Abraham Maslow’s Theory of Personality

Throughout the history of psychology, many psychologists have formulated theories of personality. One of the well-known is Abraham Maslow, along with Carl Rogers, for being the greatest exponents of what is known as the third force of psychology, humanism. This current emerged in contrast to Psychoanalysis and Behaviorism.

Unlike these schools, humanism sees the person from a holistic and positive vision, where the center of attention is the subjective experience of the subject. People are active beings who have the capacity to develop, and their basic instinct and dignity reside in the confidence they have in themselves.

Who was Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow was an American psychologist who was born in Brooklyn (New York) on April 1, 1908 Her parents were non-Orthodox Jews from Russia who came to the land of opportunity in hopes of achieving a better future for their children. Abraham Maslow was never a very sociable guy, and since he was a child, he took refuge in books.

Before becoming interested in psychology, he first studied law at the City College of New York (CCNY). After marrying Berta Goodman, his older cousin, he moved to Wisconsin to attend college there. It was here that he began studying psychology. He worked with Harry Harlow, famous for his experiments with baby monkeys and attachment behavior. After graduating and earning his doctorate in this discipline, he returned to New York to work with EL Thorndike at Columbia University, where he became interested in research into human sexuality. In this period of his life, he began teaching at Brooklyn College and came into contact with many European psychologists who came to the United States, for example, Adler or Fromm.

Carl Rogers’ humanistic theory

Humanistic psychology is, without a doubt, one of the most important currents of thought in psychology. But to know what it is about, it is necessary to know the work of another great figure of this school. It is difficult to understand humanism without Rogers and Maslow. Therefore, before delving into Maslow’s theoretical proposals, let’s delve into Carl Rogers’ theory.

If Freudian psychoanalysis saw the person from their problematic behaviors and behaviorism visualized people as passive beings, that is, they did not have many options to influence the environment. The vision of Carl Rogers and humanism, on the other hand, was totally different, because the human being is seen as an active individual and owner of his own realization. For Rogers, a person who pays attention to the organic appraisal process is a fully functional or self-actualized person.

Rogers emphasizes the freedom of individuals when it comes to taking the direction of their lives According to him, people’s personalities can be analyzed according to how they approach or distance themselves from what is considered a highly functional individual.

The person who is fully functional, that is, healthier, when he or she has a series of characteristics. They are the following:

You can delve deeper into Rogers’ ideas in this article: ”The Theory of Personality proposed by Carl Rogers”

Maslow’s theory of personality

Maslow adds his concept of needs to Rogers’ theory. This psychologist’s theory revolves around two fundamental aspects: our needs and our experiences In other words, what motivates us and what we seek throughout life and what happens to us on this path, what we are experiencing. This is where our personality is formed. In fact, Maslow is considered one of the great motivation theorists.

Maslow’s theory of personality has two levels. One biological, the needs that we all have and another more personal, which are those needs that are the result of our desires and the experiences that we live.

Definitely, Maslow is associated with the concept of self-realization, because in his theory he talks about the needs that people have to develop ourselves, to seek our maximum potential. And, according to this, people have an innate desire to self-actualize, to be what they want to be, and they have the ability to pursue their goals autonomously and freely.

In a way, the way in which an individual approaches their self-realization will correspond to the type of personality they manifest in their daily lives. This implies that for Maslow personality is related to motivational aspects that have to do with the objectives and situations that each human being experiences; It is not something static that remains inside people’s heads and manifests itself unidirectionally, from the inside out, as could be criticized by some reductionist and deterministic conceptions of this psychological phenomenon.

The implications of this are clear: to study personality, one must also know the context in which people live and the way in which it responds to the motivational needs of individuals. Simply focus on administering multiple tests to obtain a score does not give us an accurate view of this, since it is based on a bias when considering that personality is what can be captured by these data collection tests. This is a point of view similar to that applied to the field of mental abilities by psychologists such as Howard Gardner and Robert J. Sternberg, critics of the psychometric conception of intelligence.

The self-actualized personality

Maslow thinks that achieving the needs of self-actualization is in everyone’s hands, however, few people achieve it. People who manage to satisfy their self-actualization needs are self-actualized people Now, Maslow states that less than 1% of the population belongs to this class of individuals.

Self-actualized people are characterized because:

If you want to know more about this type of people, you can read our article:

The theory of the pyramid of human needs

Maslow is famous for his theory of the Pyramid of Needs because, according to him, The needs follow a hierarchy, from the most basic to the most complex, and its pyramid is built by five levels

At the base of this figure are the first ones and at the highest part the second ones. From bottom to top these are the different levels of needs:

The needs must be met to be able to aspire to the higher level. For example, if we do not have our physiological needs covered, we cannot aspire to our affiliation needs. At the highest level are the needs for self-actualization. It is this hierarchy that, according to Maslow, marked the way in which the personality adapts to circumstances, depending on each situation experienced. It is, in short, a conception of personality that covers very extensive psychological aspects and goes beyond the psychometric approach that dominated in his time.

• You can learn more about the theory of human needs in our post: “Maslow’s Pyramid: the hierarchy of human needs”