Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow

I am presently re-reading Maslow’s 1962, “Towards a Psychology of Being”.

His writing verges on the timeless and resulted in the growth of positive psychology and the human potential movement. He has influenced the work of more recent luminaries such as Martin Seligman (Flourishing) and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Flow).

Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) was an American psychologist best known for his ‘hierarchy of needs’. This was a theory of psychological health based on meeting human needs in sequence beginning with physiological needs and culminating in ‘peak experiences’ and ‘self-actualization’.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

In his “Towards a psychology of Being” Maslow deals in detail with the structure and functions of peak experiences and self actualisation. In his research he covered the literature on mysticism and also some of the Eastern classics. He is therefore good on the limitations of language to deal with the ineffable. But he remains a creature of his woolly, intellectual times and his Weltenschaaung is not informed by neurology and evolutionary psychology. If he was still alive I am sure that he would love the way that the world view is going.

He is still worth reading

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Maslow, Abraham H. (2013-07-18). Toward a Psychology of Being (Kindle). Start Publishing LLC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Maslow