Abraham Maslow, an unhappy boy who became the father of humanistic psychology

Abraham Maslow’s name is one of the most important in the history of psychology. He is considered the father of the so-called “humanistic psychology”, a current that we can place at an intermediate point between psychoanalysis and behaviorism and that has had a great influence on the development of psychology.

Abraham Maslow, son of Jewish immigrants, was born in Brooklin, New York (USA), on April 1, 1908. His childhood It was not easy at all, since he was a victim of discrimination on several occasions. That was perhaps what motivated his interest in what happens in our minds under certain circumstances.

Maslow himself said on several occasions that he was not a happy child. His difficulty in being accepted stimulated his curiosity. He made the library his second home. And there, immersed in books, he began to cultivate a keen intelligence, which always kept him among the best students.

The training of Abraham Maslow

At first, Abraham Maslow believed that laws were his thing. That’s why he started studying Law, but he soon realized that his true fascination was in psychology. That’s why He decided to leave New York and began studying it at the University of Wisconsin.

His life changed forever during that period. He married an older cousin, and also met the man who would become his first mentor: Harry Harlow. With him began to carry out the first studies about primates . He was particularly struck by their sexual behavior and power relations in the packs.

Later he returned to New York. He worked as a teacher at Columbia University. There he met Edward Thorndike and Alfred Adler. The latter, very close to Sigmund Freud, became his second mentor.

Later, Maslow worked as a professor at Brooklyn College, New York University. It was a particularly prolific time. There he met Erich Fromm and Karen Horney, two eminences of psychology who greatly enriched his vision..

Maslow’s revolutionary theories

Abraham Maslow was, above all, a great observer and a passionate researcher. Beyond the understanding of human behavior, Maslow was motivated by the idea of ​​finding the means to help others take steps toward self-realization.. Already in his undergraduate thesis he had proposed an initial theory that he called “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.”

Over time, this initial hierarchy became what was later known as “Maslow’s pyramid of needs.”. The main axes of his theory are condensed in it. It proposes the existence of a set of needs common to all human beings. Such needs start from the satisfaction of the most basic, until reaching the most abstract.

In this way, Maslow suggests that physiological needs should be at the base of his pyramid. After, successively and ascendingly, the needs for security, social acceptance, self-esteem and, finally, self-actualization.

The importance of Maslow in psychology

As often happens, at first Maslow’s theories were not widely received.. Some psychologists of the time, especially from the behaviorist current, found them not very rigorous in scientific terms. They thought it had more humanism than psychology, in the strict sense.

The psychoanalytic current did not see him favorably either, since his approaches were far from Freud’s basic postulates.. However, Maslow himself gave credit to the Viennese psychoanalyst, although pointing out that his doctrine fell short of understanding human behavior. In his opinion, Freud had studied only what concerned neurotic behavior and therefore had to be complemented with the study of healthy behavior.

Despite the resistance, Little by little, Abraham Maslow’s theory began to attract the attention of psychologists of his time.. The idea that human beings have structured needs and that our well-being is conditioned by how we prioritize/hierarchize the satisfaction of these needs also began to seduce intellectuals from other disciplines such as sociology, anthropology and marketing, among others.

Thus, in 1967, the American Humanist Association named him Humanist of the Year.. Maslow never stopped being a teacher, but in his last years he only taught occasionally. His time was absorbed by other of his projects, which he ultimately could not complete. He died in 1970 and based on his postulates he laid the foundations for what would formally become the humanist current.

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