Abraham Maslow: biography of the man who bet on human potential

Abraham Maslow was one of the founders of humanistic psychology. An approach based on the needs and self-realization of human beings. In fact, His theory of self-realization and his pyramid of hierarchies became especially relevant. Both remain to this day in Psychology programs at all Universities.

Thus, Maslow became interested in the study of the psychology of the healthy man. He did it as a complement to the work of psychoanalysts and behaviorists who dealt with people with neurotic behavior.

He was a brilliant psychologist who dedicated his life to study and broke with the psychology of the moment, opening a new vision within his field of work. As with almost all pioneers, His theories revolutionized the academic world and were initially rejected by the most conventional psychologists.

Below, we review the life of a man whose work has influenced areas as diverse as education and the business world.

His life

Abraham Maslow was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1908. It seems that his childhood was not very happy. He was a lonely child who felt rejected by his classmates for being of Jewish origin. Maslow would remember his childhood among books. He received a strict education from his parents that made him a brilliant student. He began studying Law at the City College of New York. But he ended up abandoning it when, finally, he discovered that Psychology was his thing.

He went to the University of Wisconsin where he earned his doctorate in 1934. That same year he published his first hierarchy of needs, although he would complete it later. The following year he returned to New York, where he spent time working with Alfred Adler, who became his mentor.

At this time he interacted with several eminences of psychology such as Karen Horney, Erich Fromm and Max Wetheimer.. Three personalities, who together with Albert Einstein were the models that Maslow would take to draw notes and conclusions that he would apply to his Theory of Self-Realization. He had great admiration for them and thought they were an example of human self-realization.

From 1935 to 1951 he served as a professor at the Brooklyn College of New York University. That’s when He moved to Brandeis University in Boston, where he headed the Psychology department and worked with Kurt Goldstein. At this stage of his life, Abraham Maslow conducted several investigations and fully developed his pyramid of needs. By then he was already considered a leader of humanistic psychology.

Abraham Maslow’s humanistic approach

Throughout his life, Abraham Maslow felt great admiration for people he described as exceptional. Maslow rejected the single method for the study of human psychology.

His proposal was to integrate behaviorism and psychoanalysis into a broader, holistic system. and that it included people who did not present neurosis. Contrary to what many think, Maslow was not against Behaviorism or Psychoanalysis. He interpreted Humanism as the missing part of these two schools.

His focus of interest remained on the needs of human growth and its culmination, self-realization, which included the full potential of each person. Maslow, Together with Gordon Allport, Carl Rogers, Victor Frank and Eric Fromm, among others, they had created what is known in psychology as the Third Force.. For the Humanist movement, how the person discovers himself is essential. It is considered conscious and capable of choice and bases its precepts on the dignity of the human being.

His work

Maslow’s theory of self-actualization postulates that man is an integrated and organized whole. Defends that each individual has hierarchical needs that must be satisfied. These needs are physiological, emotional and self-realization and must be resolved from the base of the pyramid, which are physiological, security, emotional and self-esteem. In this way he manages to move towards self-realization, which is the top of the pyramid. Maslow maintained that the object of therapy should be directed toward the integration of the individual as a human being.

For Maslow, the motivation of the human being is the need. He used the term metamotivation to define people who explore beyond basic needs to achieve self-actualization. Additionally, he coined the term “peak” or “peak experience.” A phenomenon that usually occurs in self-actualized people in very intense moments in which they feel especially alive and immersed in their own experience. His work was reflected in books such as Motivation and Personality, published in 1954, Psychology of Being, 1962 and The Psychology of Science, 1966.

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