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Continued...
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
In
1968, students of human behavior began to study psychologist Abraham Maslow's
newly updated book
Toward
a Psychology of Being. A theme of his observations
about how we all think, feel, and act has been called the "hierarchy of needs."
It looks like this:
Maslow proposed
that every child and adult has overlapping needs that fall into naturally-ranked levels
or prior-ities:
Level
1: reduce
current
physical
dis-comforts
first:
hunger, thirst, pain, air, temperature, smells, balance, noise, light, and rest (sleep). When those
are satisfied enough now...
Level 2: We try to fill our
need to
feel
safe enough in the near future. Safety
comes from trusting that our level-one needs will be reliably met in the com-ing
hours and days (our safety zone). In our
society, that translates into believing that we'll have a depen-dable source of
money
to buy those securities. The safety zone is short for some people, longer
for
others.
Maslow suggested that when we feel comfortable and safe enough, we
then try to fill...
Level 3:
our need for companionship:
our primitive need to feel accepted by, and part of, a group of other people.
We need to
feel we
belong
to (are accepted by) a family, tribe, group, or
clan. The alternative is feeling we're alone (and unsafe) in the world.
For infants, being alone too long means dying.
People abandoned emotionally or physically
too often as infants
unconsciously grow
subselves who remain terrified of abandonment
in adulthood. Alternatively, their subselves protect them from (another)
devastating
by (uncon-sciously) never
with anyone.
Semi-conscious
terror of rejection and abandonment is one
root of relationship
and
The other root is
excessive
("I'm flawed and unlovable!") Unacknowledged
code-pendence and it's underlying
false-self wounds often cause adults to
unconsciously pick
wounded, un-aware people over and over again,
until they choose to heal. Personal
can partially heal each root of codependence, over
time. These ideas gained general public and clinical acceptance after (1980+) Maslow proposed this hierarchy of needs.
He
proposed that if we feel our level
1, 2, and 3 needs are satisfied enough,
then we focus on filling...
Level 4: our need to be recognized as special
and valuable by our group. We need to be more than just a featureless face
in the crowd, we need to be known and appreciated
as a unique, respected person.
of
childhoods who were
shamed too often as young children may search endlessly for the specialness and praise they
never got.
Paradoxically, their
discounts
praise when it's offered ("I really don't
deserve it..."). Until wound-recovery releases them from this endless quest, such burdened,
unaware
people are never really free to achieve...
|
Level 5: the need to be self
actualized. A key reason people still value Maslow's
ideas is the univer-sal longing to be fully ourselves.
That implies we each have unique talents and abilities that we long to
develop and use to benefit the world if all our other need-levels are filled well enough,
often enough. Then we can become creative, energized, centered, focused, and
productive and
"at our highest personal potential."
|
Do you know what self actualization feels like? Do
you know anyone whom you feel is "living at their highest personal potential"?
Did your parents and key caregivers achieve this prize? Has your mate? Are
your kids headed toward that priceless condition?
Pause and reflect: does this natural ranking of primal human needs make
sense to you? If it doesn't, do you have another explanation for why we
all behave the way we do? How does this ranking relate to why you chose to
read this article?
So what use is this hierarchy to you and others?
Four Key Implications
