Maslow's hierarchy of needs is an idea in psychology proposed by American psychologist Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper "A Theory of Human Motivation" in the journal Psychological Review. Maslow subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans' innate curiosity. His theories parallel many other theories of human developmental psychology, some of which focus on describing the stages of growth in humans. The theory is a classification system intended to reflect the universal needs of society as its base, then proceeding to more acquired emotions. The hierarchy of needs is split between deficiency needs and growth needs, with two key themes involved within the theory being individualism and the prioritization of needs. While the theory is usually shown as a pyramid in illustrations, Maslow himself never created a pyramid to represent the hierarchy of needs. The hierarchy of needs is a psychological idea and also an assessment tool, particularly in education, healthcare and social work. The hierarchy remains a popular framework, for example in sociology research, management training, and higher education.
According to the APA Dictionary of Psychology, a feeling is "a self-contained phenomenal experience"; and feelings are "subjective, evaluative, and independent of the sensations, thoughts, or images evoking them". The term feeling is closely related to, but not the same as, emotion. Feeling may for instance refer to the conscious subjective experience of emotions. The study of subjective experiences is called phenomenology. Psychotherapy generally involves a therapist helping a client understand, articulate, and learn to effectively regulate the client's own feelings, and ultimately to take responsibility for the client's experience of the world. Feelings are sometimes held to be characteristic of embodied consciousness.
Abraham Harold Maslow was an American psychologist who created Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in priority, culminating in self-actualization. Maslow was a psychology professor at Brandeis University, Brooklyn College, New School for Social Research, and Columbia University. He stressed the importance of focusing on the positive qualities in people, as opposed to treating them as a "bag of symptoms". A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Maslow as the tenth most cited psychologist of the 20th century.
Humanistic psychology is a psychological perspective that arose in the mid-20th century in answer to two theories: Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory and B. F. Skinner's behaviorism. Thus, Abraham Maslow established the need for a "third force" in psychology. The school of thought of humanistic psychology gained traction due to Maslow in the 1950s.
Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is an approach to enhanced communication, understanding, and connection based on the principles of nonviolence and humanistic psychology. It is not an attempt to end disagreements, but rather a way that aims to increase empathy and understanding to improve the overall quality of life. It seeks empathic dialogue and understanding among all parties. Nonviolent Communication evolved from concepts used in person-centered therapy, and was developed by clinical psychologist Marshall Rosenberg beginning in the 1960s and 1970s. There are a large number of workshops and clinical materials about NVC, including Rosenberg's book Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life. Marshall Rosenberg also taught NVC in a number of video lectures available online; the workshop recorded in San Francisco is the most well-known.
Use value or value in use is a concept in classical political economy and Marxist economics. It refers to the tangible features of a commodity which can satisfy some human requirement, want or need, or which serves a useful purpose. In Karl Marx's critique of political economy, any product has a labor-value and a use-value, and if it is traded as a commodity in markets, it additionally has an exchange value, defined as the proportion by which a commodity can be exchanged for other entities, most often expressed as a money-price.
Labour power is the capacity to do work, a key concept used by Karl Marx in his critique of capitalist political economy. Marx distinguished between the capacity to do work, i.e. labour power, and the physical act of working, i.e. labour. Labour power exists in any kind of society, but on what terms it is traded or combined with means of production to produce goods and services has historically varied greatly.
Content theory is a subset of motivational theories that try to define what motivates people. Content theories of motivation often describe a system of needs that motivate peoples' actions. While process theories of motivation attempt to explain how and why our motivations affect our behaviors, content theories of motivation attempt to define what those motives or needs are. Content theory includes the work of David McClelland, Abraham Maslow and other psychologists.
Theory Z is a name for various theories of human motivation built on Douglas McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y. Theories X, Y and various versions of Z have been used in human resource management, organizational behavior, organizational communication and organizational development.
Self-determination theory (SDT) is a macro theory of human motivation and personality that concerns people's innate growth tendencies and innate psychological needs. It pertains to the motivation behind people's choices in the absence of external influences and distractions. SDT focuses on the degree to which human behavior is self-motivated and self-determined.
Dependency need is "the vital, originally infantile needs for mothering, love, affection, shelter, protection, security, food, and warmth."
Self-actualization, in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, is the highest personal aspirational human need in the hierarchy. It represents where one's potential is fully realized after more basic needs, such as for the body and the ego, have been fulfilled. Long received in psychological teaching as the peak of human needs, Maslow later added the category self-transcendence.
Some Marxists posit what they deem to be Karl Marx's theory of human nature, which they accord an important place in his critique of capitalism, his conception of communism, and his materialist conception of history. Marx does not refer to human nature as such, but to Gattungswesen, which is generally translated as "species-being" or "species-essence". According to a note from Marx in the Manuscripts of 1844, the term is derived from Ludwig Feuerbach's philosophy, in which it refers both to the nature of each human and of humanity as a whole.
Gandhian economics is a school of economic thought based on the spiritual and socio-economic principles expounded by Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi. It is largely characterised by rejection of the concept of the human being as a rational actor always seeking to maximize material self-interest that underlies classical economic thinking. Where Western economic systems were based on what he called the "multiplication of wants," Gandhi felt that this was both unsustainable and devastating to the human spirit. His model, by contrast, aimed at the fulfillment of needs – including the need for meaning and community. As a school of economics the resulting model contained elements of protectionism, nationalism, adherence to the principles and objectives of nonviolence and a rejection of class war in favor of socio-economic harmony. Gandhi's economic ideas also aim to promote spiritual development and harmony with a rejection of materialism. The term "Gandhian economics" was coined by J. C. Kumarappa, a close supporter of Gandhi.
A taxonomy of fundamental human needs and the ways in which these needs can be satisfied was developed by Manfred Max-Neef. This was based on his work on Human Scale Development, first published in 1986.
The concept of human development expands upon the notion of economic development to include social, political and even ethical dimensions. Since the mid-twentieth century, international organisations such as the United Nations and the World Bank have adopted human development as a holistic approach to evaluating a country’s progress that considers living conditions, social relations, individual freedoms and political institutions that contribute to freedom and well-being, in addition to standard measures of income growth.
In 1938, Henry Murray developed a system of needs as part of his theory of personality, which he named personology. He argued that everyone had a set of universal basic needs, with individual differences on these needs leading to the uniqueness of personality through varying dispositional tendencies for each need; in other words, a specific need is more important to some than to others. In his theory, Murray argues that needs and presses acted together to create an internal state of disequilibrium; the individual is then driven to engage in some sort of behavior to reduce the tension. Murray believed that the study of personality should look at the entire person over the course of their lifespan – that people needed to be analysed in terms of complex interactions and whole systems rather than individual parts – and an individual's behaviors, needs and their levels, etc. are all part of that understanding. Murray also argued that there was a biological basis for personality and behavior.
The socialist mode of production, also known as socialism or communism, is a specific historical phase of economic development and its corresponding set of social relations that emerge from capitalism in the schema of historical materialism within Marxist theory. The Marxist definition of socialism is that of production for use-value, therefore the law of value no longer directs economic activity. Marxist production for use is coordinated through conscious economic planning. According to Marx, distribution of products is based on the principle of "to each according to his needs"; Soviet models often distributed products based on the principle of "to each according to his contribution". The social relations of socialism are characterized by the proletariat effectively controlling the means of production, either through cooperative enterprises or by public ownership or private artisanal tools and self-management. Surplus value goes to the working class and hence society as a whole.
Human Givens is the name of a theory in psychotherapy formulated in the United Kingdom, first outlined by Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell in the late 1990s, and amplified in the 2003 book Human Givens: A new approach to emotional health and clear thinking. The human givens organising ideas proffer a description of the nature of human beings, the 'givens' of human genetic heritage and what humans need in order to be happy and healthy based on the research literature. Human Givens therapy draws on several psycho therapeutic models, such as motivational interviewing, cognitive behavioural therapy, psychoeducation, interpersonal therapy, imaginal exposure therapy and NLP such as the Rewind Technique, while seeking to use a client's strengths to enable them to get emotional needs met.
Jiska Cohen-Mansfield is the Igor Orenstein Chair for the Study of Geriatrics at Tel Aviv University Medical School and a professor at the Department of Health Promotion at the School of Public Health in the Sackler Medical Faculty at Tel Aviv University. She is the director of the Minerva Center for Interdisciplinary Study of End of Life at Tel-Aviv University.
