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Abraham
Maslow
was a famous America psychologist who
developed the notion of a hierarchy of
human needs. Maslow is also credited as
creating humanistic psychology and is
well known for his published works Motivation
and Personality and Toward a Psychology
of Being.
Abraham
Maslow was born on April 1, 1908 in Brooklyn,
New York. As the first child to Russian-born
Jewish immigrants, Maslow was pushed into
succeeding in school since his parents
had grown up with little education. Maslow
studied hard and eventually enrolled in
the City College of New York where he
stayed for three semesters. After transfers
back and forth to Cornell, Maslow finally
moved out of New York and finished his
B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in psychology at
the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
Prior to graduating, Maslow took his first
cousin, Bertha Maslow, as a wife.
After
achieving his degrees, Maslow returned
to New York to work at Columbia University
with E.L. Thorndike. Shortly thereafter
he began teaching at Brooklyn College
where he met Alfred Alder and Erich Fromm,
the leading European psychologists of
that time. With his connections and accrued
knowledge, Maslow became the chairman
of the psychology department at Brandeis
University in 1951. It was during this
time that Maslow befriended Kurt Goldstein
who gave Maslow his first look at the
idea of self-actualization, an idea Maslow
would later use to create a hierarchy
of human needs.
"Maslow's
Hierarchy of Needs" is considered
a cornerstone in the study of self-actualization.
According to Maslow, humans follow a distinct
pattern of needs in their life. When one
need is met, the next one in the hierarchy
is used as motivation. These needs, listed
in ascending order, are: physiological,
safety, social, esteem, and self-actualization.
Once a lower need is met, a higher one
is sought. Needs listed lower on the hierarchy
are more powerful and more basic while
higher ones are thought to be unique only
to humans.
Maslow
fell into ill health later in life and
in 1970 he died of a heart attack. He
was 62 and living in California.
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