“Someone asked me... How did a timid youth turn into a “fearless” (seeming) leader and speaker? How did it happen that I strived for frankness, held unpopular views, while the majority behaved differently? My first instinct was to answer: “Intellectual development is just a realistic view of things,” but I refrained from such an answer because, in isolation from the rest, it would be wrong. "Good will, compassion and intellectual development“I finally answered.”—Abraham Maslow, American psychologist, founder humanistic psychology
The life story of a famous American psychologist Jewish origin Abraham Maslow, known as the author of the “pyramid of needs,” is the story of an ugly Jewish boy with a very difficult childhood who became a happy person and created a theory thanks to which each of us can become happy.
Life stories are sources of happiness
Difficult childhood
Jewish pogroms at the beginning of the twentieth century in the then Russian Empire forced the parents of the future scientist, Samuil Maslov and Rosa Shilovskaya, to emigrate from the Kyiv province to America. On April 1, 1908, their eldest son, Abraham, was born in Brooklyn.
The parents often quarreled, the father disappeared from home at times, the mother was cruel and gave her attention and love to other children. A terrible picture remains in Abraham's memory: his mother smashes the heads of two cats, which he brought home to feed, against the wall. " My entire philosophy of life and my research have one common source - they are fueled by hatred and disgust for what she (mother) embodied.", Maslow recalled.
A couple of years later the family moved to a non-Jewish area of the city and Abraham went to school there. He was the only Jew in his class, and he had to learn about anti-Semitism as a child. He was a frail and ugly teenager who was even embarrassed to enter a subway car where there were many people. " It’s amazing that having such a childhood, I didn’t develop neurosis or even psychosis... I was lonely and unhappy. I grew up in libraries, among books, without friends", he admitted. Life among books yielded results - thanks to reading and constant intellectual development, his IQ reached 195.
Native love
In his early youth, Abraham fell in love with his cousin Bertha Goodman, but did not dare admit it to her because he was afraid of being rejected. When, at the age of 20, I made up my mind, to my surprise, I met a response. He was overwhelmed with happiness and experienced the so-called “peak experience”, which gave a powerful impetus to life and science. They married at the ages of 20 and 19 and lived a happy life, raising two daughters who also devoted their lives to psychology. " Life didn't really start for me until I got married", wrote Maslow.
Maslow and students
Professor Abraham Maslow was very loved by his students. He treated them with understanding and respect. Since many of them came from emigrant families, like himself, Maslow took care of them and even helped them arrange their lives. Figuratively speaking, it was the students who carried him into the chair of the president of the American Psychological Association.
Steps on the path to happiness
To please his father, Abraham went to college, where he planned to study law, but realized that being a lawyer did not bring him any satisfaction at all. So he went to the University of Wisconsin, where he graduated academic course in psychology and in 1931 became a master humanities, and in 1934 - a doctor. His dissertation was devoted to the study of dominance and sexual behavior in a colony of monkeys.
After receiving his doctorate, Maslow returned to New York, where he began working at Columbia University. In 1937, he became a professor at Brooklyn College, where he worked for 14 years. It was New York in these years that became the center of development of psychological science - many European psychologists who took refuge from Nazi persecution worked there, including Alfred Adler, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, Max Wertheimer, Ruth Benedict and Kurt Goldstein.
Communication with them gave rise to the idea of researching self-actualizing individuals and the foundations of humanistic theory, and Abraham Maslow considered Goldstein one of his teachers. Informal communication with such outstanding scientists and personalities contributed to the further formation of Maslow’s humanistic views and laying the foundations of the humanistic theory of personality. At this time he was also engaged in psychoanalysis.
In 1951 year Maslow headed the psychology department at Brandeis University and worked here until 1969. It was here that the foundations of humanistic psychology were formed as an independent direction and recognition came to Maslow.
In the summer of 1962, he worked as a visiting specialist at Non-Linear Systems, a leading California company in the field of high technology, where he conducted seminars on business management. The theoretical foundations of these seminars are still actively used in human resource management.
In 1969, he left Brandeis University and began working for the Loughlin Charitable Foundation in Menlo Park, California. Here he acquired complete freedom for his intellectual activity in the field of humanistic psychology and philosophy.
Maslow was a member of several professional and honorary societies, including president of the Division of Personality and Social Psychology, the Division of Aesthetics of the American Psychological Association, and in 1967 he was elected president of the American Psychological Association, which annually gives an award in his name for contributions to the field of the human psyche.
Maslow was also the founder and editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology and the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, as well as a consultant to many periodicals. scientific publications. IN last years life, he actively supported the Esalen Institute in California - an institute for integral human development, which was a settlement-commune on west coast California, founded in 1962 by American psychologists Michael Murphy and Richard Price - and other communities studying human capabilities.
Abraham Maslow died on June 8, 1970 in Menlo Park from a heart attack that overtook him while jogging.
Maslow's recipe: how to become happy
Get rid of the Jonah complex
« If you deliberately set out to become less of a person than your abilities allow you to be, I warn you that you will be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life.", said Abraham Maslow. He was the first to describe the Jonah complex (the biblical prophet who tried to avoid the fate destined for him by God because he was afraid of the responsibility entrusted to him), which consists of a person’s fear of realizing his inherent abilities.
Such people doom themselves to a boring and limited, but well-established existence. They think that in this way they avoid losses and failures. " Wanting to avoid the risks associated with overcoming difficulties, with self-improvement and internal progress, these unfortunate people initially live as if they had suffered a total failure", noted Maslow.
Move to the top of the pyramid of needs
A person, striving for self-actualization (from the Latin actualis - “genuine”, “real”), becomes what he can and should become, which allows him to live in harmony with himself.
« A composer must compose music, an artist must create paintings, a poet must compose poems.“, said Maslow, believing that anyone can realize their potential, regardless of profession.
« Life is continuous process, in which you constantly have to choose. Almost all the time a person has the opportunity to choose: retreat or move forward. Either a return to even greater fears, concerns and defenses, or development and spiritual growth. Making a choice towards development rather than fear ten times a day means taking ten confident steps towards self-realization“,” stated the famous psychologist.
Achievements of Abraham Maslow
- the founder of humanistic psychology, which considers a person as responsible for his own destiny, freely making a choice among the opportunities provided to him; the highest manifestations of man are self-actualization, highest values and meanings, freedom and responsibility.
- one of the founders of transpersonal psychology - a branch of psychology that studies transpersonal experiences (Maslow’s “peak experiences”), altered states of consciousness and religious experience, combining modern psychological approaches and spiritual practices of the East and West.
Physiology (hunger, sleep, sexual desire)
Safety (life is not in danger)
Sociality (friendship, love, belonging to a nationality, community)
Recognition (respect, recognition of usefulness in the life of society)
Cognition (natural curiosity - to know, be able to, study)
Aesthetics (need to follow truth)
I (understanding the meaning of my existence).
Each step in the pyramid is a level of needs. Needs are satisfied from simple to higher, the desire for higher ones appears after the satisfaction of simpler ones.
Abraham Maslow also formulated common features self-actualized people (using the example of studying the lives of outstanding personalities such as Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jane Adams, Aldous Huxley and Baruch Spinoza):
1. Effective perception of reality and comfortable relationship with reality.
2. Acceptance of yourself, others and nature.
3. Spontaneity, simplicity and naturalness.
4. Focus on the problem.
5. The ability to isolate and the need for privacy.
6. Autonomy: independence from cultural cliches and environment.
7. Freshness of perception.
8. Mystical and summit experience.
9. A sense of community with others.
10. Deeper and more insightful relationships.
11. Democratic.
12. The ability to recognize good and evil, ends and means.
13. Philosophical, friendly humor.
14. Creativity.
15. Resistance to culturalization, staying outside of any specific culture.
The test of satisfaction of basic needs (Maslow's test) allows you to determine which needs are the main ones at this stage. In modern life, it is used in personnel management, employee motivation and in the theory of progressive management.
— “Motivation and Personality” (1954)
— “Eupsyche: a diary” (1965)
— “Psychology of Science: Reconnaissance” (1966)
Tania Weissman
Maslow Abraham Harold (1908 - 1970) - American psychologist, one of the founders of the humanistic trend in psychology and ideological inspirer almost all subsequent humanistic psychologists. Maslow believed that psychology should be interested not only in the depths of the human spirit, but also in its heights - the spiritual world and ontological values.
The beginning of humanistic psychology was laid by the landmark article “The Theory of Human Motivation” (1943), in which Maslow assigns psychology the role of one of the means contributing to the social and psychological well-being of a person, and connects psychology with the problems of personal growth and development. The background to Maslow's scientific views was a protest against the tendency, dominant in behaviorism and psychoanalysis, to see in all manifestations mental life subject of the consequence of deficit motivation. Attributing to human behavior exclusively the motives of satisfying frustrated needs and unsatisfied desires, behaviorism and psychoanalysis, as Maslow aptly put it, “explained to the point of destruction” creativity, love, and altruism.
It must be said that most of Maslow's works were published in the last decade of his life, and in to a greater extent, they are a collection of hypotheses, thoughts and points of view rather than a developed theoretical system. Although Maslow received informal psychotherapeutic education and had personal experience of undergoing psychoanalysis, he practically does not touch on the topic of psychotherapy in his works. Moreover, Maslow argued that the support a person receives in warm friendly relations, may be equivalent to professional psychotherapeutic assistance.
Maslow was repeatedly reproached for being too optimistic about human nature, in insufficient attention to the contradictions and disharmony inherent in many outstanding personalities. However, Maslow remained a committed theorist - an innovator who believed in the power of the potential of the human individual. He admitted the insufficiency experimental confirmation his research, which allowed many to see him as an “armchair” scientist.
In order to understand Maslow’s religious views, you need to turn to his biography and become more familiar with the theoretical provisions of humanistic psychology.
Abraham Maslow was born in New York (1908), the eldest of seven children in a family of Jewish emigrants from Russia. The family lived in Brooklyn, an area where no Jews lived, and being the only Jewish boy among non-Jews, Maslow felt very insecure. He compared his condition at that time to that of the only black man in a white school: “I was lonely and unhappy. I grew up in libraries, among books, almost without friends." He began to make a living early by selling newspapers and helping in his family's cooperage business.
Maslow's parents were uneducated, not very loving people. The relationship with my mother was especially difficult. Maslow characterized his mother as a cruel, hostile and ignorant woman. She was very religious, but did not love her children, and too often threatened her eldest son that God would punish him for his indecent actions. The relationship with his mother was so bad that it was accompanied by hatred that lasted throughout his life—Maslow even refused to come to his mother’s funeral. It hardly makes sense to talk about the true religiosity of a person with such personal qualities, which distinguished Maslow’s mother, but, nevertheless, Maslow’s hatred of his mother extended to his attitude towards religion and gave rise to doubts about God. With his father, who also did not have a good disposition, was fond of alcohol and fights, inspired his son that he was ugly and stupid, Maslow was able to reconcile over time and often spoke of him with warmth and love.
Maslow attended courses at Cornell University, then transferred to the University of Wisconsin, where he received a bachelor's degree (1930) in psychology, a master's degree in humanities (1931), and a doctorate (1934). Maslow's doctoral dissertation was devoted to the study of sexual and dominance behavior in monkeys. Maslow married (1928) Bertha Goodman, and associated his marriage and move to Wisconsin with the real beginning of his life. The birth of his first child turned Maslow from a convinced behaviorist into a skeptic: “I told myself that anyone who has a child cannot be a behaviorist,” so inadequate did behaviorism seem to him in relation to mystery human life. Maslow was interested in Gestalt psychology and psychoanalysis, and the work of social anthropologists - Malinowski, Mead, Benedict and Linton.
The move to New York (1930) was associated with Maslow's work as a professor of psychology at Brooklyn University. By that time, New York, as Maslow put it, had become the center of the psychological universe - a significant part of the European intellectual elite who had emigrated from Hitler's Germany, settled in New York. Friday seminars in the house of A. Adler, acquaintance with E. Fromm, R. Benedict, M. Wertheimer significantly enriched Maslow’s life. “I learned from everyone and left all doors open,” Maslow wrote about this period of his life, but most of all he highlighted the influence exerted on his views by M. Mead, G. Murphy, R. May, K. Rogers, K. Goldstein and G. Allport.
The outbreak of the Second World War served as an impetus for Maslow to synthesize various scientific views on human nature and create a new one: “I wanted to make sure that science could consider those problems that non-scientists deal with: problems of religion, poetry, values, philosophy, art.” Initial submission new concept Maslow originated in the book “Motivation and Personality” (1954), followed by a stream of publications developing and complementing this concept. In the preface to “Towards a Psychology of Being” (1962), Maslow’s concept, which by that time had become known as humanistic psychology, is called “a viable alternative to objectivist psychology and orthodox Freudianism.” Maslow points to the origins of his theoretical concept: “If I could sum up in one sentence what humanistic psychology means to me, I would say that it is the integration of Goldstein (and Gestalt psychology) with Freud (and various psychodynamic psychologies), under the auspices of the scientific spirit of my teachers at the University of Wisconsin.” . Then there was Brandeis University (Maslow - chairman of the psychology department (1951 - 1961), and professor of psychology), the American Psychological Association (Maslow - president (1967 - 1968)), the Laughlin Charitable Foundation in California (Maslow - board member ( 1968 – 1970)). Maslow's sudden death (1970) at the age of 62 from a heart attack did not dampen interest in his work. By that time, his books had been published: “Towards the Psychology of Being” (1968), “Religions, Values and Summit Experiences” (1964), “Eupsyche: A Diary” (1965), “Psychology of Science: Reconnaissance" (1966), "Motivation and Personality" (1987), "New Dimensions of Human Nature" (1971). The volume In Memory of Abraham Maslow (1972) was compiled with the participation of Maslow's widow and published posthumously.
Maslow defines neurosis and a person’s psychological inability to live as “diseases of deprivation,” i.e. as diseases caused by dissatisfaction of fundamental needs, which Maslow arranged in a hierarchical sequence:
1. Physiological needs (food, water, sleep, etc.);
2. Need for security (stability, order);
3. The need for love and belonging (family, friendship);
4. The need for respect (self-esteem, recognition);
5. Self-actualization needs (development of abilities).
Maslow made the assumption that the sequential arrangement of basic needs in the hierarchy is the leading principle of organizing human motivation. The needs located below are dominant and must be more or less satisfied in order for a person to be able to recognize the presence of needs located above and be motivated by them. The exceptions are:
· creative people who can develop and express their talent, despite difficulties and obstacles;
· people whose values and ideals are so strong that they are willing to endure hunger, thirst, and even die rather than give up own values and ideals;
· people who can create their own hierarchy of needs in accordance with the characteristics of their biography (for example, the need for respect may mean more to a person than the need for love and belonging).
Needs arise gradually, partially overlap, a person can be motivated simultaneously at two or more levels of needs, they are never satisfied according to the “all or nothing” principle. Different complaints correspond to different levels of frustrated needs - the higher the level of complaints (imperfection of the world, unaesthetic environment), the more prosperous things are. The higher the need is located in the hierarchical sequence, the great individuality, human qualities and mental health is demonstrated by the person experiencing it.
As a continuation of the hierarchical concept of motivation, Maslow identified two motivational categories: “deficit” (deficit or D-motives), built on the need to satisfy basic deficit states, and “existential” (growth motives, meta-needs, B-motives), pursuing the distant goal of realizing human potential.
Within the framework of the deficit and existential categories, Maslow introduced the concepts of “existential values” / “deficit values”, “existential / deficit cognition”, as well as “existential / deficit love”. It can be said that the main difference between the concepts of “being” and “deficit” is that “being” presupposes acceptance and loving relationship, and “scarce” is an unmet need and consumer attitude. So, for example, “B-cognition” is distinguished by unclouded, non-evaluative, undistorted perception and the ability to appreciate what is perceived, while “D-cognition” is less accurate, ineffective, biased, distorted by unsatisfied desire and need. “B-love” is love for the essence, “being” or “being” of another, which does not pretend to possess or improve the object of love, while “D-love” is based on an unsatisfied need for self-esteem, sex or fear of loneliness. Maslow believed that “B-love” is more satisfying and lasting than “D-love,” which loses its freshness and spice over time.
In New Frontiers of Human Nature, Maslow hypothesizes that “… existential values may emerge as the defining characteristics of a “true” (functional, usable, useful) religion. Probably, this criterion is now best met by the combination of Zen Buddhism and Taoism with humanism.”
It can be said that the idea expressed by Aristotle, according to which what a worthy person considers good is good, formed the foundation of humanistic psychology. Maslow wrote: “The study of the ugly, the underdeveloped, the immature and the unhealthy can only create an ugly psychology and an ugly philosophy. The study of self-actualizing people should become the basis for a more universal psychological science."
Self-actualization is one of the central concepts of humanistic psychology. Maslow defined self-actualization as the full use of a person's talents, abilities and opportunities. Self-actualization is not an achievement, but an endless process, similar to the Buddhist Path of Enlightenment, a way of living and building relationships with the world. Maslow argued that self-actualizing people represent a guide to action for all humanity and their values should form the basis of scientific ethics.
To form an image of a self-actualized personality, Maslow studied the best, from his point of view, representatives of humanity: nine contemporaries and nine historical figures– Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jane Adams, William James, Albert Schweitzer, Aldous Huxley and Baruch Spinoza.
As a result of research and observation, Maslow identified the following characteristics of self-actualizing individuals:
1. More effective perception of reality than others;
2. More developed ability accept yourself, others and the world as a whole as they really are;
3. Spontaneity, simplicity and naturalness in behavior;
4. More developed ability to focus on a problem;
5. Expressed autonomy, desire for privacy;
6. Independence from the influence of culture and environment, originality;
7. Freshness of perception and richness of emotional reactions;
8. Capacity for peak or mystical experiences;
9. The ability to identify oneself with humanity, the ability to compassion;
10. The presence of deep interpersonal relationships;
11. Democratic views and behavior;
12. Developed Creative skills, creativity;
13. Ability to distinguish between means and ends;
14. Developed sense humor;
15. Resistance to cultivation.
However, self-actualizers can be extremely inconvenient to others. Because they are independent and unconventional in their views and behavior, they can appear rebellious and eccentric.
If a society consists of mediocre, inexpressive, inconspicuous people, Maslow believed, then this society is poorly constructed, since it does not give a person room for self-actualization. The process of self-actualization can be inhibited by the negative influence of past experiences and the resulting unproductive habits, social influence, group pressure and internal defenses. To the traditional psychoanalytic list of defenses, Maslow added two more: desacralization and the “Jonah complex.”
By desacralization Maslow understood a person’s deterioration of quality own life by refusing to take a deep, serious and involved attitude towards anything. Maslow believed that cultural and religious symbols had lost their inspiring, uplifting, motivating and motivating power and were not being respected or cared for as they should be. A desacralized symbol reduces the possibility of frustration and trauma, but at the same time loses its significance.
Maslow used the term “Jonah Complex” to describe a person’s refusal to try to fully realize their abilities. Like the Old Testament Jonah, who tried to avoid the fulfillment of prophecy, people are afraid of the full realization of their abilities, preferring a safe average life without special achievements.
The concepts of “peak experience” and “plateau experience”, introduced by Maslow, describe the peak of self-actualization, i.e. life realities of metamotivated people. Maslow generalized the term “peak experience” best moments human life, accompanied by experiences of ecstasy, delight, bliss and greatest joy. “Peak experiences” are caused by intense, inspiring events, feelings of love, and the exceptional beauty of works of art and nature. They are expressed in experiences of ecstasy or mystical experiences, lasting from several minutes to several hours, rarely longer. In terms of Gestalt psychology, a “peak experience” can be called the completion of a gestalt; in the Reichian paradigm, a complete release or orgasm.
Unlike “peak experiences,” “plateau experiences” are more stable and long-lasting, changing your point of view and awareness of the world. “Plateau experiences” are tied to reality, seen symbolically, mythically, metaphorically, poetically, or transcendentally.
Maslow argued that the characteristics of the world that accompany peak experiences correspond to “eternal values”: “We meet here with the old familiar triad of truth, beauty and goodness... These are the characteristics that great religious leaders and philosophers valued, and this list includes almost everything that most serious thinkers agree that they are the ultimate or highest life values» .
Maslow had his own mystical experience after his first heart attack, almost at the end of his life. Maslow compared the relationship between a person who has experienced peak experiences, which he called supreme, and those who have not, to the relationship between a solitary mystic and a religious organization.
Maslow discovered transcendence of self-actualization by studying self-actualizing individuals who had experienced many “peak experiences” and psychologically healthy, productive people with little or no experience of transcendence. People who transcend self-actualization, Maslow noted, more often feel the mysticism of the world, see the transcendent dimension of life under the guise of everyday life, and regard peak or mystical experiences as the most important aspect of their own lives. Such people think more holistically and are able to perceive the unity behind the apparent complexity and contradictory nature of life. These are, first of all, innovators and original thinkers, and not systematizers of other people's ideas. The spiritual and intellectual development of such people contributes to their awareness of their own ignorance, insignificance before the grandeur of the universe, which leads to the development of a sense of humility in them. Transcending people are more likely than others to consider themselves “carriers” rather than “owners” of talents and abilities, and they are less selfishly involved in their work. Meanwhile, not everyone who has mystical experiences is a transcendent self-actualizer—some simply do not have the psychological health and productivity that, according to Maslow, are essential properties of self-actualization.
In self-actualizing Maslow's people detected the presence of the so-called “spiritual dimension”: “Several centuries earlier they would have been perceived as people walking the Paths of God, God's people... If we define religion in socio-behavioral terms, all of them can be considered religious people, even atheists." Maslow, not without reason, believed that a person needs a value frame of reference, a meaning-forming philosophy of life, just as he needs the sun, calcium and love.
F. Goble wrote that of the entire population of subjects studied by Maslow, only one was religious in the orthodox sense of the word. Another was a convinced atheist. Everyone else believed in a meaningful universe and spiritual life. Almost all of them had a clear understanding of right and wrong, built on own experience, and not on religious dogmas, but these ideas are surprisingly similar to the values and ideals declared by orthodox religions. In particular, quoting Maslow: “Overcoming oneself, merging truth, goodness and beauty, doing good to others, wisdom, honesty, naturalness, going beyond selfish and personal motives, abandoning lower desires in favor of higher ones... decrease hostility, cruelty and destructiveness and increasing friendliness, kindness, etc.” .
Maslow predicted the emergence of a new one - transpersonal psychology: “I must also say that I consider humanistic psychology, the psychology of the third force, transitional, preparatory to an even higher one.” The fourth psychology, transpersonal, transhuman, centered on the cosmos, and not on human needs and interests, going beyond the human, self-determination, self-actualization, etc. ...We need something "greater than ourselves" to which we can revere, to which we can devote ourselves in a new, naturalistic, empirical, non-ecclesiastical way, like, perhaps, Thoreau and Whitman, William James and John Dewey."
According to Maslow, transpersonal psychology should study religion and religious experience, since historically the phenomenon of mystical experience and the idea of ultimate human capabilities are associated specifically with the sphere of religion and were initially formulated in religious terms. Maslow believed that official psychology shuns these types of experiences precisely because of the unscientific, mystical, dogmatic ways of presenting them. Maslow also explained the continuing interest in Eastern religions in Western society as less theological and more psychological approach Eastern religions and teachings to explain human nature. In Eastern religious traditions, there are clearly described paths of mental and spiritual development, as well as meditative techniques that facilitate the experience of mystical experiences. Transpersonal psychology, Maslow believed, is designed to theoretically and empirically study meditation, yoga and other spiritual disciplines: “ Religious literature“It’s a useful source if you know what to look for and use.”
Maslow had a strong dislike for institutionalized forms of religion. In his study "Religions, Values and Peak Experiences" (1964), Maslow argued for the importance of distinguishing mysticism from "organized" religion." Maslow argued that the main enemy of mysticism is precisely “organized” religion, and spoke of two “religions” of humanity: the first includes mystical experience, the second rejects it. This statement by Maslow is very controversial, since any tradition includes the phenomena of religious experiences and feelings. There are no pure forms of mysticism, just as there are no pure forms of “organized” religions that would be based on abstract ideas free from religious experiences.
Maslow wrote that organized religion, churches, can become the main enemies of religious experience and the people having such experiences. He believed that "the old pretensions of organized religion to be the sole arbiter of faith and morals" should be abandoned. He saw his task as proving that “spiritual values have natural origin and are not the exclusive property of organized churches.” The essence of religion, according to Maslow, lies in the uniformity inherent in all creeds - they are based on “the personal insight, revelation or ecstasy of some keenly feeling prophet.” Religion, therefore, represents only one of the possible types of higher experiences characteristic of people of both industrial and traditional cultures.
Rejecting organized religion, Maslow focused on the religion of the individual, with its specific experiences, colored by personal shades, believing that religious feelings and values are special case individual feelings and values, and not vice versa.
Individual religion, according to Maslow, appears to us as a set of value, ethical attitudes, norms, and regulations, mediated by the ethnocultural characteristics of the individual and specific mystical experience. He believed that each person has his own religion, developed "according to his own insight, revealing his personal myths, symbols and rituals" which have no meaning to anyone else. The problem with individual religion, Maslow believed, is that it does not promote communication and does not solve the problem of human coexistence. Maslow saw the possibility of partially overcoming this disunity in various informal associations, not burdened by a bureaucratic structure, but a radical overcoming of disunity, in his opinion, is possible only as a result of the reconstruction of society. For such an updated Maslow Society created the special term “Eupsyche” and put into it an original meaning - a union of psychologically healthy, self-actualizing individuals. Maslow thought of Eupsyche as different from utopia, the idea of which seemed populist and impractical to him. In the ideal society, the author of which was Maslow, an important role was to be played by humanistic religion - an ideology that unites people professing the cult of goodness, truth and beauty. Maslow believed that humanistic religion could replace the religions and quasi-religions of modern times. The essential features of a eupsychic society should be: a high level of security and the opportunity for each individual to maximize their abilities and realize their potential.
According to A. Maslow, positivist-oriented science is not suitable for studying spiritual values and the inner world of man. He considered empirical, positivist and behaviorist approaches to the study of the inner world of man not acceptable, since they exclude spiritual values from the scope of consideration of science. In other words, Maslow protested against science, which had been emasculated human content, and at the same time against “organized” religion, which monopolizes the spiritual life of a person.
A. Maslow was convinced that science acted fairly in rejecting religion’s answers to questions about the meaning of life and spiritual values, but it was wrong in rejecting the questions themselves. Maslow wrote that science brackets the concept of love, but life without love is worth nothing. He sought to separate spiritual values from the religious context and pointed out that positivist science supported religion with its indifferent attitude to spiritual issues. Positivists, ignoring the spiritual side of life, not seeing beyond religious form the physical and social content of the problems leave spirituality at the mercy of religion. Maslow believed that the fields of science concerned with the study of man must undergo radical changes. The center of the study of humanistic science should be a holistic, special, accomplished person who has reached heights in the context of his own culture. Research methods should be developed within the framework of a holistic integrative approach. Maslow also considered it necessary to include the problems of values, experiences, beauty, etc. in the subject of research.
Religion, according to Maslow, should also be subject to analysis by an updated transformed science, humanistic psychology or philosophy in order to sift the wheat from the chaff, by which Maslow meant bureaucratic organization, the imposition of a dogmatic view of the world, etc.
So, A. Maslow’s concept represents a specific philosophy of life, a philosophy of human nature and is one of the first attempts to build a synthetic theory of Man. The humanistic approach of a scientist to man is a certain worldview, as well as a general philosophical system of seeing man in the world. It is significant that his theory was implemented in various fields of science and in practical activities. Maslow unconventionally posed the eternal philosophical question: the relationship between individual consciousness (Spirit, Will) and the human body (organism). Maslow believed important task establishing contact and communication between people who transcend and those who do not have mystical experience. He believed that “organized religion” is not capable of solving such a problem due to its complex bureaucratic system: key positions in it can be occupied by rational people who do not experience higher experiences, believers not out of conviction, but out of calculation.
Maslow wrote that the roots and sources of religion lie in the experience of mystical insights and experiences, and the roots of science should be sought in distrust of the evidence of such experiences and the experience of destroying religious illusions. He called for approaching issues of mystical experience with “restraint, caution and sobriety” and hoped for the creation within science of a “productivity meter” or pragmatic test that could test the truth of such statements.
Maslow believed that psychotherapy and education need to come to easy-to-use normative concepts that will allow a person to become familiar with existential values, help to become “more honest, good (in the sense of the value of “good”), beautiful, integrated, etc.” . “Much the same is true of certain versions of the major theistic and non-theistic religions,” wrote Maslow, “both dogmatic and mystical versions each of them. In general, they preach that (a) God is the embodiment of most of the values of existence; (b) the ideal, religious and devoted person to God is the one who best embodies these “divine” existential values, or at least strives for this; (c) all the methods, ceremonies, rituals, dogmas he uses can be considered means for achieving the specified values as goals; (d) heaven is the place, or state, or time of achieving such ends. Salvation, redemption, transformation - these are all varieties of acceptance of the above truths." Based on the above, Maslow found it possible to propose “B-values” as a criterion for the practical “suitability” of religion.
Developing the tradition of existential philosophy - to look at man as a creative and worthy being, humanistic psychology has influenced a number of areas of scientific research: religious studies, intercultural study of personality and the psychology of science, theory and practice of management. Maslow initiated scientific research into ecstatic states in religious rituals and Everyday life. He created a hierarchical model of motivation, in the light of which he studied science, religion, management and organization of production, training, psychotherapy and medicine in general. Very original is the model of ideal culture “Eupsychia” developed by Maslow, which, according to the author’s plan, was supposed to provide society with the opportunity to fully develop human potential. And although today this idea seems quite fantastic, perhaps in the future, what today looks like exceptional examples of mental health will become the norm. After all, Maslow only echoed the gospel call: “Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
1. What was the impetus for the creation of humanistic psychology?
2. What biographical facts influenced Maslow's religious views?
3. List the main theoretical concepts humanistic psychology. Reveal their meaning.
4. Expand Maslow’s point of view on the phenomenon of mystical experience.
5. What characteristics did Maslow consider to be characteristic of self-actualizing people?
6. Expand the concept of “hierarchy of needs”. What did Maslow mean by “deficit” and “being” needs?
7. What is “eupsyche” and what are its main properties?
8. Explain the reasons for Maslow’s rejection of the so-called. "organized" religions.
Literature:
1. Maslow A. New frontiers of human nature / Transl. from English M.: Smysl, 1999. – 425 p.
Abraham Maslow is an American psychologist who developed the most universal model of human motives and needs. that his views are studied in a detailed version at psychology departments, it is now difficult to find anyone who has not heard of the famous “pyramid of needs.”
Scientist's Ledger
However, not only students and luminaries of psychology can draw information from Maslow’s work “Motivation and Personality.” Teachers, businessmen, and sociologists will be interested in it. In general, this work will attract anyone who wonders what underlies the motivational-need sphere of a person.
This publication was published more than half a century ago. But despite the numerous concepts of motivation, it still remains relevant. Personal interest, haunting questions - these are the reasons why the American scientist of Russian origin Abraham Maslow took up writing this work. Motivation and personality are the two main concepts he studies. They are also reflected in the title of his book.
Maslow's childhood and youth
It must be said that Abraham Maslow’s childhood was by no means cloudless. The scientist's parents emigrated to the United States even before his birth. There was a constant conflict situation in the family. In addition, the boy inherited a Jewish appearance from his father, so he had to experience firsthand that Maslow’s academic success was very high, his youth was spent in loneliness and oppression.
Introduction to psychological knowledge
Subsequently, Maslow, on the recommendation of his father, decides to devote himself to the study of law. But, having become acquainted with psychology, he leaves already from the first year. He received his education at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and then began working as a college teacher. He also worked as an assistant to the famous behavioral scientist Edward Thorndike. He received the title of President of the American Psychological Association in 1967. Maslow was very inspired by his work
Basic concept
Maslow’s book “Motivation and Personality” examines the structure of needs, their basic properties, influence on motivational sphere person. consists of blocks, each of which reflects a specific need - from basic to higher. This model is very easy to explain with an example. Physiological needs such as hunger and thirst are fundamental. While experiencing them, it is unlikely that anyone will begin to think, for example, about the philosophy of postmodernism. Therefore, first of all, we must be satisfied with vital important needs body.
Then comes the need for safety - both physical and emotional. It is important to have a roof over your head, to live without a threat to your existence.
When these needs are met, the person begins to seek satisfaction of needs more high class- social recognition, sympathy. The need for friendship is followed by the need for self-esteem, that is, the person now desires autonomy and leadership.
The top Maslow's pyramids is the need for self-actualization. When all other needs are satisfied, a person can begin to freely realize the potential inherent in him by nature.
So, at any given moment, behavior is driven by unsatisfied needs. And most often they are never fully satisfied. That is why there are about 2% of people who have reached the level of self-actualization in their lives, as stated in Maslow’s book “Motivation and Personality.”
How is Maslow's theory different?
Practicality and realism are the main qualities that motivation possesses. A. Maslow, who was initially carried away by the ideas of behaviorism, then comes to the conclusion: these concepts are well reproduced in laboratory conditions, but have little in common with a person’s real life style, his philosophy.
The main problem of psychology
In general, it should be noted: the gap between theory and practice is the main problem of psychological science. Unfortunately, for those people who turn to psychologists for help, no one opens this curtain. And no one can answer their question about whether this or that specialist will really be able to help.
The separation of psychology from reality: an example
One of the main qualities a good psychologist, like a serious psychological theory, is realizable in practice with the goal of helping people. This directly relates to Maslow's theories. Well illustrated this example reviews of people who seek help from psychotherapists of various categories regarding the treatment of addictions: alcoholism, gambling addiction, smoking. To get rid of such difficulties, many psychotherapists use the substitution technique, according to which one addiction can only be replaced by another - in in this case, more productive. Bypassing one or two steps of Maslow's pyramid, they recommend that their patients replace their addiction by starting to engage in self-realization. Unsatisfied needs of the lower level, for some reason, still make themselves felt: former alcoholic or Casanova, it is very difficult to “replace” his addiction with other activities, say, beadwork. And how can an addict understand what kind of business will take place at the top of his needs until his needs for love, respect, sympathy, friendship, and warm emotional connections with people are not satisfied?
People are disappointed in psychotherapy, paying a lot of money for it. The picture would be different if all psychologists used Maslow’s work “Motivation and Personality” in their work. Reviews, one must believe, would be much better both about psychologists and about the possibilities of psychotherapy in general.
Maslow's book "Motivation and Personality": summary
The first part of the book is devoted to the study of the essence of needs, how their satisfaction affects the development of a person, the formation of his character, and also once again revises the concept of instincts. Maslow says that this construct is applicable to humans to a small extent. Although instincts are the basis for all his actions, behavior is also greatly influenced by genes and environment.
The next part examines the concept of mental health, the role of frustration in meeting needs, the issue of acceptability aggressive behavior. Maslow says that a positive attitude practically neutralizes aggression: therefore, it is always necessary to take environmental conditions into account when considering any type of behavior, including destructive ones.
The last part of Maslow’s book “Motivation and Personality” examines the role of creativity in science, issues of methodology, and the importance of a holistic approach.
Maslow calls for considering a person not only in the context of comparing a mentally healthy person with a neurotic person. Anyone who is interested in issues of self-actualization can safely recommend the fundamental work created by Abraham Maslow - “Motivation and Personality.” Reviews from numerous readers for more than one generation have shown that this work will help every person reach better heights and understand themselves.
Abraham Maslow born April 1, 1908 in New York into a family of Jewish immigrants. He grew up in New York and attended the University of Wisconsin. He received his bachelor's degree in 1930, his master's degree in humanities in 1931, and his doctorate in 1934. While studying at Wisconsin, Maslow became deeply interested in the work of social anthropologists such as Malinowski, Mead, Benedict, and Linton. Abraham Maslow studied behaviorism under the guidance of the famous experimenter Clark Hull. Maslow studied the behavior of primates under the leadership of Haria Harlow. His dissertation concerns the relationship between dominance and sexual behavior in primates.
After Wisconsin, Maslow began to study human sexual behavior on a large scale. Psychoanalytic ideas about the importance of sex for human behavior supported his research in every possible way. Abraham Maslow believed that a better understanding of sexual functioning would greatly improve human fitness.
Psychoanalytic theory significantly influenced the life and thinking of Maslow himself. Psychoanalysis of one's own ego has shown a huge difference between intellectual knowledge and actual experience. “To simplify a little, we can say that Freud presents us with a sick part of psychology, and we must now supplement it with a healthy part,” Maslow noted.
After receiving his doctorate, Maslow returned to New York, continued his research at Columbia, and then taught psychology at Brooklyn College.
New York was very important at this time cultural center, which hosted many German scientists fleeing Nazi persecution. Maslow conducted joint research with various psychotherapists, including Alfred Adler, Erich Fromm, and Karen Horney, who were concerned with the application of psychoanalytic theories to the analysis of behavior in other cultures.
Maslow also seriously studied Gestalt psychology. He greatly admired Max Wertheimer, whose work on productive thinking was extremely close to Maslow's own research on cognition and creativity.
Also significantly influencing Abraham Maslow's thinking was the work of Kurt Goldstein, a neuropsychologist, which points out that the body is a single whole, and what happens in any part of it affects the whole organism. Maslow's work on self-actualization was to some extent inspired by Goldstein, who first used the term.
In addition, Maslow was greatly impressed by William Sumner's book The Ways of Nations, which analyzes how most of human behavior is determined by cultural patterns (patterns) and regulations. The impression of the book was so strong that Maslow decided to devote himself to this area of research.
During World War II, Maslow saw how little abstract theoretical psychology in solving the world's major problems, as a result of this "epiphany" his interests shifted from experimental psychology to social psychology and personality psychology.
Maslow’s main achievement in psychology is considered to be his concept of a holistic approach to man and analysis of his highest essential manifestations - love, creativity, spiritual values, which influenced many branches of science, in particular the development economic thought.
Maslow created a hierarchical model of motivation (in Motivation and Personality, published in 1954), in which he argued that higher needs guide an individual's behavior only to the extent that lower needs are satisfied. The order of their satisfaction is as follows:
2) the need for security;
3) the need for love and affection;
4) the need for recognition and evaluation;
5) the need for self-actualization - the realization of a person’s potentials, abilities and talents. Self-actualization is defined as “full use of talents, abilities, opportunities, etc.”
“I imagine a self-actualized person not as an ordinary person to whom something has been added, but as an ordinary person from whom nothing has been taken away. Average person- this is complete human, with suppressed and suppressed abilities and gifts,” wrote Maslow.
Maslow lists the following characteristics of self-actualizing people:
1) more effective perception of reality and more comfortable relationships with it;
2) acceptance (of oneself, others, nature);
3) spontaneity, simplicity, naturalness;
4) task-centeredness (as opposed to self-centeredness);
5) some isolation and need for solitude;
6) autonomy, independence from culture and environment;
7) constant freshness assessments;
8) mysticism and experience of higher states;
9) feelings of belonging, unity with others;
10) deeper interpersonal relationships;
11) democratic character structure;
12) distinguishing between means and ends, good and evil;
13) philosophical, non-hostile sense of humor;
14) self-actualizing creativity;
15) resistance to acculturation, transcendence of any common culture.
IN last book Maslow's "The Far Achievement of Human Nature" describes eight ways in which an individual can self-actualize, eight types of behavior leading to self-actualization
- Self-actualization means experiencing it completely, vividly, wholeheartedly, with complete concentration and complete absorption.
- Living by constant choice, self-actualization means: in every choice, decide in favor of development.
- To actualize means to become real, to exist in fact, and not just in possibility. Here Maslow introduces a new term - “self,” by which he understands the essence, the core of an individual’s nature, including temperament, unique tastes and values. Thus, self-actualization is learning to tune into one's own inner nature.
- Essential aspects of self-actualization are honesty and taking responsibility for one's actions.
- A person learns to trust his judgments and instincts, and act in accordance with them, which leads to better elections what is right for each individual.
- Self-actualization also involves a constant process of developing not only one’s actual abilities, but also one’s potentials.
- Maslow also uses the concept of “peak experience.” These are transitional moments of self-actualization, in which a person is more holistic, more integrated, aware of himself and the world at the moments of “peak” much sharper, brighter and more colorful than during the period of his passive existence.
- The further, but not the last stage of self-actualization is the discovery of one’s “protective fields” and the constant abandonment of them. A person must be aware of how he distorts his own image and images outside world, and direct all your activities to overcome these protective obstacles.
During a long illness, Abraham Maslow became involved in the family business, and his experience of applying psychology to family business found expression in Eupsychic Management, a collection of thoughts and articles related to management and industrial psychology.
In 1951, Abraham Maslow moved to the newly organized Breedian University, accepting the post of chairman of the psychology department; there he remained almost until his death. In 1967-1968 he was president of the American Psychological Association, 1968-1970. - Member of the board of the Laughlin Charitable Foundation in California.
Maslow is rightly considered in the United States to be the second (after William James) major psychologist and the founder of the humanistic movement (“third force” after behaviorism and Freudianism) in psychology.
Maslow's main strength lies in his interest in areas of human life that have been ignored by most psychologists. He is one of the few psychologists to seriously explore the positive dimensions of human experience. He himself, remarkably, could not stand limiting labels: “There is no need to talk about “humanistic” psychology, there is no need for an adjective. Don't think I'm an anti-behaviourist. I am an anti-doctrinaire... I am against everything that closes doors and cuts off opportunities.”
Works:
Abraham Maslow was born on April 1, 1908 in New York City to Jewish immigrant parents. He grew up in New York and attended the University of Wisconsin. He received his bachelor's degree in 1930, his master's degree in humanities in 1931, and his doctorate in 1934. While studying at Wisconsin, Maslow became deeply interested in the work of social anthropologists such as Malinowski, Mead, Benedict, and Linton. Maslow studied behaviorism under the guidance of the famous experimenter Clark Hull. Maslow studied the behavior of primates under the leadership of Haria Harlow. His dissertation concerns the relationship between dominance and sexual behavior in primates. After Wisconsin, Maslow began to study human sexual behavior on a large scale. Psychoanalytic ideas about the importance of sex for human behavior strongly supported his research. Maslow believed that a better understanding of sexual functioning would greatly improve human fitness. Psychoanalytic theory significantly influenced the life and thinking of Maslow himself. Psychoanalysis of one's own ego has shown a huge difference between intellectual knowledge and actual experience. “To oversimplify a little, we can say that Freud presents us with a sick part of psychology, and we must now supplement it with a healthy part,” Maslow noted. After receiving his doctorate, Maslow returned to New York, continued his research at Columbia, and then taught psychology at Brooklyn College. New York at this time was a very significant cultural center, hosting many German scientists who fled Nazi persecution. Maslow conducted joint research with various psychotherapists, including Alfred Adler, Erich Fromm, and Karen Horney, who were concerned with the application of psychoanalytic theories to the analysis of behavior in other cultures. Maslow also seriously studied Gestalt psychology. He greatly admired Max Wertheimer, whose work on productive thinking was extremely close to Maslow's own research on cognition and creativity. Also significantly influencing Maslow's thinking was the work of Kurt Goldstein, a neuropsychologist, which points out that the body is a single whole, and what happens in any part of it affects the whole organism. Maslow's work on self-actualization was to some extent inspired by Goldstein, who first used the term. In addition, Maslow was greatly impressed by Sumner's book The Ways of Nations, which analyzed how much human behavior is determined by cultural patterns and prescriptions. The impression of the book was so strong that Maslow decided to devote himself to this area of research. During World War II, Maslow saw how little abstract theoretical psychology meant in solving the world's major problems, and as a result of this "epiphany" his interests shifted from experimental psychology to social and personality psychology. Maslow's main achievement in psychology is considered to be his concept of a holistic approach to man and analysis of his highest essential manifestations - love, creativity, spiritual values, which influenced many branches of science, in particular the development of economic thought. Maslow created a hierarchical model of motivation (in Motivation and Personality, published in 1954), in which he argued that higher needs guide an individual's behavior only to the extent that lower needs are satisfied. The order of their satisfaction is as follows: 1) physiological needs; 2) the need for security; 3) the need for love and affection; 4) the need for recognition and evaluation; 5) the need for self-actualization - the realization of a person’s potentials, abilities and talents. Self-actualization is defined as “full use of talents, abilities, opportunities, etc.” “I imagine a self-actualized person not as an ordinary person to whom something has been added, but as an ordinary person from whom nothing has been taken away. The average man is a complete human being, with stifled and suppressed abilities and gifts,” wrote Maslow. Maslow names the following characteristics of self-actualizing people: 1) a more effective perception of reality and a more comfortable relationship with it; 2) acceptance (of oneself, others, nature); 3) spontaneity, simplicity, naturalness; 4) task-centeredness (as opposed to self-centeredness); 5) some isolation and need for solitude; 6) autonomy, independence from culture and environment; 7) constant freshness of the assessment; 8) mysticism and experience of higher states, 9) feelings of belonging, unity with others, 10) deeper interpersonal relationships; 11) democratic character structure; 12) distinguishing between means and ends, good and evil; 13) philosophical, non-hostile sense of humor, 14) self-actualizing creativity; 15) resistance to acculturation, transcendence of any common culture. Maslow's latest book, The Further Advances of Human Nature, describes eight ways in which an individual can self-actualize, eight types of behavior leading to self-actualization 1. Self-actualization means experiencing it completely, vividly, wholeheartedly, with complete concentration and complete absorption. 2. To live by constant choice, self-actualization means: in every choice, decide in favor of development 3. To actualize means to become real, to exist in fact, and not just in possibility. Here Maslow introduces a new term - “self,” by which he understands the essence, the core of an individual’s nature, including temperament, unique tastes and values. Thus, self-actualization is learning to tune into one’s own inner nature. 4. Essential aspects of self-actualization are honesty and taking responsibility for one’s actions. 5. Man learns to trust and act on his judgments and instincts, which leads to better choices of what is right for each individual 6. Self-actualization also involves a constant process of developing not only one's actual abilities, but also one's potentialities. 7. Maslow also uses the concept of “peak experience.” These are transitional moments of self-actualization, in which a person is more holistic, more integrated, aware of himself and the world at the moments of “peak” much sharper, brighter and more colorful than during the period of his passive existence. 8. The further, but not the last stage of self-actualization is the discovery of one’s “protective fields” and the constant abandonment of them. A person must be aware of how he distorts his own image and the images of the outside world, and direct all his activities to overcome these protective obstacles. During a long illness, Maslow became involved in the affairs of the family business, and his experience of applying psychology to the family business found expression in Eupsychic Management, a collection of thoughts and articles related to management and industrial psychology. In 1951, Maslow moved to the newly organized Breide University, accepting the post of chairman of the psychological department; there he remained almost until his death. In 1967-1968 he was president of the American Psychological Association, 1968-1970. - Member of the board of the Laughlin Charitable Foundation in California. Maslow is rightly considered in the United States to be the second (after William James) major psychologist and the founder of the humanistic movement (“third force” after behaviorism and Freudianism) in psychology. Maslow's main strength lies in his interest in areas of human life that have been ignored by most psychologists. He is one of the few psychologists to seriously explore the positive dimensions of human experience. He himself, remarkably, could not stand limiting labels: “There is no need to talk about “humanistic” psychology, there is no need for an adjective. Don't think I'm an anti-behaviourist. I am an anti-doctrinaire... I am against everything that closes doors and cuts off opportunities.” Abraham Maslow died on February 17, 1970.
MASLOW Abraham Harold
Maslow) Abraham Harold (1908-1970) - American psychologist, specialist in the field of personality psychology, motivation, abnormal psychology (pathopsychologists). One of the founders of humanistic psychology. He received his education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Bachelor, 1930; Master, 1931; Doctor of Philosophy, 1934). He began his professional career as a teacher at the Faculty of Psychology at Columbia teacher training college(1935-1937) and Brooklyn College (1937-1951). From 1951 to 1969 M. - Professor at Brandeis University. In 1967 - President of the American Psychological Association (APA). Recipient of the American Humane Association's Humanist Award (1967). Honorary doctor of a number of universities. Founder of Eupsychian Management magazine. Having started your scientific career from studies of social behavior of primates in the 1930s, already in the early 1940s. M. turned to the study of the highest essential manifestations of man, inherent in him alone - love, creativity, highest values, etc. The impetus for this was the empirically identified by M. type of so-called self-actualizing personalities, which most fully express human nature. Having put forward the demand for a holistic approach to man and an analysis of his specifically human properties in contrast to the biological reductionism and mechanism that reigned supreme in post-war American psychology, M. at the same time sees the source of these properties in biological nature a person, accepting K. Goldstein’s view of development as the deployment of potentialities inherent in the body. M. speaks about the instinctoid nature of basic human needs, including the need he postulates for self-actualization - the disclosure of the potentials inherent in a person. In the 40s M. develops a theory of human motivation, which is still one of the most popular. M.'s theory is based on the idea of a hierarchy of satisfying needs, starting from the most pressing physiological ones and ending with the highest need for self-actualization. In total, M. identifies 5 hierarchical levels of needs (the so-called pyramid of M.). The lower needs are satisfied first; superiors begin to motivate behavior only when inferiors are satisfied. Most people's behavior is driven by lower needs because they fail to satisfy them and move to a higher level. In the mid-50s. M. abandoned a rigid hierarchy, identifying two large classes of needs that coexist with each other: deficit needs (needs) and development needs (self-actualization). Continuing the study of self-actualizing individuals, whose life problems are qualitatively different from the neurotic pseudo-problems facing an immature personality, M. comes to the conclusion about the need to create new psychology- psychology of human existence as complete, developed personality, in contrast to the traditional psychology of human becoming human. In the 60s M. is developing such a psychology. In particular, it shows the fundamental differences cognitive processes in cases where they are driven by need, and when they are based on the motivation for development and self-actualization. In the second case, we are dealing with knowledge at the level of Being (B-cognition). A specific phenomenon of B-cognition are the so-called peak experiences, characterized by a feeling of delight or ecstasy, enlightenment and depth of understanding. Brief episodes of peak experiences are given to all people; in them everyone for a moment becomes, as it were, self-actualizing. Religion, according to M., arose initially as a figurative and symbolic system for describing peak experiences, which subsequently acquired independent meaning and began to be perceived as a reflection of a certain supernatural reality. Ordinary motivation at the level of Being is replaced by the so-called meta-motivation. Metamotives are the values of Being (B-values): truth, goodness, beauty, justice, perfection, etc., which belong both to objective reality and to the personality structure of self-actualizing people. M. derives these values, like basic needs, from human biology, declaring them universal; the sociocultural environment plays only the role of a factor influencing their actualization, more often negatively than positively. In recent years, M. has moved even further, developing the problem of transcendence of self-actualization and transition to even higher levels of development. M. stood at the origins of transpersonal psychology, was one of the leaders of this movement in initial period his formation. M.’s ideas about the direction of human development led him to ideal model eupsychic society, which creates and supports opportunities for maximum self-actualization of its members. M.'s eupsychic ideology has found practical application in management, into which, thanks to M., ideas about self-actualization as a motivating force for people's behavior in the management of organizations have penetrated. In recent years, M. turned to the problems of education, devoting a number of original works to them. M. had a great influence on the development Western psychology in the 1960-70s, giving a powerful impetus to the humanistic movement in it. At the end of the 1950s. M. became the initiator of the association of unconventionally thinking psychologists interested in specific human manifestations person into a new community from which grew the American Association of Humanistic Psychology (1962) and the Journal of Humanistic Psychology (1961). M. was the main inspirer and, until his death, one of the leaders of the humanistic psychology movement, in many ways its face. Main works M.: Motivation and Personality, N.Y., 1954; Toward a Psychology of Being, N.Y., 1962; Religions, Values, and Peak-experiences, Columbus, 1964; The Psychology of Science, N.Y., 1966; The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, N.Y., 1971. In Russian. lane Self-actualization / Personality psychology. Texts. M., Moscow State University, 1982; Motivation and personality, St. Petersburg, 1999. D.A. Leontiev