10. MASLOW'S THEORY OF HUMAN MOTIVATION. Maslow (1970) formulated a positive theory of motivation that he believed would satisfy the theoretical demands listed in the 16 principles listed above. Most of his work resulted directly from clinical experience. He believed his theory was founded in the functionalist tradition of Dewey and James, and was fused with the holism of Wertheimer, Goldstein, Gestalt Therapy, the dynamicism of Freud, Fromm, Horney, Reich, Jung, and Adler. He labeled this integration or synthesis a "holistic- dynamic theory." Physiological Needs Most motivation theories begin with the physiological drives. Recent research makes it necessary to revise traditional notions about needs: first, the development of the concept of homeostasis, and second, the finding that appetites (preferential choices among foods) are a fairly efficient indication of actual needs or lacks in the body. Homeostasis refers to the body's automatic efforts to maintain a constant or normal state of the blood stream. Cannon (1932) described this process for (1) the water content of the blood, (2) salt content, (3)sugar content, (4) protein content, (5) fat content, (6) calcium content, (7) oxygen content, (8) constant hydrogen-ion level (acid base balance), and (9) constant temperature of the blood. Young (1948; 1941) summarized the work on appetite and its relation to body needs. He theorized that if the body lacks some chemical, the individual will tend to develop a specific appetite or partial hunger for that missing food element. It is impossible to make any list of fundamental physiological needs for they can come to almost any number one might wish, depending on the degree of specificity of description. What this means is that the person missing everything in life in an extreme fashion will most likely be motivated to satisfy physiological needs rather than any others. If a person is lacking food, safety, love, and esteem, he would hunger for food more strongly than for anything else. For the person who is extremely or dangerously hungry, no other interests exist but food. He dreams food, remembers food, perceives food, and wants only food. All other drives are stifled, including sex, and a pure hunger drive exists. One peculiar characteristic of the human organism is that when it is dominated by a certain need, its whole philosophy of the future tends also to change. Utopia for the chronically hungry man would be a place where there is plenty of food. Life itself tends to be defined in terms of eating. Anything else in life is unimportant. Freedom, love, community feeling, respect, philosophy, may all seem useless since they fail to fill the stomach. The average American citizen is experiencing appetite rather than hunger when he says, "I am hungry." He may experience sheer life-and-death hunger only by accident and then only a few times throughout his entire life. Maslow (1970) maintained that "it is quite true that man lives by bread alone - when there is no bread." But what happens to man's desires when there is plenty of bread and when his belly is filled? It is then that other higher needs emerge and these, rather than physiological hungers, dominate the organism. When these are satisfied, again new and still higher needs emerge, and so on. This is what Maslow meant when he wrote that human needs are organized into a hierarchy of "relative prepotency." In his theory, gratification is as important as deprivation. Once a need is met, the organism is released from the domination of physiological needs, thus, permitting the emergence of other more social goals. A want that is satisfied is no longer a want. Maslow hypothesized that in individuals in whom a certain need has always been satisfied are best equipped to tolerate deprivation of that need in the future. Those who have been deprived in the past will react differently to current satisfactions than the those who have never been deprived. Safety Needs Once physiological needs are gratified, then there emerges a new set of needs which Maslow (1970) categorized as safety needs: security; stability; dependency; protection; freedom from fear, from anxiety and chaos; need for structure, order, law, limits; strength in the protector. A man whose hunger is satisfied but feels unsafe, if it is extreme and chronic enough, may be characterized as living almost for safety alone. The average child, and less obviously, the average adult generally prefers a safe, orderly, predictable, lawful, organized world which he can count on and in which unexpected, unmanageable, chaotic, or other dangerous things do not happen, and in which he has powerful parents or protectors who shield him from harm. The healthy and fortunate adult in American society is largely satisfied in his safety needs. The peaceful, smoothly running, stable, good society ordinarily makes its members feel safe enough from wild animals, extremes of temperature, criminal assault, murder, chaos, and tyranny. When Maslow first proposed his theory in 1954 and the revised work in 1970, crime in American streets was largely confined to certain areas. In the past five years, the safety need is becoming more of an issue. As of January 12, 1994, 12 murders were committed in Washington, D.C., our nation's capital, in the first 12 days of the new year. Violence in our neighborhoods, communities, and cities will surely become a major safety issue if it continues to proliferate in the last six years of this decade. Other aspects of the attempt to seek safety and stability in the world are seen in the very common preference for familiar rather than unfamiliar things, or for the known rather than the unknown (Maslow, 1937). The tendency to use religion or philosophy to organize the universe and man into it in some sort of coherent, meaningful whole is motivated by the safety need. The need for safety is an active and dominant mobilizer of the human's resources only in real emergencies. Some neurotic adults are like unsafe children in their desire for safety. The neurotic individual may be described with great usefulness as a grown-up person who retains his childhood attitudes toward the world. A neurotic adult behaves as if he were actually afraid of being spanked, or denied his mother's approval, or having his food taken away from him. His childish attitudes of fear and threat reaction to the dangerous world go underground. Untouched by the growing up and learning processes, this individual can be affected by any stimulus that feels threatening (Horney, 1937). The neurosis in which the search for safety takes its clearest form is in the compulsive-obsessive. These individuals try frantically to order and stabilize the world so that no unmanageable, unexpected, or unfamiliar dangers will ever appear. They develop all sorts of ceremonials, rules, and formulas so that every possible contingency may be provided for and so that no new contingencies may appear. They are like brain-injured cases who manage to maintain equilibrium by avoiding everything unfamiliar and strange and by ordering their restricted world in such a neat, disciplined fashion that everything in the world can be counted on (Goldstein, 1939). The safety needs can become very urgent on the social scene whenever there are real threats to law and order, to the authority of society. The conditions in many cities today (1994) with the exponential increase in violent crime has caused the issue of gun access and gun control to become an extremely heated debate. Though most Americans will never be violently assaulted due to the sheer odds, many people feel the compulsion to arm themselves with handguns and assault weapons capable of discharging 15-30 rounds of ammunition semi-automatically. Domestic violence in families significantly increased in the last decade. This, coupled with the rise in street crime, makes the issue of safety a compelling one for many Americans. The threat of chaos, or of nihilism, can be expected in many human beings to produce a regression from any higher needs to the more prepotent safety needs. A common reaction in such situations is the acceptance of a dictatorship or of a military style rule. With the breakup of the Soviet Block Nations and the movement toward a free economy system in Russia, a concomitant rise in crime is occurring. On NBC News (January 12, 1994), Tom Brokaw, reporting from Moscow, profiled the rapid development of a "Russian Mafia" which accounted for over 200 murders in that city in the past year alone. At the same time, there is a rising debate over the necessity to return to the old ways, the old Bolshevik controls, in order to stem the tide of violence and crime in the new Russia. All human beings respond to danger with realistic regression to the safety need level, and will prepare to defend themselves in any manner that seems necessary to thwart the danger. Turning the cheek may be biblically correct, but in reality, "Do unto others first before they do unto you" rules the street corner today. Most people living near the edge of the safety line, are disturbed by threats to legality, and to the representatives of the law who seem to be incapable of protecting them from harm. The Belongingness and Love Needs Once physiological and safety needs are met, there emerges the need for belongingness, love, and affection. The cycle of needs satisfaction repeats itself, and this new need becomes the epicenter of his life. A human being will feel the absence of friends, or wife or children. He will hunger for affectionate relationships with people in general, and for a place in his group or family. He will feel the pangs of loneliness, of ostracism, of rejection, of friendliness, of rootlessness (Maslow, 1959). There is little scientific information about the belongingness need, although there is a common theme in novels, poems, plays, and autobiographies. From these, we know in a general way the destructive effects on children of moving too often, of disorientation, of the general over-mobility that is forced by industrialization, of being without roots, or of despising one's roots, one's origins, one's group, of being torn from one's home and family friends and neighbors (Maslow, 1970). We still underplay the deep importance of the neighborhood, of one's territory, of one's clan, of one's own kind. In Ardrey's (1966) Territorial Imperative, with great poignancy and conviction, he described the need for the individual to belong to something, to someone, our deep animal tendency to herd. In our society, the thwarting of the belongingness and love needs is found in the core cases of maladjustment and severe pathology. Love and affection are looked upon with ambivalence and are sometimes hedged about with many restrictions and inhibitions. Many clinical studies have assessed this need, and like Suttie (1935) concluded that within our culture there exists a "taboo on tenderness." Maslow (1970) stressed that love is not synonymous with sex, and sex is a purely physiological need and is multi-determined. He maintained that the tremendous growth in T-groups and other personal growth groups and intentional communities may be motivated by an unsatisfied hunger for contact, for intimacy, for belongingness. He hypothesized that some proportion of youth rebellion groups may be motivated by the profound hunger for groupiness. Spergel and Chance (1991) supported this notion in their research on youth gangs in America concluding that "belonging to something was better than not belonging to anything. The gang, unlike the modern American family, provides support, a sense of community, and basically, protection. If a family or a society cannot satisfy this need, then the gang will." The Esteem Need All people need a stable, firmly based, high evaluation of themselves. Self-respect, self-esteem, and the esteem of others is necessary for an individual to feel whole. These needs are manifested in a desire for strength, for achievement, for adequacy, for mastery and competence, for confidence in the face of the challenges of the world. Satisfaction of the self-esteem need leads to a feeling of self-confidence, worth, strength, capability, and adequacy, of being useful, and necessary in the world (Adler, 1939; 1964). Thwarting these needs produces feelings of inferiority, of weakness, and of helplessness. They in turn give rise to either basic discouragement or else compensatory or neurotic trends. An appreciation of the necessity of basic self-confidence and an understanding of how helpless people are without it can be gained from a study of severe traumatic neurosis (Kardiner, 1941). From the theologians' discussion of pride and hubris, from the Frommian theories about the self-perception of untruth to one's own nature, from the Rogerian work with self, from essayists like Ayn Rand (1943), we learn more and more about the dangers of basing self-esteem on the opinions of others rather than on real capacity, competence, and adequacy to the task. The most stable and healthy self-esteem is based on deserved respect from others rather than on external fame or celebrity and unwarranted adulation. It is helpful to distinguish the actual competence and achievement that is based on sheer will power, determination and responsibility, from that which comes naturally and easily out of one's own true inner nature, one's constitution, one's biological fate or destiny, or as Horney (1950) put it, "out of the REAL SELF rather than out of the idealized pseudo-self. The Need for Self-Actualization Even if the first four needs are satisfied, the human being will still develop a restlessness, a discontent, unless the individual is doing what he, individually, is fitted for. A musician must make music, a teacher teach, a poet write poems, a bricklayer lay bricks, if he is to ultimately be at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. He must be true to his own nature. This need Maslow (1954) called self-actualization. First coined by Goldstein (1940), self-actualization refers to a man's desire for self-fulfillment, or to become actualized in what he is potentially. This tendency might be phrased the desire to become more and more what one idiosyncratically is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming. What form this takes varies from person to person. The clear emergence of these needs usually follows the satisfaction of the physiological, safety, love and esteem needs. Of the five needs defined in Maslow's hierarchy, this last one is the most difficult to fulfill, and is the most sought after of them all. In my work with new employees beginning their work experience with the Abraxas Foundation, I find all these needs in effect. Needing to work in order to survive, an individual seeks employment with the Foundation. He applies for a position, is interviewed and then returns to his home to wait for a call from the director who needs to fill a position. In the process, he may feel unsafe, unwanted, certainly less than self-actualized. Then one day he receives a phone call from the Human Resources Director to inform him that he has a position with the Foundation and told when to report to work. At that moment, he feels wanted, needed, and self-actualized. He will be able to provide for himself and for his family. He will be safe from the throes of the poverty line. He will feel this way until he reports for his first day of work and begins the new employee orientation process. Everything he knew before, experienced before, believed he understood before, is challenged and the momentary elation of feeling self-actualized evaporates and he must struggle to adapt to a new work environment, a new life situation. Eventually, with guidance and support, with experience, and with a significant amount of effort on his part, he will eventually feel self-actualized again. When and how remains within his own province. It will happen only if the other basic four needs are consistently met. There will be vacillation through time. Self- actualization may come easily to some and more difficultly to others. The human condition is unpredictable. Events will affect the pace at which the individual satisfies the hierarchy of needs. Preconditions for Basic Need Satisfactions Freedom of speech, freedom to do as one pleases, freedom to investigate and seek information, freedom to defend oneself, justice, fairness, honesty, and orderliness, when thwarted, will result in the individual's reacting as if threatened. The individual will defend these freedoms because without them the basic satisfactions are quite impossible. An act is psychologically important if it contributes to the satisfaction of basic needs. A similar statement may be made for the various defense or coping mechanisms. Some are directly related to the protection or attainment of the basic needs. Others are only weakly related. Any danger to the more basic defense mechanisms is more threatening than danger to less basic defenses. Motivation to Know and Understand Maslow (1970) maintained that the reason we know little about the cognitive impulses that motivate human beings is that they are not important in the clinic. The exciting and mysterious symptoms found in the classical neuroses are lacking here. Consequently, we find little on the subject in the writings of the great inventors of psychotherapy and psychodynamics, Freud, Adler, Jung, etc. Among the academics, Murphy (1958), Wertheimer (1959), and Asch (1952) treated the problem of motivation. Acquiring knowledge and systematizing the universe have been considered techniques for the achievement of basic safety in the world, or for the intelligent man, expressions of self-actualization. Though their formulations may be useful, they did not formulate any definitive answers to the questions as to the motivational role of curiosity, learning, philosophizing, experimenting, etc. in the human being. Beyond these negative determinants for acquiring knowledge, there are some reasonable grounds for postulating positive impulses to satisfy curiosity, to know, to explain, and to understand (Maslow, 1968). Maslow listed the following conditions under which positive impulses lead to a measure of self-actualization: 1. Something like human curiosity can easily be observed in animals. Monkeys will pick things apart, will poke their fingers into holes, will explore all sorts of situations where it is improbable that hunger, fear, sex, comfort, status, etc. are involved. Harlow's (1950) experiments amply demonstrated this. 2. The history of mankind supplies us with a satisfactory number of instances in which man looked for facts and created explanations in the face of the greatest danger, even to life itself (Maslow, 1957). 3. Studies of psychologically healthy people indicate that they are attracted to the mysterious, to the unknown, to the chaotic, unorganized, and unexplained. This seems to be an attractiveness. These areas are in themselves and of their own right interesting. The contrasting reaction to the well know is one of boredom (Maslow, 1957). 4. It may be valid to extrapolate from the psychopathological. The compulsive-obsessive neurotic, Goldstein's brain-injured soldiers, Maier's (1939) fixated rats, all show a compulsive and anxious clinging to the familiar and a dread of the unfamiliar, anarchic, the unexpected, the un-domesticated. There are some phenomena that may turn out to nullify this possibility. Among those forced unconventionality, a chronic rebellion against any authority whatsoever, Bohemianism, the desire to shock and to startle, all of which may be found in certain neurotic individuals, as well as in the process of de-acculturation. 5. The needs to know and to understand are seen in late infancy and childhood, perhaps even more strongly than in adulthood. This seems to be a spontaneous product of maturation rather than learning. Children do not have to be taught to be curious. But they may be taught, as by institutionalization, not to be curious (Goldfarb, 1945). 6. Finally, the gratification of the cognitive impulses is subjectively satisfying and yields to end-experiences. Though this aspect of insight and understanding has been neglected in favor of achieved results, learning remains true to insight and is usually a bright, happy, emotional spot in a person's life. Perhaps, it can even be viewed as a high spot in the life span (Maslow, 1969). The Aesthetic Needs Aesthetic needs are the least researched of all human needs. Maslow (1967) was convinced that, from his clinical observations, some individuals truly possess an aesthetic need. "They get sick from ugliness," he wrote, "and are cured by beautiful surroundings. They crave actively, and their cravings can be satisfied only by beauty" (p. 93). It is seen almost universally in healthy children. Evidence of aesthetic need impulse is found in every culture and in every age as far back as the cave man. Overlapping aesthetic needs with conative and cognitive needs makes it difficult to separate them. The needs for order, for symmetry, for closure, for completion of the act, for system, and for structure may be indiscriminately assigned to either cognitive, conative, or aesthetic, or even to neurotic needs. Maslow asked, "what does it mean when a man feels a strong conscious impulse to straighten the crookedly hung picture on the wall?" Is it conative, cognitive, or aesthetic? This is a research question which still needs to be asked and studied in much greater detail to determine which is the most accurate one. Maslow (1970) contended that the hierarchy of needs is not nearly so rigid as he may have implied earlier. Most people seem to have these basic needs in about the order that has been indicated. There are a number of exceptions: 1. For some people, self-esteem seems to be more important than love. This common reversal in the hierarchy is usually due to the development of the notion that the person who is most likely to be loved is a strong or powerful person, one who inspires respect or fear and who is self-confident or aggressive. 2. There are other innately creative people in whom the drive to creativeness seems to be more important than any other counterdeterminant. This creativeness appears not as self-actualization released by basic satisfaction, but in spite of a lack of it. 3. In certain people the level of aspiration may be permanently deadened or lowered. The less prepotent goals may simply be lost, and may disappear forever so that the person who has experienced life at a very low level never experiences self-actualization. 4. The so-called psychopathic personality is another example of permanent loss of the love needs. These are people who have been starved for love in the earliest months of their lives and have simply lost forever the desire and the ability to give and to receive affection. 5. Another cause of reversal of the hierarchy is that when a need has been satisfied for a long time, this need may be underevaluated. People who have never experienced chronic hunger are apt to underestimate its effects and to look upon food as a rather unimportant thing. Thus a man who has given up his job rather than lose his self-respect, and who then starves six months or so, may be willing to take his job back even at the price of losing his self-respect. 6. Another partial explanation of apparent reversals is seen in the fact that we have been talking about the hierarchy of prepotency in terms of consciously felt wants or desires rather than of behavior. Looking at behavior itself may give us the wrong impression. Looking at behavior itself may give us the wrong impression. What we have claimed is that the person will want the more basic of two needs when deprived in both. There is no necessary implication here that he will act upon his desires (Maslow, 1970, pp. 52-53). Multiple Determinants of Behavior Not all behavior is determined by basic needs. Maslow (1970) contended that not all behavior is motivated. There are many determinants of behavior other than motives. One other important class of determinants is the external field. Behavior may be determined completely by the external field, or even by specific, isolated, external stimuli, as in association of ideas, or certain conditioned reflexes. Secondly, some behavior is highly motivated and other behavior is only weakly motivated. Some is not motivated at all. Another important point is that there is a basic difference between expressive and coping behavior. An expressive behavior does not try to do anything; it is simply a reflection of the personality. A stupid man behaves stupidly, not because he wants to, but simply because he is what he is. The random movements of a healthy child, the smile on the face of a happy man even when he is alone, the springiness of the healthy man's walk, and the erectness of his carriage are other examples of expressive, nonfunctional behavior. The style in which a man carries out almost all his behavior, motivated as well as unmotivated, is often most expressive (Allport & Vernon, 1933; Wolff, 1943). The chief principle of organization in human motivational life is the arrangement of basic needs in a hierarchy of less or greater priority or potency. The chief dynamic principle animating this organization is the emergence in the healthy person of less potent needs upon gratification of the more potent ones. The physiological needs, when unsatisfied, dominate the organism, pressing all capacities into their service and organizing these capacities so that they may be most efficient in this service. Relative gratification submerges them and allows the next higher set of needs in the hierarchy to emerge, dominate, and organize the personality, so that instead of being hunger obsessed, it now becomes safety obsessed. The principle is the same for the other set needs in the hierarchy, for instance, love, esteem, and self-actualization (Maslow, 1935). Learning and Basic Need Gratification In general gratification theory, any loss of appetite after satiation, the change in quantity of type and defensiveness after safety need gratification demonstrate: 1. disappearance with increased exercise, and 2. disappearance with increased reward (Maslow, 1959, p. 145). The task of need gratification is almost entirely limited to intrinsically appropriate satisfiers. There can be no casual and arbitrary choice, except for nonbasic needs. For the love- hungry, there is only one genuine, long-run satisfier, honest and satisfying affection. For the sex-starved, food-starved, or water-starved person, only sex, food, or water will ultimately serve. This is the sort of intrinsic appropriateness stressed by Werthheimer (1959), Kohler (1938), and other Gestalt psychologists, such as Asch, Arnheim, Katona, as a central concept in all fields of psychology. Even in Gestalt learning theory character traits are not considered to be wholly learned. This theory is too limited in its rationalistic stress on the cognition of intrinsic motivation in the outside world. A stronger tie to the conative and affective processes within a person than is afforded either by associative or Gestalt learning is needed (Lewin, 1935). What can be described as character or intrinsic learning takes place at its centering point changes in the character structure rather than in behavior. Among its many components are the: 1. educative effects of unique (non-repetitive) and of profound personal experiences; 2. affective changes produced by repetitive experiences; 3. conative changes produced by gratification-frustration experiences; 4. broad attitudinal, expectational, or even philosophical changes produced by certain types of early experience; and, 5. determination by constitution of the variation in selective assimilation of any experience by the organism (Levy, 1934, pp. 203-234). Such considerations point to a closer relationship between the concepts of learning and character formation. It may be productive to define paradigmatic learning as change in personal development, in character, structure, as movement toward self- actualization, and beyond (Maslow, 1969a; Maslow, 1969b; Maslow, 1969c). The Concept of Gratification Health If person A lived for several weeks in a dangerous jungle where he has managed to stay alive by finding occasional food and water, he would be fulfilling survival needs. Person B not only stays alive but also has a rifle and a hidden cave with a closable entrance. Person C has all these and two more men with him as well. Person D has the food, the gun, the allies, the cave, and in addition, has with him his best-loved friend. Finally, Person E has all these and in addition is the well- respected leader of his band. We may call these men, respectively, the merely surviving, the safe, the belonging, the loved, and the respected. This is not only a series of increasing basic need gratifications, but is a series of increasing degrees of psychological health (Erikson, 1959; Freud, 1920). A man who is safe, belongs, and is loved will be healthier than a man who is safe and belongs, but who feels rejected and unloved. If he wins respect and admiration, and develops self-respect, then he is still more healthy, self-actualizing, and fully human. Basic need gratification is positively correlated with the degree of psychological health. Gratification theory would suggest that such a correlation of basic needs and good health exists synergistically (Maslow, 1969). It is a general clinical finding that the human being, when fed steady doses of safety, love, respect, he or she works better, perceives more efficiently, uses intelligence more fully, thinks to correct conclusions more often, digests food more efficiently, and is less subject to various diseases (p. 92). The study of the self-actualizing man indicates the special status of basic human needs. On the satisfaction of these needs is the healthy life based. Self-actualizing individuals are readily seen to be impulse-accepting as the instinct hypothesis would demand rather than impulse-rejecting or repressing (p. 93). The basic needs arrange themselves in a definite hierarchy on the basis of the principle of relative potency. The safety need is stronger than the love need because it dominates the organism in various ways when both needs are frustrated. The physiological needs are stronger then the safety needs, which are stronger than the love needs, which are stronger than the esteem needs, which are stronger than those needs called, the need for self-actualization. Maslow (1970) presented the following continuum to explain this hierarchical structure: 1. The higher need is a later phyletic or evolutionary development. 2. Higher needs are later ontogenetic developments. 3. The higher the need the less imperative it is for sheer survival, the longer gratification can be postponed, and the easier it is for the need to disappear permanently. 4. Living at the higher need level means greater biological efficiency, greater longevity, less disease, better sleep, appetite, etc. 5. Higher needs are less urgent subjectively. 6. Higher need gratification produce more desirable subjective results, i.e., more profound happiness, serenity, and richness of the inner life. 7. Pursuit and gratification of higher needs represent a general healthy trend away from psychopathology. 8. The higher needs have more preconditions. 9. Higher needs require better outside conditions to make them possible. 10. A greater value is usually placed upon the higher need than upon the lower by those who have been gratified in both. 11. The higher the need level, the wider is the circle of love identification, the greater is the number of people love-identified with, and the greater is the average degree of love identification. 12. The pursuit and the gratification of the higher needs have desirable civic and social consequences. 13. Satisfaction of higher needs is closer to self- actualization than is lower-need satisfaction. 14. The pursuit and gratification of the higher needs leads to greater, stronger, and truer individualism. 15. The higher the need level the easier and more effective psychotherapy can be: at the lowest need levels it is of hardly any avail. 16. The lower needs are far more localized, more tangible, and more limited than the higher needs (p. 100). The recognition that man's best impulses are appreciably intrinsic and have tremendous implication for motivational theory. It means that it is no longer necessary or desirable to deduce values by logic or to try to read them off from authorities or revelations. Human nature carries within itself the answer to the questions, how can I be good; how can I be fruitful? The human organism tells us what it needs, and thereby, what it values, by sickening when deprived of these values and by growing when not deprived. Healthy People and the Condition of Self-Actualization. Healthy people can accept their own human nature with all its shortcomings, discrepancies, and variations from the ideal. They accept themselves without chagrin or complaint, or even without thinking about the matter very much. They can take the foibles, sins, goods and evils of human nature in the same unquestioning spirit with which they accept the characteristics of nature. Their eyes see what is before them without being strained through spectacles of various sorts to distort or shape or color the reality (Bergson, 1944). What healthy people do feel guilty about are the discrepancies between what is and what might very well be or ought to be. They do not feel bad or guilty about: 1. Improbable shortcomings, e.g., laziness, thoughtlessness, loss of temper, hurting others; 2. Stubborn remnants of psychological ill health, e.g., prejudice, jealousy, envy; 3. Habits, which, though relatively independent of character structure, may yet be very strong, or 4. Shortcomings of the species or of the culture or of the group with which they identified themselves (Adler, 1939; Bergson, 1944; Horney, 1950). Self-actualizing people can all be described as relatively spontaneous in behavior and in their inner life, thoughts, and impulses. Their behavior is marked by simplicity and naturalness, and by a lack of artificiality or straining for effect. Their unconventionality is not superficial but essential and internal. Recognizing that the world of people in which they live could not understand or accept this, and since they wish no hurt to come to others, they will go through the ceremonies and rituals of convention with a good-humored shrug and with the best possible grace. It is not that they lack conventionality, but that it fits like a cloak that rests very lightly upon their shoulders and they can easily cast it aside thus not permitting it to hamper them. This inner attitude can be seen in moments when they become fully absorbed in something that is close to one of their main interests. They can easily drop off all sorts of rules of behavior to which at other times they conform. It is as if they make a conscious effort to be conventional, as if they were conventional voluntarily and by design. They are often the most ethical of people even though their ethics are not necessarily the same as those of the people around them. Since they are alienated from ordinary conventions and from ordinarily accepted hypocrisies, lies, and inconsistencies of social life, they sometimes feel like spies or aliens in a foreign land, and sometimes behave so. Sometimes they let themselves go deliberately, out of momentary irritation with customary rigidity or with conventional blindness. When trying to teach someone something, they may sometimes find emotions bubbling up from within them that are so pleasant or even ecstatic that it seems almost sacrilegious to suppress them. They are not anxious, guilty, or ashamed of the impression that they make on the onlooker. They claim that they usually behave in a conventional manner because no great issues are involved or because they know people will be hurt or embarrassed by any other kind of behavior. Their ease of penetration to reality, their closer approach to an animal-like or childlike acceptance and spontaneity imply a superior awareness of their own impulses, desires, opinions, and subjective reactions in general (Fromm, 1947; Rand, 1943; Reik, 1943). Fromm (1941) found that there was a profound difference between self-actualizing people and others; namely, that the motivational life of self-actualizing people is not only quantitatively but also qualitatively different from that of ordinary people. He constructed a different psychology of motivation for self-actualizing people, and called it metamotivation or growth motivation, rather than deficiency motivation. He found that they do not strive in the ordinary sense, but rather develop beyond the normal. They attempt to grow to perfection and to develop more and more fully in their own style. The motivation of ordinary men is a striving for the basic need gratifications that they lack. Self-actualizing people lack none of these gratifications, and yet they have impulses. They work, they try, and they are ambitious, even though in an unusual sense. For them, motivation is just character growth, character expression, maturation, and development, or self-actualization. Self-actualized people are generally focused on problems outside themselves. They are problem centered rather than ego centered. They generally are not problems for themselves and are not much concerned about themselves as contrasted with ordinary introspectiveness that is finds in insecure people. They customarily have some mission in life, some task to fulfill, some problem outside themselves which enlists much of their energies (Buhler & Mussarik, 1968; Frankl, 1969). They seem never to get so close to the trees that they cannot see the forest. They work within a framework of values that are broad and not petty, universal and not local, and view life in terms of a century rather than the moment. This impression of being above small things, of having a larger horizon, a wider breadth of vision, of living in the widest frame of reference is of the utmost social interpersonal importance. A unique characteristic of self-actualized people is that they can be solitary without harm to themselves and without discomfort. It seems true that for almost all that they positively like solitude and privacy to a definitely greater degree than the average person. They can remain above the battle, unruffled and undisturbed by that which produces turmoil in others. They retain their dignity even in undignified surroundings and situations. In general, they are more objective than average people. They possess the ability to concentrate to a greater degree than ordinary people. This intense concentration sometimes produces a by-product called absent- mindedness, and the ability to forget and to be oblivious of their surroundings. Physiologically, they sleep soundly, have an undisturbed appetite, are able to smile and laugh through a period of problems, worry, and responsibility. In their silent moments, they pray and are spiritually alive. Self-actualizing people do not need others in the ordinary sense of the word. Thus, it is easily interpreted by "normal" people as coldness, snobbishness, lack of affection, unfriendliness, or even hostility. They are autonomous, self-disciplined, deciding agents rather than pawns in the game of life. Self-actualizing people have more "free will" and are less "determined" than average people are. They are the leaders of the Democratic self- choice society because they are self-movers, self-deciders, self- choosers who make up their own minds without needing the support or the permission of others (Asch, 1956; McClelland, 1961; McClelland, 1964; McClelland & Winter, 1969). Since they are propelled by growth motivation rather than by deficiency motivation, self-actualizing people are not dependent for their main satisfactions on the real world, other people, the culture, or on extrinsic satisfactions. They are dependent for their own development and continued growth on their own potentialities and latent resources. Being independent of the environment means a relative stability in the face of hard knocks, blows, deprivations, frustrations, and set-backs. They maintain their relative serenity in the midst of circumstances that would drive other people to suicide. Deficiency-motivated people must have other people available, since most of their main need gratifications (love, safety, respect, prestige, belongingness) come only from other human beings. Growth- motivated people actually become hampered by other people. Their determinants for satisfaction and the good life are inner- individual and not social. They are strong enough to be independent of the opinions of other people, or even their affection. They value less the honors, rewards, status, popularity, prestige, and the love they can bestow, than self- development and inner growth (Huxley, 1955; Northrop, 1947; Rand, 1943; Rogers, 1961). Self-actualizing people possess the wonderful capacity to appreciate the basics of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy, however stale these experiences may become to others. Wilson (1969) called this, worship of the "newness of simple things." For such people, any sunset may be beautiful as the first one, any flower as breath-taking as another even after they have seen a million flowers. They remain convinced of their luck in marriage thirty years after their marriage ceremony. For such people, even the casual workday and moment-to-moment business can be thrilling. These intense feelings do not come all the time, but at the most unexpected moments. They may cross a river on the ferry ten times and on the eleventh crossing experience the feelings, reactions to beauty, and excitement as when they rode the ferry for the very first time (Eastman, 1928). It may be that this acute richness of subjective experience is an aspect of closeness of relationship to the concrete and fresh. Staleness of experience is a consequence of ticketing off a rich perception into one or another category as it proves to be no longer advantageous, or useful, or threatening, or otherwise, ego-involved (Bergson, 1944). Herzberg's (1966) studies of "hygiene" factors in industry, Wilson's observations on the St. Neot's margin (1967; 1969) and Maslow's (1965) study of "low grumbles, high grumbles, and metagrumbles" all show that life could be vastly improved if people could count their own blessings as self-actualizing people can and do, and if they can retain their constant sense of good fortune and gratitude for it. The subjective expressions that James (1943) called "mystic experiences" are common for self-actualized people. These are the same feelings of limitless horizons opening up to the vision, of being simultaneously more powerful, of the great ecstacy and wonder and awe, of the loss of time and space, and finally, the conviction that something extremely important and valuable has happened so that people are transformed and strengthened even in their daily life by such experiences. Many current psychologists call these "peak experiences." The acute mystic or peak experience is a tremendous intensification of any of those in which there is loss of self or transcendence of it like problem centering, intense concentration, mega-behavior and other intense sensuous experiences (Benedict, 1970). Nonspeaking self- actualizers tend to be practical, effective people, mesomorphs living in the world and doing very well in it. Peakers seem to live in the realm of Being; of poetry, esthetics; symbols; transcendence; "religion" of the mystical, personal, noninstitutional sort; and of end-experiences (Laski, 1962; Maslow, 1964; Maslow, 1968; Maslow, 1962, Maslow, 1969). Gemeinschaftsgefuhl, a word invented by Adler (1939) described the flavor of feelings for mankind expressed by self- actualizing people. They hold for human beings a deep feeling of identification, sympathy, and affection in spite of occasional anger, impatience, or disgust for certain human foibles. They possess a genuine desire to help the human race. They conduct their lives as if they were all members of a single family. Self-actualizing people are different from others in thought, impulse, behavior, and emotion. In basic ways, they are like aliens in a strange land. Few people understand them, however much they are like by others. They are often saddened, exasperated, and even enraged by the shortcomings of the average person. The knowledge that they can do many things better than the average person, that they can see things others cannot, that the truth is so clear to them and for most it is veiled and hidden, is what Adler called the "older-brotherly attitude." Self-actualizing people maintain deeper and more profound interpersonal relations than other adults. They are capable of more fusion, greater love, more perfect identification, more obliteration of the ego boundaries than other people would consider possible. A downside to this is that self-actualizing people have deep ties with few individuals. Their circle of friends is small. The ones that they love profoundly are few in number. They have an especially tender love for children and are easily touched by them. In a real sense, they have compassion for all mankind. This love is not indiscriminate. They can and do speak realistically and harshly of those who deserve it, and especially of those who are hypocritical, pretentious, pompous, or self-inflated. The briefest possible description is to say that their hostile reactions to others are deserved, and for the good of the person attacked or for someone else's good. Fromm (1964) maintained that hostility is not character based, but is reactive or situational. Self-actualized people are not susceptible to this human foible. In the deepest sense, self-actualizing people are democratic people. They are friendly with anyone of suitable character regardless of class, education, political belief, race, or color. They are often not even aware of these differences which are for the average person so obvious and important. They find it possible to learn from anybody who has something to teach them, no matter what other characteristics the others may have. In this learning relationship, they do not try to maintain any outward dignity or to maintain status or age prestige. They are quite aware of how little they know in comparison with what could be known and what is known by others. It is possible for them to be honestly respectful and even humble before people who can teach them something that they do not know or who have a skill they do not possess. Most profound, is their desire to give a certain amount of respect to any human being just because he is a human individual. They are more than less likely to counterattack against evil people and their behaviors. Lastly, they are far less ambivalent, confused, or weak-willed about their own anger than average people are (Fromm, 1964). In daily living, they demonstrate less chaos and confusion in knowing the difference between right and wrong. They are strongly ethical, and have definite moral standards. Their notions about right and wrong, good and evil, are often not conventional ones. Levy (1951) pointed out that a few centuries ago, these people would have been described as "men who walk in the path of God or as godly men." A few say that they believe in God, but describe this God more as a metaphysical concept than as a personal figure. Self-actualizing people behave as though means and ends are clearly distinguishable. Generally, they are fixed on ends. They make the situation more complex because they regard ends themselves as the many experiences and activities that they are. It is possible for them to make out of the most trivial and routine activity an intrinsically enjoyable game or dance or play. Wertheimer (1961) pointed out that most children are so creative that they can transform hackneyed routine, mechanical, and rote experiences as in experiments, transporting books from one set of shelves to another, into a structured and amusing game of a sort by doing this according to a certain system or with a certain rhythm. Self-actualized people possess a sense of humor that is not ordinary. They do not consider funny what the average person finds humorous. They do not laugh at others possibly hurting them, nor do they laugh at a smutty joke. They consider humor to be closely allied to philosophy, and generally poke fun at human beings at large when they are foolish, or forget their place in the universe as being abysmally insignificant. Lincoln's humor serves as an example for them in that his jokes never hurt anyone. They may be said to be less humorous than the average in the population. The average person might consider them to be rather on the sober or even serious side. Their humor can be pervasive, and includes the human situation, human pride, seriousness, busy-ness, bustle, ambition, striving and planning. This attitude rubs off on professional work itself, which in a certain sense is also play, and which, though taken seriously, is also taken lightly (Maslow, 1969). More than any other characteristic, self-actualized people are creative. There is no exception. Each one shows in one way or another a special kind of creativeness or originality or inventiveness. It is not the genius or special-talent creativeness of the Mozart type. Geniuses display a creativity that is not easily understood. The creativeness of self- actualized people seems most like the naive and universal creativeness of unspoiled children. Santayana (1946) called this the "second naivete." This creativeness does not appear in the usual forms of writing books, composing music, or producing artistic objects, but is rather much more humble. It is a special type of creativity, being an expression of a healthy personality and is projected out into the world in whatever activity the person engages in. They become creative shoemakers, carpenters, and clerks. This creativity is manifested in a greater freshness, penetration, and efficiency of perception than the average person. These people are less inhibited, constricted, bound, enculturated than their peers. Likewise, they are more spontaneous, natural, and human. If there were no choking forces in our society, we might expect that all human beings would demonstrate this special type of creativeness (Anderson, 1959; Maslow, 1958). Self-actualizing people are not well adjusted in the naive sense of approval of and identification with the culture. They get along with the culture in various ways, and all of them may be said to resist enculturation and maintain a certain inner detachment from the culture in which they are immersed (Maslow, 1968). Reisman (1950) pointed out their resistance to enculturation is a complex issue to unravel. He proposed the following notions as possible explanations for this phenomena: 1. All these people fall within the limits of apparent conventionality in choice of clothes, of language, of food, of ways of doing things in our culture. And yet they are not really conventional, certainly not in the fashionable, chic, or smart ways. 2. None of these people can be called authority rebels in the adolescent or irresponsible sense. They show no active impatience or moment-to-moment, chronic, long- term discontent with the culture or preoccupation with changing it quickly. They often show bursts of indignation with injustice. When quick change is possible or when resolution and courage are needed, it is present in these people. 3. An inner feeling of detachment from the culture is not necessarily conscious but is displayed by almost all, particularly in discussions of the American culture as a whole. They are certainly very different from the ordinary sort person who passively yields to cultural shaping displayed for instance by the ethnocentric subjects of the many studies of authoritarian personalities. Detachment from the culture is probably reflected in self-actualizing subjects' isolation from people and their liking for privacy, which has been described as less important than the average person's need for the familiar and customary. 4. They are autonomous, ruled by laws of their own character rather than by the rules of society. It is in this sense that they are not merely Americans, but to a greater degree than others, members at large of the human race (p. 33-34). Reisman asked this question: Is it possible to be a good or healthy man in an imperfect culture? He concluded, that yes, it was possible. These people manage to get along by a complex combination of inner autonomy and outer acceptance that is possible only so long as the culture remains tolerant of this kind of detached withholding from complete cultural identification. This is not ideal health. The imperfect society forces inhibitions and restraints on these people. Since few people can attain health in our culture, those who do attain it are lonely for their own kind (Dembo, 1961). Self-actualized people possess a wish for perfection and sometimes, their guilt or shame about shortcomings are projected upon various kinds of people from whom the average man demands much more than they themselves give. They are equipped with silly, wasteful, and thoughtless habits. They can be boring and irritating. They are not free from all superficial vanities, pride, partiality to their own productions, family, friends, and children. Temper outbursts are possible. They are also capable of an extraordinary and unexpected ruthlessness. Since they are very strong people, this makes it possible for them to display surgical coldness when this is called for beyond the power of the average man. In their concentration, in their fascinated interest, in their intense concentration on some phenomenon or question, they may become absent-minded or humorless and forget their ordinary social politeness. Even their kindness can lead them into mistakes. Finally, they are not free of guilt, anxiety, sadness, self-castigation, internal strife, and conflict. What Maslow (1970) concluded from this analysis was that "there are no perfect human beings. To avoid disillusionment with human nature, we must first give up our illusions about it" (p. 144). A firm foundation for a value system is automatically furnished to self-actualized people by their acceptance of the nature of the self, of human nature, of social life and the nature of physical reality. This foundation is supplied to all self-actualized people by their intrinsic dynamics. Among these are: 1. Their peculiar comfortable relationships with reality; 2. Their Gemeinschaftsgefuhl; 3. Their basically satisfied condition from which flow, as epiphenomena, various consequences of surplus, of wealth, overflowing abundance; 4. Their characteristically discriminating relations to means and ends (Maslow, 1957). The uppermost portion of the value system of the self- actualized person is entirely unique and character-structure expressive. Self-actualization is actualization of a self, and no two selves are altogether alike. There is only one Renoir, one Brahms, one Spinoza, one John Doe. Though self-actualized individuals have much in common, each is unmistakenly unique. They are more completely individual than any group yet described. They are closer to both humanhood and to their unique individuality. In conclusion, what has been considered in the past to be polarities or opposites or dichotomies were so only in less healthy people. In healthy people, these dichotomies were resolved, the polarities disappeared, and many opposites thought to be intrinsic merged with each other to form unities (Chenault, 1969). The dichotomy between selfishness and unselfishness disappears altogether in healthy people because every act is both selfish and unselfish (Maslow, 1964). They are simultaneously very spiritual and very pagan and sensual even to the point where sexuality becomes a path to the spiritual and "religious." Duty cannot be contrasted with pleasure nor work with play when duty is pleasure, when work is play, and the person doing his duty and being virtuous is seeking his pleasure and being happy. Healthy people are so different from average ones, not only in degree but in kind as well, that they generate two very different kinds of psychology. Maslow (1970) contended that "it becomes more and more clear that the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy, and the study of self- actualizing people must be the basis for a more universal science of psychology" (p. 180). Reik (1957) defined love as the absence of anxiety. This is seen with exceptional clearness in healthy individuals. They tend to be more spontaneous, less defensive, less role conscious and strive for intimate relationships. There is less of a tendency to put the best foot forward in a healthy love relationship. In self-actualizing people the quality of the love and sex satisfactions may both improve with the length of the relationship. Generally, self-actualizing love is in part the absence of defenses, and an increase in spontaneity and in honesty. The more a healthy person gets to know the person of the opposite sex, the better he or she will like what is seen. One of the deepest satisfactions coming from the healthy love relationship is that it permits the greatest spontaneity, the greatest naturalness, the greatest dropping of defenses and protection against threat. Rogers (1951) described this relationship in this way: "Love has here its deepest and most general meaning, and that is of being deeply understood and deeply accepted....We can love a person only to the extent that we are not threatened by him; we can love only if his reactions to us, or to those things which affect us, are understandable to us....Thus, if a person is hostile toward me, and I can see nothing in him at the moment except the hostility, I am quite sure that I will react in a defensive way to the hostility" (p. 159). Meninger (1942) described the reverse side of the coin. "Love is impaired less by the feeling that we are not appreciated than by a dread, more or less dimly felt by everyone, lest others see through our masks, the masks of repression that have been forced upon us by convention and culture. It is this that leads us to shun intimacy, to maintain friendships on a superficial level, to underestimate and fail to appreciate others lest they come to appreciate us too well" (p. 22). Self-actualized people were loved and were loving, and are loved and are loving. Psychological health comes from being loved rather than from being deprived of love. They now love and are loved. They have the power to love and the ability to be loved. Though Meninger (1942) made the very acute statement that human beings want to love each other but just don't know how to go about it, this is not true for healthy people. They know how to love, and can do so freely and easily and naturally and without getting wound up in conflicts or threats or inhibitions. Sex and love are more perfectly fused with each other in healthy people. Although it may be true that these are separate concepts, and although no purpose would be served in confusing them with each other unnecessarily, still it must be reported that in the life of healthy people, they tend to become joined and merged with each other (Reik, 1957; Suttie, 1935). In self-actualizing people the orgasm is simultaneously more important and less important than in average people. It is often a profound and almost mystical experience, and yet the absence of sexuality is more easily tolerated by these people. This is not a paradox or contradiction. It follows from dynamic motivation theory. Loving at a higher need level makes the lower needs and their frustrations and satisfactions less important, less central, more easily neglected. Schwartz (1951) wrote, "Although totally different in nature, sexual impulse, and love are dependent on and complementary to each other. In a perfect, fully mature human being only this inseparable fusion of sexual impulse and love exists. This is the fundamental principle of any psychology of sex. If there be anyone capable of experiencing the purely physical gratification of sex, he or she is sexually subnormal (immature or otherwise)" (p. 21). Sexual pleasure in self-actualized people may be very intense or not intense at all. This conflicts with the romantic attitude that love is divine rapture, a transport from the diurnal, a mystical experience. These people do not live on the heights, but usually at a more average level of intensity. Self- actualizing love demonstrates many of the characteristics of self-actualization in general. The acceptance of sexuality is the main basis for the intense enjoyment that these people find in it (Maslow, 1970). This notion supports D'Arcy's (1947) thesis that erotic and agapean love are basically different but merge in the best people, those that are self-actualized. In healthy people the dichotomies are resolved, and the individual becomes both active and passive, both selfish and unselfish, both masculine and feminine, both self-interested and self-effacing. D'Arcy acknowledged that this occurs though with extreme rarity. How does self-actualized love manifest itself in the loving couple? The ordinary way in which this need shows itself to the eyes of the world is in terms of taking on responsibility, of care, of concern for another person. The loving husband can get as much pleasure from his wife's pleasure as he can from his own. The loving mother would rather cough herself than hear her child cough. An illness in the good, self-actualized loving couple, is an illness of the couple rather than a misfortune of one of the pair. If the relationship is a very good one, the sick or weak one can throw himself upon the care of the protectiveness of the loving partner with the same abandonment and lack of threat and lack of self-consciousness that a child shows in falling asleep in his parent's arms. In less healthy couples, the illness strains the relationship (Maslow, 1970). Overstreet (1949) stated, "The love of a person implies, not the possession of that person, but the affirmation of that person. It means granting him, gladly, the full right of his unique manhood" (p. 103). The self-actualized man or woman does not pretend to own the other person. The converse is quite true. To own would deny the individual his or her right to be, to become self-actualized. There is no need to own someone else. This would imply a prepotent need that was not fulfilled. Self- actualized love is the highest form of love because it is the free-flowing giving of one person to another without reservations, without pretense, without objections. In this type of relationship, one individual affirms the others individuality, the eagerness for a growth experience for the other, the essential respect for his or her individuality and unique personality. The self-actualizing person will not casually use another or control him or disregard his wishes (p. 104). Admiration and love in self-actualizing people are most of the time undemanding of rewards and conducive to no purposes, and are experienced in Northrop's (1946) Eastern sense, concretely and richly, for their own sake (Allport, 1961). It seems healthy people fall in love the way one reacts to one's first appreciative perception of great music: one is awed and overwhelmed by it and loves it. Horney (1950) defined unerotic love in terms of regarding others as ends in themselves rather than means to ends. The consequent reaction is to enjoy, to admire, to be delighted, to contemplate and appreciate, rather than to use. St. Bernard said it very aptly: "Love seeks no cause beyond itself and no limit; it is its own fruit, its own enjoyment. I love because I love; I love in order that I may love..." (Allport, 1947). Horney (1950) maintained that self-actualizers have no serious deficiencies to make up and must be looked upon as freed for growth, maturation, development, for the fulfillment and actualization of their highest individual and species nature. A paradox seems to be created by the fact that self-actualized people maintain a degree of individuality, of detachment, and autonomy that seems at first glance to be incompatible with the kind of identification and love described above. The fact is that self-actualizing people are simultaneously the most individualistic and the most altruistic and social and loving of all human beings. They can be extremely close to one another and yet go apart when necessary without collapsing. They do not cling to one another. Throughout the most intense and ecstatic love affairs, these people remain themselves, and remain ultimately, the masters of their own souls. They live by their own standards even though enjoying each other intensely (p. 154). Cognition and Self-Actualization. Habits are at once necessary and dangerous, useful and harmful. They save us time, effort, and thought, but at a big expense. They are the prime weapon of adaptation and yet they hinder adaptation. They are problem solutions and yet in the long run they are the antonyms of fresh, creative thinking, of solutions to new problems. They tend to replace in a lazy way, true, fresh, attending, perceiving, learning, and thinking (Argyris, 1962). The four factors mentioned--natural laziness or simian reluctance, fondness for assimilating the new to the old, tradition and success--have contributed to keep our thought undeveloped. The periods of intense intellectual ferment and tradition-shattering thinking have been extraordinarily rare within the historical period. The thinking of Plato and Aristotle sufficed from the Greek times to the Renaissance, and the thinking of Galileo and Descartes at the Renaissance furnished natural science with a stock of fundamental notions that have needed little revision until recent times. Thus, during the most of the intervening times, thinking has chiefly been a process of working out bad habits (p. 32). Self-actualized people do not use habits because they are lazy. Their use is to simplify life so that more important activities can be undertaken. When a person cannot find his socks and shoes because they are hidden someplace in the room, it behooves him to establish some habits which will make life more efficient. This habit-making activity can be as simple as this, or more elaborate, depending upon the action the person needs to perform. Self-actualized people avoid habitualizing their thinking in order to avoid placing themselves into a closet which doesn't have any light in it and eventually no way out. They prefer to leave their lives, their activities, their cognitive processes open-ended (deBono, 1985). Thinking is the technique through which human beings create something new. This implies that thinking must be revolutionary in the sense of occasionally conflicting with what has already been concluded. If it conflicts with the intellectual "status quo" it is then the opposite of habit, or memory, or what the person has already learned. By definition, it contradicts what habits produce for us; namely, orderliness, efficiency, and maintenance of the status quo. True, free thinking breaks our habits, our patterns of living, our cultural taboos. Creative thinking is exemplified by boldness, daring, and courage. No creative thinking activity of mankind ever involved the warming up of yesterday's leftovers (deBono, 1987). There is then a certain contrast between classifying experiences and appreciating them, between using them and enjoying them, between cognizing them in one way and creatively using them in another. All writers on the mystic and religious experiences emphasized this as few technical psychologists have. Huxley (1944) said: "As the individual grows up, his knowledge becomes more conceptual and systematic in form, and its factual, utilitarian content is enormously increased. But these gains are offset by a certain deterioration in the quality of immediate apprehension, a blunting and a loss of intuitive power" (p. vii). Unless the individual can break away from fossilizing his thinking, he will be subject to: 1) having only stereotypical problems or in failing to perceive new ones; (2) using only stereotyped and rote habits and techniques for solving these problems; (3) having in advance of all life's problems, sets of ready made, cut and dried solutions and answers. These three tendencies add up to an almost complete guarantee against creativeness and inventiveness (Argyris, 1965). "The essence of life," he wrote, "is to be found in the frustrations of established order. The Universe refuses the deadening influence of complete conformity. And yet in its refusal, it passes toward novel order as a primary requisite for important experience. We have to explain the aim at forms of order, and the aim at novelty of order, and the measure of success, and the measure of failure" (p. 119). This is not to say that holistic thinking is not used in creative thinking. It is, and the point is that it is used only in a different way. This results in intrinsic learning and the person becomes the person he or she is to become potentially (Maslow, 1946). The bold thinker must be able to break the "Einstellung," to be able to be free of the past, of habit, expectation, learning, custom, and convention, and to be free of anxiety whenever venturing out of the safe and familiar harbor (Rand, 1943). Self-actualized people avoid such rubrics, such stereotypical thinking. Their desire is to be free of convention, of the common, ordinary, mundane, rhetorically backward. They choose to live on the edge, making up the rules of life as they go along. As Picasso said, "Every act of creation is first, an act of destruction." It is not that they want to "burn the mother down," but they want to experience some new and wondrous ways of living their lives. They maximize their potential by asking, "What is it that I want to achieve? How can I achieve it?" Then they go about the business of achieving what they want to without worrying about the conventions of society. This is not a simple undertaking. All civilizations, societies, communities, families, and friends, conspire to stop this process. What appears to be new, exciting, and different, frightens even the most foresighted individuals in society. The die is cast. The battle lines are often drawn. If the person wants to pursue his or her self-actualization, then there will need to be a break with tradition, habit, habitualizing thinking. People who walk beyond the sidewalk of society without regard for conventional wisdom and thinking and can accept the "slings and arrows" of outrageous public opinion, will succeed in their own unique and inimitable way. Their motivation is to fulfill the highest of human needs. They refuse to accept less because to do so is to limit them. Contrary to common sense, they function beyond the realm of what is common, maintaining that common sense is not very common for if it were so prevalent, it would be possessed by more people. They eventually succeed in their own way, much like James Joyce (1950) did when he completed Finnegan's Wake, a novel few understood but all admired. They speak poetically of the future, and live their daily lives walking to the beat of pentameters and not hollow footsteps. Theirs is a noble, yet divergent existence beyond reasonability. Occidental Purposefulness and Oriental Beingness. Western culture rests on the Judao-Christian theology. The United States particularly is dominated by the Puritan Work Ethic which stresses work, struggle, striving, soberness, earnestness, and above all, purposefulness (Allport, 1933). American psychology is overpragmatic, over-Puritan, and overpurposeful. From the point of view of values, there is a preoccupation with means to the exclusion of concern with ends. The culmination of this perspective may be found in explicit form in Dewey's Theory of Valuation (1939) in which the possibility of ends is in effect denied; they are themselves only means to other means, to other means..., etc. In his later writings, Dewey did accept the existence of ends. Causality theory is a suitable tool for the life of achievement and technological accomplishment, but is completely useless for the life that stresses intensive perfection, aesthetic experience, contemplation of ultimate values, enjoyment, meditativeness, connoisseurship, and self- actualization. Motivation is not synonymous with determination. Although it was Freud (1920) who originally confounded the two concepts, his mistake has been so widely followed by psychoanalysts that they now automatically look for motives only no matter what change occurs. The study of self-actualizing people makes it clear there is a necessity for distinguishing between their motivational life and that of more average people. They clearly live a self- fulfilling, value-enjoying, self-perfecting life, rather than seeking for the basic need gratification that the average citizen lacks. Self-actualization is the coming to full development and actuality of the potentialities of the organism, and is more akin to growth and maturation than it is to habit formation or association via reward. Behavior is means rather than end. Behavior gets things done in the world. Ends are frequently subjective experiences of satisfaction. Without reference to the fact that most instrumental behaviors have human worth only because they bring about these subjective end-experiences, the behavior itself often becomes scientifically senseless (Young, 1941). Behaviorism may be understood better if it is seen as one cultural expression of the general Puritan striving and achieving point of view already mentioned. This implies that to its various other failings must now be added ethnocentrism. The creation of art may be relatively motivated when its seeks to communicate, to arouse emotion, to show, to do something to another person, or it may be relatively unmotivated when it is expressive rather than communicative, intrapersonal rather than interpersonal. What is important for the sophisticated person is the question of the aesthetic experience. It is so rich and valuable an experience for so many people that they will simply scorn or sneer at any psychological that denies or neglects it. Even the aesthetic perception may be seen as relatively unmotivated by comparison with ordinary cognitions. A useful jumping-off point for thinking about just being, is the analysis of the concept of waiting. For instance, the cat in the sun does not wait any more than a tree waits. Waiting implies wasted, unappreciated time that is empty of significance for the organism. It is a by-product of a too exclusively means- oriented attitude toward life. It is seen as a stupid, inefficient, wasteful response. Travel is an excellent example of the way in which a piece of time can be either enjoyed as an end experience or completely wasted. Education is another instance, as are interpersonal relations in general. There is an old Taoist belief that says, "Sit still long enough in one place and the whole world will pass you by." Imagine the Average American standing still long enough to even let his family pass him by. No, we are not prone to standing, sitting, or even walking slowly from one point to another. Our crowded freeways are an example of this (Ironically, the question is, why do we call them freeways?). For the use-oriented, purposeful, need-reducing kind of person time is wasted that achieves nothing and serves no purpose. In Tao belief, "Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time." And, "Some things that are not necessary may yet be essential." An excellent illustration of the way American culture is unable to take its end experiences straight may be seen in strolling, canoeing, golfing, and other pastimes. These activities are extolled because they get people into the open, close to nature, out into the sunshine, or into beautiful surroundings. In essence, these are ways in which what should be unmotivated end activities and end experiences are thrown into a purposeful, achieving, pragmatic framework in order to appease the Occidental conscience. Imagine any ardent golfer not keeping score or talking about his round after it is over. He will replay the entire experience, analyze every shot, and delimit the game into a scientific exercise. This is the American way. It is also anti-self-actualizing. The mystic experience, the experience of awe, of delight, of wonder, of mystery, and of admiration are all subjectively rich experiences of the same passive, aesthetic ones that beat their way in upon the organism, flooding it as music does. These are end experiences, ultimate rather than instrumental, changing the outside world not at all. All this is true for leisure as well if properly defined (Pieper, 1964). As for the basic life pleasure, any ailing or dyspeptic or nauseated person can testify to the reality of that most ultimate biological pleasure that is an automatic, unsought for, unmotivated by-product of being, fully alive and healthy. In self-actualized people, the truth is simply perceived without effort, rather than struggled for or sought after. The fact that in most experiments, motivation of some sort is necessary before problems can be solved. This might be a function of the triviality or arbitrariness of the problems rather than proof that all thinking must be motivated. In the good life lived by healthy people, thinking, like perceiving, is spontaneous and passive reception or production. It is unmotivated, effortless. It is a happy expression of the nature and existence of the organism. They let things happen rather than make them happen, like the flower makes perfume or the tree makes an apple. Normally Healthy People and Their Values. Drucker (1939) presented the thesis that western Europe, since the beginning of Christianity, was dominated by four successive ideas regarding how individual happiness and welfare were achieved. Each of these held up a certain type of man as ideal, and assumed that if only this ideal were followed, individual happiness and welfare would result. 1. Middle Ages: Spiritual man. 2. Renaissance: Intellectual man. 3. Capitalism: Economic man. 4. Fascism: Heroic man. Drucker maintained that all these concepts have failed and are now giving way to the fifth concept, psychologically, healthy, or "natural" man. What will this new man, woman, child be like? The following describe this individual: 1. Humans possess an essentially, individual nature; some skeleton of psychological structure that may be treated analogously with physical nature; some needs, capacities, and tendencies that are in part genetically based; some basic needs are on their face good or neutral rather than evil. 2. Full health and normal, desirable development consist in actualizing this nature, in fulfilling these potentialities, and in developing into maturity along the lines that this hidden, covert, dimly seen essential nature dictates, growing from within rather than being shaped from without. 3. Most psychopathology results from the denial or the frustration or the twisting of man's essential nature (p. 124). Drucker's contention was similar to Aristotle's that the "good life consists in living in accordance with the true nature of man." Maslow (1970) contended that Aristotle did not know enough about the true nature of man to propose this. All that Aristotle could do in describing this essential nature was to look around him and observe people, and build a picture of the good man in his own culture and in that particular period of time. His work lacked external validity. The essential difference between the Aristotelian Theory and the modern conceptions of Goldstein, Fromm, Horney, Rogers, Buhler, May, Grof, Dabrowski, Murray, Sutich, Bugental, Allport, Frankl, Murphy, Maslow, Robbins, and others is that we can seen not only the surface, not only the actualities, but the potentialities as well. Modern psychologists can better understand what lies hidden in man, what lies suppressed, neglected, and unseen. They can further judge the possibilities, the potentialities, and the highest possible achievements available to humans. Maslow (1970) concluded that, "history has practically always sold human nature short" (p. 271). Current thinking regarding normal human development accepts that self-realization cannot be attained by intellect or rationality alone. Aristotle maintained that reason the highest quality in humans. Now, rationality, along with emotionality, and the conative, wishing, and driving side of human nature are all present in the healthy, normal, human being. Fromm (1947) said, "Reason has become a guard set to watch its prisoner, human nature, and thus both sides of human nature, reason, and emotion, were crippled as captives." The realization of self occurs with acts of thinking as well as the active expression of emotional and instinctual capacities as well. Maslow (1970) contended: WHAT WE CAN BE = WHAT WE OUGHT TO BE. To be empirical, the "ought" is out of place. What ought a cat to become? The answer to this question is ludicrous for the cat. Likewise, it is for the human being as well. In a single moment of time, it is possible to distinguish between what a human is and what he or she could be. Humans are comprised of layers of behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, thoughts, emotions, and all coexist, even though they may contradict each other at any given time. Understanding and accepting that an individual may behave badly and may yet be loving deep down inside provides the individual with hope for improvement in the species of mankind. Man's inherent design or inner nature are his anatomy and physiology, and also his most basic needs, yearnings, and psychological capacities. This inner nature is usually not obvious and easily seen, but is hidden and unfilled, weak rather than strong. Maslow (1970) maintained that four separate lines of evidence existed to support this position. 1. Frustration of these needs and capacities is psychopathogenic; 2. Their gratification is healthy-character-fostering as neurotic need gratifications are not; 3. They spontaneously show themselves as choices under free conditions; 4. They can be directly studied in relatively healthy people (p. 274). Giving gratification to neurotic needs does not breed health as does gratification of basic inherent needs. Giving a power hungry neurotic power seeker all the power he wants does not make him less neurotic, nor is it possible to satisfy his neurotic need for power. However much he is fed he still remains hungry. It makes little difference for ultimate health whether a neurotic need be gratified or frustrated. It is different with basic needs like safety and love. Their gratification breeds health, their satiation is possible, their frustration does breed sickness (Maslow, 1965). Practically all healthy adults have led loving lives. They love and are loved. As adults, they are now loving people. Finally, they need love less than the average person, apparently because they already have enough. Just as an organism needs salt in order to attain health and avoid illness, so to does it need love for the same reason. The organism is so designed that it needs salt, and love, in the same way an automobile is designed that it needs gas and oil (p. 296). Healthy adults, in a psychological utopia, would tend to be more Taoistic, nonintrusive, and basic need-gratifying. They would be far less controlling, violent, contemptuous, or overbearing than humans are in general. Under such conditions, the deepest layers of human nature would emerge with ease. Inquiry into the effect of culture on health indicates that individuals can be healthier than the culture in which they grow and live. This is possible because of the ability of the healthy human being to be detached from his or her surroundings, which is to say that humans live by inner laws rather than by outer pressures (p. 298). Healthy individuals are not usually externally visible. They are not marked off by unusual clothes, or manners, or behavior. It is an inner freedom that they have. They are independent of the approval and disapproval from other people, and seek self-approval instead. Tolerance and freedom of taste and opinion seem to be the key necessities (p. 280). The neglect of higher needs and neglect of the differences between lower and higher needs dooms people to disappointment when wanting continues even after a need is gratified. In the healthy person, gratification produces no cessation of desire, but after a temporary period of contentment, substitution of higher desires and higher frustration levels along with the same old restlessness and dissatisfaction. Sex is customarily discussed as if it were a problem. The preoccupation with the dangers of sex has obscured the obvious that it can be or should be a very enjoyable pastime and possibly also very profoundly therapeutic and educational one (p. 286). Thinking in the healthiest people is not of the Dewey type, stimulated by some upsetting problem or nuisance, and disappearing when the problem is solved. It is spontaneous, sportive, and pleasurable, and is often emitted or produced without effort. Thinking is not always directed, organized, motivated, or goal-bent. Fantasy, dreaming, symbolism, unconscious thinking, infantile, emotional, thinking, psychoanalytic free association, are all productive in their own way. Healthy people come to many of their conclusions and decisions with the aid of their own innate common sense. The behavior of a healthy person is less determined by anxiety, fear, insecurity, guilt, shame, and more by truth, logic, justice, reality, fairness, fitness, beauty, rightness, and morals. The subject for a positive psychology is the study of psychological health, aesthetic health, value health, physical health, and the like. What produces the socially desirable characteristics of kindliness, social conscience, helpfulness, neighborliness, identification, tolerance, friendliness, desire for justice, righteous indignation? The taste, values, attitudes, and the choices of self-actualizing people are to a great extent on an intrinsic and reality-determined basis, rather than on a relative and extrinsic basis. They live within stable system of values and not a robot world of limited values or none at all. Frustration level and frustration tolerance may be higher in self-actualized people (p. 293). Maslow prompted psychologists in the last half of the 20th Century to consider new and better ways to view human beings, and especially, human motivation. His hierarchy is well-known. People in casual conversation talk about fulfilling their needs, and becoming self-actualized. Just as Freud's work precipitated a flurry of work by his followers, Maslow's hypotheses also caused psychologists to use his work as a springboard to new and unique explanations for what motivates people. But unlike Freud, his work created the proliferation of self-help programs that sprung up in the past thirty years. What made his work exciting to many followers was his emphasis on the positive, forward- thinking approach to viewing human beings. He eschewed neuroses, and promoted healthy living, healthy human behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs. Up until Darwin, the major forces thought to cause behavioral arousal, direction, and persistence were seen to be physical for the animal and both physical and spiritual for the human being. This division stemmed from a number of philosophical and theological considerations developed over a period of more than two thousand years. The understanding of the motivational processes of animals could be done in a mechanistic fashion. The motivational process of the human was controlled by his physiological needs and desires, his knowledge, and his will. The conscious, human will served to balance and control gluttonous, physical, and sexual desires of the body. Maslow's contribution to the inquiry into what motivates human beings was moving away from animal experimentation and moving toward the observation of healthy, self-actualized individuals in an attempt to observe directly what characteristics make them so unique. He made startling discoveries that made the world of psychology and sociology dig deeper into the nature of man and his motives. Until his theories were published in 1954, most motivational theories were limited to causal relationships with little validity in the real world. Maslow admitted that his work lacked some clinical and experimental validity, and yet he did not foresee any difficulty in translating his theories. More research needs to be conducted into Maslow's theories in order to further validate them.