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Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Encyclopedia of Childhood and Adolescence

The hierarchy of needs is a theory about the needs that motivate all humans developed by Abraham Maslow, a central figure in humanistic psychology and in the human potential movement. Maslow began to work out this theory of human motivation in the 1940s, and first published his thoughts in Motivation and Human Personality in 1954.

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Rejecting the determinism of both the psychoanalytic and behaviorist approaches, Maslow took an optimistic approach to human behavior that emphasized developing one's full potential. He based his studies on successful historical and contemporary figures whom he considered "self-actualizers," including Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), Jane Addams (1860-1935), Albert Einstein (1879-1955), and Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962). In addition to drawing up a list of the common traits of these individuals, Maslow placed self-actualization at the peak of his hierarchy of human motivations, the concept for which he is best known today.

This hierarchy is usually depicted as a pyramid with five levels, ranging from the most basic needs at the bottom to the most complex and sophisticated at the top. From bottom to top, the levels are biological needs (food, water, shelter); safety; belongingness and love; the need to be esteemed by others; and self-actualization, the need to realize one's full potential. According to Maslow, the needs at each level must be met before one can progress to the next level. Maslow considered fewer than one percent of the population to be self-actualized individuals. However, he believed that all human beings still possessed an innate (if unmet) need to reach this state.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Maslow became associated with the movement known as humanistic psychology, which he also referred to as the Third Force because it offered an alternative to the prevailing schools of psychoanalysis and behaviorism in both theory and therapeutic practice. Maslow rejected the idea that human behavior was determined by childhood events or conditioning and believed that the goal of psychotherapy was to remove the obstacles that prevented clients from self-actualizing.

As humanistic psychology gave birth to the human potential movement of the 1960s, Maslow became one of its central figures, lecturing at the Esalen Institute at Big Sur, California. In 1967-68, Maslow served as president of the American Psychological Association . Prior to his death in 1970, Maslow published over 100 articles in magazines and professional journals. His books include Toward a Psychology of Being (1962), Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences (1964), Eupsychian Management (1965), The Psychology of Science (1966), and a posthumous collection of papers entitled The Farther Reaches of Human Nature (1971).

Gale Encyclopedia of Childhood & Adolescence. Gale Research, 1998.

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Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Encyclopedia of Childhood and Adolescence

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