The humanistic direction in Maslow’s theory of personality. Humanistic theories of development (A. Maslow, K. Rogers). Man in a concentration camp

In 1943, Abraham Maslow's article "A Theory of Individual Motivation" was published in Psychological Review. His views differed from the popular concepts of psychoanalysis and behaviorism at that time, which were based on the behavior of animals and were speculative. Maslow's theory was based on experiments with people conducted in hospital settings.

In addition, Maslow's research allowed for the first time to formulate a positive view of human nature. Traditional psychology studied people with mental disorders, while Abraham Maslow studied the behavior of healthy and fulfilled individuals. He paid special attention to such manifestations of personality as altruism, love, and creativity.

Maslow's pyramid

Images of Maslow's pyramid of needs are very common. This diagram simplifies the theory of motivation. It should be noted that Abraham Maslow is not the author of the drawing. It first appears in German-language literature from the 1970s.

Typically, Maslow's theory of motivation includes five types of needs.

The two lower levels of the hierarchy, including organic needs and the need for safety, are collectively called physiological or basic. They form a behavioral dominant. These needs are inevitable, they ensure human survival, so they are satisfied first. Only by realizing basic needs will a person be able to think about higher-order goals. It is obvious that people realize their desires gradually, as if rising from one step to another, therefore another name for the theory of motivation is Maslow’s ladder.

The short list of needs consists of five points, but there is also a more detailed breakdown of Maslow’s pyramid.

In a detailed classification, the spiritual and moral needs of the individual are divided into three groups (cognitive, aesthetic and needs for self-actualization).

Self-actualization

Abraham Maslow identified the characteristics of people who are close to self-actualization:

According to Maslow, not everyone succeeds in achieving self-actualization. People often don't see their potential, they are afraid of their talents and possible success. Sometimes the environment hinders the development of abilities. Development requires a safe and friendly environment.

Flexibility of Maslow's theory

Initially, the theory of motivation stated that further advancement is impossible until basic needs are satisfied. It was believed that, first of all, a person uses all opportunities to provide himself and his family with food, clean water, safe housing, and so on.

Abraham Maslow later said that the process of realizing an individual’s needs is not always progressive, and the usual order may be disrupted. Often the satisfaction of higher desires begins when the lower ones have not yet been realized. Moreover, Maslow said that some needs may arise simultaneously. For example, a person may need security, love, and self-esteem. Not everyone’s basic needs are fully satisfied, but this does not prevent people from having a desire to be useful to society or to love. It is not necessary to satisfy the needs of the lower level completely in order to move to a higher level of Maslow's pyramid.

Application of Maslow's theory

Motivation theories are often used by managers who seek to improve the performance of their employees. Works of Abraham Maslow were of great importance in the creation of modern theories of motivation.

Leaders must understand that personal motivation determined by many needs. To motivate an employee, the manager needs to give him the opportunity to satisfy existing needs.

Social: team spirit in the workplace, periodic meetings, stimulation of social activity of employees.
The need for respect: interesting and meaningful work, encouragement of achieved results, career advancement, professional training and retraining.
Self-expression needs: to allow subordinates to use their full potential and develop their abilities.

Economic incentives alone are not enough for many people. Increasing earnings helps to satisfy only basic needs. It is believed that only the poorest and most powerless sections of the population are guided by the needs of the lower levels.

Disadvantages of Maslow's theory

Maslow's concepts have attracted both supporters and critics. The latter believed that the study samples were too small and no generalizations could be made from them. Composing list of personality traits moving along the path of self-actualization, Abraham Maslow chose active and healthy people such as Abraham Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, Albert Einstein. Such people, in his opinion, were successful. Some great people, such as Richard Wagner, were not included in the study because they did not possess the personality traits that Maslow valued.

The main problem with the theory of the hierarchy of personal needs is that there is no way to quantify the extent to which human needs are satisfied. Maslow's theory is not universal; it does not take into account individual characteristics of personality development. For some people, the order of the hierarchy of needs changes.

Due to the fact that the theory of motivation is built in accordance with a certain hierarchy, it is often associated with a pyramid of power. The more material values for a person, the more his needs are satisfied and the more power he has. This theory is especially popular among people with hierarchical thinking. They are convinced that individual success is based on competition. Closer to the top of the pyramid and, accordingly, happier is the one who actively and successfully competes with others.

Such an outlook on life leads to the fact that people strive to get as many generally accepted things as possible, such as a prestigious job, expensive housing, social status. Many people believe that a large number of achievements leads to happiness.

In modern theories of human and social development, competition is viewed as an unproductive path. Community development It can be more effective if you give up competition and put the uniqueness of the individual and her ability to demonstrate her talents in the foreground.

A. Maslow (1908-1970) received three academic degrees for his study of primate behavior. Then he studied psychoanalysis. His passion for Eastern psychology and meetings with major European psychologists such as E. Fromm, A. Adler, K. Horney, M. Wertheimer, who moved to America to escape Hitler, prompted him to rethink human nature. A. Maslow noted that S. Freud’s works are based on the study of people suffering from neuroses. He organized a large-scale study using materials from mentally mature, harmonious, creative people - travelers, sailors, military commanders, his acquaintances, colleagues, etc. The results were new and impressive. Summarizing them, A. Maslow built his theory of personality, which is based on his conceptual idea of the motivation of human behavior and the characteristics of creative, self-actualizing individuals.

According to A. Maslow, the internal activity of the individual manifests itself primarily through motives and needs. The latter are instinctoid and are organized into a hierarchical system, which has come to be called the pyramid of needs. The dominant needs are located at the bottom. If they are satisfied, then higher level needs are manifested and realized. The lowest level is physiological needs, i.e. needs for food, drink, etc. They ensure physical survival, therefore they are the most powerful and urgent. The second level consists of security and protection needs. These include the needs for stability, law, order, predictability of events, overcoming illness, chaos, etc. They become aggravated during turbulent periods in the life of society and are also manifested in a preference for permanent work and other motivated searches for security.

The third level in A. Maslow's pyramid consists of the needs for belonging and love. Already in infancy, the child develops a need for close emotional contact with his mother and loved ones. Then the objective focus of this need expands, the desire to establish close emotional connections, relationships of love, friendship, affection in the family, group, and with other people develops. A. Maslow believes that in modern society, for most people this need remains unsatisfied at different stages of age development. Hence - psychological problems, internal conflicts, neuroses.

The next level consists of self-esteem needs. The author identified two types of respect: self-respect and respect for others. The first type is characterized by such indicators as competence, real achievements, independence, freedom. The second type is associated with indicators of prestige, recognition, status, reputation, and evaluation by others.

And finally, the highest level in the hierarchy of needs is the need for self-actualization. This is the desire for self-improvement, the realization of one’s personal and creative potential. People must be who they can be, that is, remain true to their nature.

Self-actualization can take the form of creative efforts, choice of field of activity, quality level of fulfillment of one’s social roles, professional, civic, and moral aspirations. A. Maslow showed that the internal motivation to realize personal potential is natural, necessary, and given to every person. But only individual people achieve a high level of realization of their personal potential. His research made it possible to discover and describe two types of predominant motivation: deficit motivation and growth motivation. A high level of growth motivation forms a self-actualizing personality.

A. Maslow analyzed in detail and summarized the biographical materials of 75 people known and close to him, who were distinguished by a pronounced predominance of motivation for personal growth, and compiled the characteristics of self-actualizing individuals. This conceptual idea is considered in the literature as one of the achievements of humanistic psychology, which in recent years has been actively used in the development of humanitarian psychotechnologies in practical psychology. The author identified 15 psychological characteristics of self-actualizing people. Let's look at some of them.

Self-actualizing people are distinguished by freshness, spontaneity and realistic perception. They see the world and people as they are. They are characterized by great receptivity, at the same time greater freedom from stereotypes, anxiety, far-fetched expectations, unjustified pessimism or optimism. This feature of effective perception extends to different aspects of life: art, science, politics. Further. These people are characterized by openness, simplicity, spontaneity. They can easily accept rules, traditions, and be tolerant of accepted standards in educational, government or other organizations. But their inner life is free from conventions, they can sharply reject social norms when they are convinced of the need for this.

People with a high level of self-actualization are also characterized by self-confidence, independence, a sense of inner strength, and human dignity. They are democratic and feel comfortable both in close friendly contacts and alone with themselves. And one more characteristic. Self-actualizing individuals are distinguished by their openness to the needs of others, public interests, and the problems of their group, people, culture, and civilization. They are free from intrapersonal conflicts, defenses, complexes and are prone to more or less large-scale activities in the interests of the community.

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At the beginning, I would like to note that this discipline, psychology, is large-scale. Therefore, for a deep and thorough understanding of the topic, let’s figure out what is commonly called psychology? PSYCHOLOGY is a science that studies the patterns of emergence, development, and functioning of the human psyche, as well as a group of people. After we have clarified the main provisions of the science being studied, we move on to a systematic consideration of the following terms that will often appear in today’s topic: PERSONALITY, PSYCHOLOGY, DEVELOPMENT, THEORY, MASLOW.

PERSONALITY is a relatively stable integral system of intellectual, moral-volitional and socio-cultural qualities of a person, expressed in the individual characteristics of his consciousness and activity. DEVELOPMENT is a process of transition from one state to another, more perfect one, a transition from an old qualitative state to a new qualitative state, from simple to complex, from lower to higher. THEORY is a system of generalized reliable knowledge about a particular fragment of reality that describes, explains and predicts the functioning of a certain set of its constituent objects. MASLOW is a famous American psychologist, founder of humanistic psychology.

It is worth immediately noting that the basis (that is, the foundation) of motivation, according to Maslow, is five basic needs. Maslow's pyramid of needs:
- sexual and biological- in movement, breathing, a roof over your head, reproduction, clothing, rest, etc.
— needs related to safety (safety)- confidence in the future, security and stability in life, in people around, the desire to prevent mistreatment, in guaranteed employment;
- social needs- in interaction with society, in love, in being in a social group, in attention to oneself, making a contribution to common activities, caring for one’s neighbor;
- self-esteem needs- needs for respect from “important others”, for social status, for career advancement, prestige and recognition;
- moral needs(needs for expression through creativity), embodiment of one’s skills, etc.

It is worth adding that this theory is foundation in the study of psychology as a science. I believe that you have mastered the topic covered, which is one of the main ones in the study of such a science as psychology. If something remains difficult from this topic, you can always ask a question that concerns you.
We wish you success in your studies and creative activities!

Humanistic theory of personality by A. Maslow

Term humanistic psychology was proposed by a group of psychologists who in the early 60s. XX century under the leadership of Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) came together to create a theoretical alternative to the two most important psychological theories - Freudianism and behaviorism. In contrast to those directions that evaluate a person as completely dependent either on the environment or on unconscious instincts, humanistic psychology views him as responsible for his destiny, freely making a choice among the opportunities provided, striving for self-improvement, being in the process of formation and change throughout life .

Humanistic psychology studies a mentally healthy, harmonious personality that has reached the peak of its development, the limit self-actualization. Such individuals, unfortunately, make up only 1-4% of the total number of people, and the rest are at one or another stage of development.

The fundamental thesis underlying Maslow's humanistic theory is that each person needs to be studied as a single, unique, organized whole, and not as individual manifestations of behavior (as behaviorists do).

According to Maslow, motivation influences human behavior as a whole, and not just its individual aspects. He believed that every person has the potential for positive growth and improvement, and that negative and destructive qualities and manifestations in people are the result of frustrations or unmet needs, and not some hereditary defects.

A. Maslow, one of the leading psychologists in the field of motivation research in the USA, developed hierarchy of needs. It consists of a number of steps. The first is physiological needs: lower, controlled by the organs of the body (breathing, food, sexual, self-defense needs). The second stage is the need for reliability: the desire for material security, health, security in old age, etc. The third is social needs. Her satisfaction is not objective and cannot be described. One person is satisfied with only minor contacts with other people, while another has a very strong need for communication. The fourth stage is the need for respect, awareness of one’s own dignity; here we are talking about prestige, social success. These needs are unlikely to be met by an individual; groups are required. The fifth stage is the need for personal development, self-realization, self-actualization, and understanding of one’s purpose.

Maslow identified the following principles of human motivation:

· motives have a hierarchical structure;
· the higher the level of motive, the less vital the corresponding needs are, the longer their implementation can be delayed;
· until the lower needs are satisfied, the higher ones remain relatively less significant (from the moment they are fulfilled, the lower needs cease to be needs, that is, they lose their motivating power);
· with an increase in the level of needs, the readiness for greater activity increases (the opportunity to satisfy higher needs is a greater stimulus for activity than the satisfaction of lower ones).

The scientist notes that the lack of goods, the blockade of basic and physiological needs for food, rest, and safety lead to the fact that they can become leading for an ordinary person. (“A person can live by bread alone when there is not enough bread.”) But if the basic, primary needs are satisfied, then the individual may exhibit higher needs, metamotivation (needs for development, for understanding one’s life, for finding its meaning).

If a person strives to understand the meaning of his life, to realize himself and his abilities as fully as possible, he gradually moves to the highest level of personal self-development - to self-realization.

Self-actualizing personality has the following features:

1. Complete acceptance of reality and a comfortable attitude towards it (not to hide from life, but to know and understand it).
2. Acceptance of others and yourself. (“I do my thing, and you do yours. I am not in this world to meet your expectations. And you are not in this world to meet my expectations. I am me, you are you. I respect and accept you as you are.")
3. Professional passion for what you love, orientation to the task, to the cause.
4. Autonomy, independence from the social environment, independence of judgment.
5. The ability to understand other people, attention, goodwill towards people.
6. Inescapable novelty, freshness of assessments, openness to experience.
7. Distinguishing between ends and means, evil and good. (“Not every means is good for achieving an end.”)
8. Spontaneity, natural behavior.
9. Humor.
10. Self-development, manifestation of abilities, potential, self-actualizing creativity in work, love, life.
11. Readiness to solve new problems, to understand tasks and difficulties, one’s experience, to truly understand one’s capabilities, to increase congruence.

Congruence- this is the correspondence of experience, awareness of experience to its real content. Overcoming defense mechanisms helps to achieve congruent, true experiences and correctly understand your problems. Personal development is an increase in congruence, understanding of your real Self, your capabilities, characteristics - self-actualization.

An active position in relation to reality, studying and overcoming reality, and not running away from it, the ability to see the events of one’s life as they are, without resorting to psychological defense, the understanding that behind a negative emotion there is a problem that needs to be solved, the ability not hiding from such problems and negative emotions in order to find and eliminate obstacles to personal growth - all this allows a person to understand himself, the meaning of life, achieve inner harmony and self-actualization. Belonging to a group and a sense of self-esteem are necessary conditions for self-actualization, since a person can understand himself only if he receives information about himself from other people.

But why are there very few such self-actualizing people? Maslow believes there are several reasons:

· unfavorable social conditions that block the satisfaction of lower and higher needs;
· a person’s ignorance of his potential, doubt in his abilities, fear of success, which prevents a person from striving for self-improvement (Jonah complex);
· excessive exposure to security needs that block a person’s desire for growth, self-improvement, change, since this may be accompanied by risk, mistakes, and anxiety.

Maslow identifies fourteen higher spiritual meta-needs. These are the aspirations for:

· integrity of the individual;
· improvement;
· completion;
· justice, order and law;
· functioning activity;
· differentiation and complexity;
· beauty;
· honesty, openness and simplicity;
· kindness;
· uniqueness and novelty;
· play and humor;
· truth and honor;
· independence and autonomy;
· freedom.

Failure to satisfy higher meta-needs may not be recognized by a person and may not be experienced as a conscious desire; nevertheless, it suppresses the growth and functioning of a healthy personality and even causes specific mental illnesses - metapathologies (these include apathy, depression, alienation, cynicism, inability to deeply love someone). or, the desire to live only for today; lack of interest in what is happening in the world, in new information; hatred, disgust; total selfishness; reluctance to achieve anything; a feeling of meaninglessness, despair, loss of the meaning of life; drug use, alcoholism). motivation need Maslow self-actualization

Among the pathogenic mechanisms that interfere with personality development, one can note a passive position in relation to reality; repression and other methods of protecting the Self - projection, replacement, distortion of the true state of affairs for the sake of internal balance and tranquility. Psychological and social factors contribute to personality degradation.

Stages of such degradation:

1. Formation of a “pawn” psychology, a global sense of one’s dependence on other forces (the phenomenon of “learned helplessness”).
2. Creation of a shortage of goods, as a result the primary needs for food and survival become leading.
3. Creating “purity” of the social environment: dividing people into “good” and “bad”, “us” and “strangers”; guilt and shame for oneself.
4. The formation of the cult of “self-criticism”, the admission of committing even those disapproved acts that a person has never committed.
5. Preservation of “sacred foundations” (a person forbids himself to even think about the fundamental premises of ideology, much less doubt them).
6. Formation of a specialized language (complex tasks are compressed into short, very simple, easy to remember expressions).
7. As a result of all these factors, a person becomes accustomed to an “unreal existence”, since from a complex, contradictory, uncertain real world he moves into an “unreal world of clarity, simplicity”, several selves are formed, functionally isolated from each other.

An “existential vacuum” is formed: a person has lost his “animal” instincts, has lost social norms, traditions that determine what he needs to do, and as a result he himself does not know what he wants (or maybe nothing), and then he does what what others want, becoming a “pawn” in the hands of others (“Sunday neurosis”). Such a person requires “logotherapy” - a struggle for the meaning of life. It is not we who ask ourselves the question of what the meaning of life is, but life asks us, and we answer with our lives. If a person is sure that the meaning of life exists, then he can rise above the most unfavorable conditions. (“He who has a why to live can bear any how,” said Nietzsche.)

Many people have so-called “neuroses of existence,” when a person does not understand why he lives and suffers from it.

The meaning of life in the outside world can be found in perhaps three ways:

· doing things;
· experiencing values, unity with other people, love;
· experiencing suffering.
· Self-actualization occurs if a person has higher meta-needs for development, life goals: truth, beauty, kindness, justice.

Maslow describes nine points of self-actualization:

1. Full experience of the present with awareness of what is happening in us and around us.
2. With each choice, decide in favor of developing a new, unexpected experience, rather than staying with the known and familiar.
3. Form your attitude towards situations, make decisions regardless of the opinions and points of view of others. 4. Honesty and taking responsibility.
4. Learn to trust your instincts and judgments and act in accordance with them (when choosing a profession, life partner, diet, etc.), and not rely on what is accepted in society.
5. Constant development of one’s abilities, using them in order to do well what a person wants to do.
6. Transitional moments in self-actualization (“peak experience”) - in situations when a person is deeply involved, excited and connected with the world and at such moments he thinks, acts, feels more clearly and clearly, is intensely aware of the world and himself, he develops new points of view, attitudes towards the world change, he feels ecstasy, delight.
7. The next step in self-actualization is identifying one’s “psychological defenses” (projection, rationalization, repression, identification, etc.) and destroying them.
8. Satisfying the needs for self-actualization, understanding the meaning of one’s life and realizing one’s purpose, and self-improvement.

If a person cannot satisfy the highest spiritual needs, even if the needs of the first four levels are satisfied, it turns out that good food, a luxurious apartment, a prosperous family and children, and a good position still do not bring happiness to a person. Maslow views the psychological growth of personality as the consistent satisfaction of increasingly higher needs.

Maslow can be considered the creator of not only humanistic, but also transpersonal psychology: he discovered the presence of a spiritual dimension in people seeking self-realization, and showed that the peak mystical experiences that push it are “above the norm”, they are accompanied by altered states of consciousness and access to the global spiritual information field.

Short biography.
Prerequisites of the theory.
Hierarchy of needs.
Maslow's pyramid.
D-motives and p-motives.
Metaneeds and metapathologies.
Two lifestyles.
Self-actualization.

Introduction.

In the previous article we already mentioned the circumstances under which psychology arose humanistic direction. Its important feature was the conviction of its followers that in addition to basic needs and the needs for the realization of animal instincts, any person also has a completely different motivation, as well as the potential for its implementation.

What was meant was the following: it is impossible to exhaustively describe a person, excluding those of his features that, in fact, distinguish him from an animal, namely, such things as the desire to understand the fundamental issues of existence and the universe, the desire for self-actualization, self-improvement, the desire for creativity and beauty.
Moreover, followers of the humanistic movement believed that the desire for the above is immanent in human nature, along with animal instincts.

Among all the humanistic theories and views on the nature of personality and its motives, Abraham Maslow's theory is perhaps the most famous.

Maslow Abraham Harold (1908 - 1970). Short biography.

Abraham Maslow was born in the USA in 1908 into a family of poor Jewish immigrants. Abraham's childhood was not easy due to difficult relationships with his parents and peers. In his own words, spoken subsequently, such a personal story was bound to end with mental problems or even more serious consequences.
The boy grew up unhappy, abandoned and lonely, and communication with peers and understanding of his parents were replaced by library corridors and books.

Initially, education was planned by his father, so young Maslow goes to college to study law, but quickly realizes that being a lawyer is not his calling. Soon, the young man enters the University of Wisconsin, where he receives a bachelor's degree in psychology, and a few years later a doctorate. During his studies, Maslow meets Harry Harlow, a famous American psychologist, in whose laboratory he studies dominant behavior in monkeys.

After receiving his doctorate, Maslow returned to New York and remained there for a long time, working at Brooklyn College. During the Second World War, a large number of the European scientific elite fled to the United States from Germany and Europe from the Nazis, including the most famous psychologists of the time, such as Erich Fromm, Alfred Adler, Ruth Benedict and others.
Thanks to this, New York at that time became a psychological mecca for the whole world, and in these conditions the scientific views and future approach of the young scientist were formed.

In 1951, Maslow received the chair of psychology at Brandeis University, where he worked for 10 years, and then lectured there. In 1969, he unexpectedly left the university and devoted all his time to studying philosophy and economics, and shortly after that, in 1970, he suddenly died of a heart attack.

Background of Maslow's theory.

Abraham Maslow's theory of human development is based on five humanistic principles, which were set out in the article on the premises of humanistic psychology. And since the pinnacle of his theory is such a concept as a person’s desire for self-actualization, it is natural that the main question that arises to this idea is what exactly motivates a person who chooses such a reference point in his hierarchy of values.

For comparison, Freud's basic desire for man, in addition to satisfying the physiological needs of the body, was to relieve constant psychological stress that arose as a result of the action of the opposition ID - Super Ego. Any personality in such a system was an eternal hostage of this confrontation, which in principle could not be completely eliminated, but through awareness of the traumatic contents of the unconscious and redirection of libidinal energy in another direction, this tension could be reduced to a certain extent. This is precisely what the work of psychological assistance in psychoanalysis was based on.

Here you can pay attention to the fact that in Freud's system the desire for higher values was determined entirely by the position of the super ego. That is, firstly, this desire was acquired through upbringing, and secondly, it was obviously secondary, since the true needs of a person, according to the teachings of psychoanalysis, were precisely the impulses of ID.

Naturally, in such a system of coordinates there was no place and could not be for some higher need that was not determined by the urgent need of the body.
Despite all the unprovability of the provisions of psychoanalysis, there were enough compelling reasons for constructing such a theory, and Freud’s logic was completely, if not scientifically impeccable, then completely obvious and understandable.

However, Sigmund Freud's theory of personality was built entirely on the materials of his work as a psychiatrist with people suffering to varying degrees from various psychological problems, often very serious ones.

This was Maslow's main complaint about psychoanalysis.
He initially believed that it was impossible to construct a correct theory without taking into account the fact that there are quite a few psychologically healthy people in the world.
It is for this reason that supporters of humanistic psychology placed such a significant emphasis on human mental health, and this played such an important role that it became one of the five basic principles new direction.

Of course, this did not mean denying the obvious fact of the existence of psychological problems, but it made it possible to look at them from a completely different perspective.
And this perspective became the theory of needs, which occupied a central place in Maslow’s views on the human personality.

Undoubtedly and quite obviously, there are a considerable number of people in the human world whose goal in life is precisely the realization of their internal capabilities and abilities, and often this realization involves a partial rejection of the priority of basic needs, since movement in this direction is associated with certain risks and frequent going beyond comfort zones.

In other words, if you want to do what your calling is, then, as a rule, you have to choose a rather thorny and difficult road, on which people often endure a lot of hardships. And these facts are well known to everyone, which means that those who choose this path are aware of its difficulties and dangers.
Nevertheless, there are always such people and there are many of them.
It is quite difficult to comprehensively explain their motives from the point of view of replacing an unrealized initial need with another type of activity, especially if these basic needs were initially satisfied. And this undoubtedly required its own explanation.

Maslow's pyramid. Hierarchy of needs.

It is obvious that first a person has a need for something, and on the basis of this need an impulse (desire) arises to satisfy it. That's what it is motivation.

One of the main provisions of Maslow's theory is that a person is constantly motivated by something, and there is almost never a state of affairs in which complete satisfaction occurs, and if such situations arise, which happens, it is very short-lived, and very soon the next need arises And so on and so forth.

In other words, according to Maslow, desires are integral characteristic human existence.

Another important part of this theory says that all the needs underlying motivation are not acquired, and innate nature and this initial urge of a person (the energy of desire) is simply superimposed on external circumstances, which determine the very object of desire, or the direction in which this energy unfolds.

The third important assumption suggests that these aspirations - motivations exist in a hierarchy due to the presence of obvious priorities.
For example, the need for breathing is obviously more primary in importance than the need for food and drink, and the need for communication undoubtedly loses to the desire to be satiated and not die of hunger.

So, here is the hierarchy of needs in order of priority that was proposed by Maslow.

- primary physiological needs of the body.
- need for security.
- the need for belonging to society and love.
- need for self-esteem.
- the need for self-actualization.

On the basis of this scale, Maslow’s well-known pyramid of needs was created, according to which the needs of the lower level must be satisfied (albeit not completely, but mostly) before there is at least an awareness of the presence of needs of another level as a necessity. According to Maslow, the higher an individual rose up the steps of this pyramid, the more he realized the human qualities of the individual, and the greater psychological health he should have.

In Maslow’s theory, it is important to understand that it has a certain degree of error, and of course he himself understood this.
After all, it is quite obvious that there can be exceptions to the hierarchy of motives, and they are quite numerous.
The world knows many people who, in the name of high ideas, subjected themselves to hardship, hunger, and even went to their death.
In this regard, Maslow said that some people, due to their individual characteristics, are able to create their own hierarchy of needs.
This assumption was obvious and was in good agreement with the second position of humanistic psychology, which affirmed the thesis of the uniqueness of each individual.
Thus, human nature itself spoke of the inevitability of the existence of exceptions in any such theory.