Maslow studied healthy people...

... most psychologists study sick people!



# Self-actualization implies the attainment of the basic needs of physiological, safety/security, love/belongingness, and self-esteem.

# The comprehensive study of one person is more useful than the extensive investigation, in many people, of an isolated psychological function.

# We must deal with the questions of value, individuality, consciousness, purpose, ethics and the higher reaches of human nature.



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SELF ACTUALIZATION

"Self Actualization is the intrinsic growth of what is already in the organism, or more accurately, of what the organism is." Abraham Maslow

Maslow studied healthy people, most psychologists study sick people.

The characteristics listed here are the results of 20 years of study of people who had the "full use and exploitation of talents, capacities, potentialities, etc.."

Self-actualization implies the attainment of the basic needs of physiological, safety/security, love/belongingness, and self-esteem.

Maslow's Basic Principles:

The normal personality is characterized by unity, integration, consistency, and coherence. Organization is the natural state, and disorganization is pathological. The organism can be analyzed by differentiating its parts, but no part can be studied in isolation. The whole functions according to laws that cannot be found in the parts. The organism has one sovereign drive, that of self-actualization. People strive continuously to realize their inherent potential by whatever avenues are open to them. The influence of the external environment on normal development is minimal. The organism's potential, if allowed to unfold by an appropriate environment, will produce a healthy, integrated personality. The comprehensive study of one person is more useful than the extensive investigation, in many people, of an isolated psychological function. The salvation of the human being is not to be found in either behaviorism or in psychoanalysis, (which deals with only the darker, meaner half of the individual). We must deal with the questions of value, individuality, consciousness, purpose, ethics and the higher reaches of human nature. Man is basically good not evil. Psychopathology generally results from the denial, frustration or twisting of our essential nature. Therapy of any sort, is a means of restoring a person to the path of self-actualization and development along the lines dictated by their inner nature. When the four basic needs have been satisfied, the growth need or self-actualization need arises: A new discontent and restlessness will develop unless the individual is doing what he individually is fitted for. A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write--in short, what people can be they must be.

Characteristics of Self Actualizing People

Realistic Realistically oriented, SA persons have a more efficient perception of reality, they have comfortable relations with it. This is extended to all areas of life. SA persons are unthreatened, unfrightened by the unknown. they have a superior ability to reason, to see the truth. They are logical and efficient. Acceptance Accept themselves, others and the natural world the way they are. Sees human nature as is, have a lack of crippling guilt or shame, enjoy themselves without regret or apology, they have no unnecessary inhibitions. Spontaneity, Simplicity, Naturalness Spontaneous in their inner life, thoughts and impulses, they are unhampered by convention. Their ethics is autonomous, they are individuals, and are motivated to continual growth. Problem Centering Focus on problems outside themselves, other centered. They have a mission in life requiring much energy, their mission is their reason for existence. They are serene, characterized by a lack of worry, and are devoted to duty. Detachment: The Need for Privacy Alone but not lonely, unflappable, retain dignity amid confusion and personal misfortunes, objective. They are self starters, responsible for themselves, own their behavior. Autonomy: Independent of Culture and Environment SA's rely on inner self for satisfaction. Stable in the face of hard knocks, they are self contained, independent from love and respect. Continued Freshness of Appreciation Have a fresh rather than stereotyped appreciation of people and things. Appreciation of the basic good in life, moment to moment living is thrilling, transcending and spiritual. They live the present moment to the fullest. Peak experiences "Feelings of limitless horizons opening up to the vision, the feeling of being simultaneously more powerful and also more helpless than one ever was before, the feeling of ecstacy and wonder and awe, the loss of placement in time and space with, finally, the conviction that something extremely important and valuable had happened, so that the subject was to some extent transformed and strengthened even in his daily life by such experiences." Abraham Maslow Maslow asked his subjects to think of the most wonderful experience or experiences of their lives--the happiest moments, extatic moments, moments of rapture, perhaps from being in live, or from listening to music or suddenly "being hit" by a book or a painting or from some great creative moment. He found that people undergoing peak experiences felt more integrated, more at one with the world, more in command of their own lives, more spontaneous, less aware of space and time, more perceptive, more self determined, more playful.

Effects of peak experiences:

The removal of neurotic symptoms A tendency to view oneself in a more healthy way Change in one's view of other people and of one's relations with them Change in one's view of the world The release of creativity, spontaneity and expressiveness A tendency to remember the experience and to try to duplicate it A tendency to view life in general as more worthwhile.

EIGHT WAYS TO SELF ACTUALIZE

Experience things fully, vividly, selflessly. Throw yourself into the experiencing of something: concentrate on it fully, let it totally absorb you. Life is an ongoing process of choosing between safety (out of fear and need for defense) and risk (for the sake of progress and growth): Make the growth choice a dozen times a day. Let the self emerge. Try to shut out the external clues as to what you should think, feel, say, and so on, and let your experience enable you to say what you truly feel. When in doubt, be honest. If you look into yourself and are honest, you will also take responsibility. Taking responsibility is self-actualizing. Listen to your own tastes. Be prepared to be unpopular. Use your intelligence, work to do well the things you want to do, no matter how insignificant they seem to be. Make peak experiencing more likely: get rid of illusions and false notions. Learn what you are good at and what your potentialities are not. Find out who you are, what you are, what you like and don't like, what is good and what is bad for you, where you are going, what your mission is. Opening yourself up to yourself in this way means identifying defenses--and then finding the courage to give them up. SELF ACTUALIZATION

Maslow (1954), believed that man has a natural drive to healthiness, or self actualization. He believed that man has basic, (biological and psychological) needs that have to be fulfilled in order to be free enough to feel the desire for the higher levels of realization. He also believed that the organism has the natural, unconscious and innate capacity to seek its needs. (Maslow 1968)

In other words, man has an internal, natural, drive to become the best possible person he can be.

"...he has within him a pressure toward unity of personality, toward spontaneous expressiveness, toward full individuality and identity, toward seeing the truth rather than being blind, toward being creative, toward being good, and a lot else. That is, the human being is so constructed that he presses toward what most people would call good values, toward serenity, kindness, courage, honesty, love, unselfishness, and goodness." (Maslow, 1968, p. 155.)

Meditation, self-hypnosis, imagery and the like are sources of discovering our inner being. To become self-actualized, Maslow said we need two things, inner exploration and action. Read more at psikoloji.fisek.com.tr

 

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