognitivism provided the scientific ground students of psychology were yearning for.
But the message should not be lost: Psychology is, first and foremost, about people, real people in real lives, and not about computer models, statistical analyses, rat behavior, test scores, and laboratories.
The “big picture” aside, there are a few criticisms we might direct at Maslow’s theory itself. The most common criticism concerns his methodology: Picking a small number of people that he himself declared self-actualizing, then reading about them or talking with them, and coming to conclusions about what self-actualization is in the first place does not sound like good science to many people.
In his defense, I should point out that he understood this, and thought of his work as simply pointing the way. He hoped that others would take up the cause and complete what he had begun in a more rigorous fashion. It is a curiosity that Maslow, the “father” of American humanism, began his career as a behaviorist with a strong physiological bent. He did indeed believe in science, and often grounded his ideas in biology. He only meant to broaden psychology to include the best in us, as well as the pathological!
Another criticism, a little harder to respond to, is that Maslow placed such constraints on self-actualization. First, Kurt Goldstein and Carl Rogers used the phrase to refer to what every living creature does: To try to grow, to become more, to fulfill its biological destiny. Maslow limits it to something only two percent of the human species achieves. And while Rogers felt that babies were the best examples of human self-actualization, Maslow saw it as something achieved only rarely by the young.
Another point is that he asks that we pretty much take care of our lower needs before self-actualization comes to the forefront. And yet we can find many examples of people who exhibited at very least aspects of self-actualization who were far from having their lower needs taken care of. Many of our best artists and authors, for example, suffered from poverty, bad upbringing, neuroses, and depression. Some could even be called psychotic! If you think about Galileo, who prayed for ideas that would sell, or Rembrandt, who could barely keep food on the table, or Toulouse Lautrec, whose body tormented him, or van Gogh, who, besides poor, wasn’t quite right in the head, if you know what I mean... Weren’t these people engaged in some form of self-actualization? The idea of artists and poets and philosophers (and psychologists!) being strange is so common because it has so much truth to it!
We also have the example of a number of people who were creative in some fashion even while in concentration camps. Trachtenberg, for example, developed a new way of doing arithmetic in a camp. Viktor Frankl developed his approach to therapy while in a camp. There are many more examples.
And there are examples of people who were creative when unknown, became successful only to stop being creative. Ernest Hemingway, if I’m not mistaken, is an example. Perhaps all these examples are exceptions, and the hierarchy of needs stands up well to the general trend. But the exceptions certainly do put some doubt into our minds.
I would like to suggest a variation on Maslow's theory that might help. If we take the idea of actualization as Goldstein and Rogers use it, i.e. as the "life force" that drives all creatures, we can also acknowledge that there are various things that interfere with the full effectiveness of that life force. If we are deprived of our basic physical needs, if we are living under threatening circumstances, if we are isolated from others, or if we have no confidence in our abilities, we may continue to survive, but it will not be as fulfilling a live as it could be. We will not be fully actualizing our potentials! We could even understand that there might be people that actualize despite deprivation! If we take the deficit needs as subtracting from actualization, and if we talk about full self-actualization rather than self-actualization as a separate category of need, Maslow's theory comes into line with other theories, and the exceptional people who succeed in the face of adversity can be seen as heroic rather than freakish aberrations.
I received the following email from Gareth Costello of Dublin, Ireland, which balances my somewhat negative review of Maslow:
One mild criticism I would have is of your concluding assessment, where you appeal for a broader view of self-actualisation that could include subjects such as van Gogh and other hard-at-heel intellectual/creative giants. This appears to be based on a view that people like van Gogh, etc. were, by virtue of their enormous creativity, 'at least partly' self-actualised.
I favour Maslow's more narrow definition of self-actualisation and would not agree that self-actualisation equates with supreme self-expression. I suspect that self-actualisation is, often, a demotivating factor where artistic creativity is concerned, and that artists such as van Gogh thrived (artistically, if not in other respects) specifically in the absence of circumstances conducive to self-actualisation. Even financially successful artists (e.g. Stravinsky, who was famously good at looking after his financial affairs, as well as affairs of other kinds) do exhibit some of the non-self-actualised 'motivators' that you describe so well.
Self-actualisation implies an outwardness and openness that contrasts with the introspection that can be a pre-requisite for great artistic self-expression. Where scientists can look out at the world around them to find something of profound or universal significance, great artists usually look inside themselves to find something of personal significance - the universality of their work is important but secondary. It's interesting that Maslow seems to have concentrated on people concerned with the big-picture when defining self-actualisation. In Einstein, he selected a scientist who was striving for a theory of the entire physical universe. The philosophers and politicians he analysed were concerned with issues of great relevance to humanity.
This is not to belittle the value or importance of the 'small-picture' - society needs splitters as well as lumpers. But while self-actualisation may be synonymous with psychological balance and health, it does not necessarily lead to professional or creative brilliance in all fields. In some instances, it may remove the driving force that leads people to excel - art being the classic example. So I don't agree that the scope of self-actualisation should be extended to include people who may well have been brilliant, but who were also quite possibly damaged, unrounded or unhappy human beings.
If I had the opportunity to chose between brilliance (alone) or self-actualisation (alone) for my children, I would go for the latter!
Gareth makes some very good points!