Theories of Personality 9th Edition

270 Part III Humanistic/Existential Theories

satisfaction of higher level needs is more subjectively desirable to those people

who have experienced both higher and lower level needs. In other words, a person

who has reached the level of self-actualization would have no motivation to return

to a lower stage of development (Maslow, 1970).

Self-Actualization

Maslow’s ideas on self-actualization began soon after he received his PhD, when

he became puzzled about why two of his teachers in New York City—anthropologist

Ruth Benedict and psychologist Max Wertheimer—were so different from average

people. To Maslow, these two people represented the highest level of human devel-

opment, and he called this level “self-actualization.”

Maslow’s Quest for the Self-Actualizing Person

What traits made Wertheimer and Benedict so special? To answer this question,

Maslow began to take notes on these two people; and he hoped to find others whom

he could call a “Good Human Being.” However, he had trouble finding them. The

young students in his classes were willing volunteers, but none of them seemed to

match Wertheimer and Benedict as Good Human Beings, causing Maslow to won-

der if 20-year-old college students could be Good Human Beings (Hoffman, 1988).

Maslow found a number of older

people who seemed to have some of

the characteristics for which he was

searching, but when he interviewed

these people to learn what made them

special, he was almost always disap-

pointed. Typically, he found them to

be “well-adjusted... but they have no

flame, spark, excitement, good dedica-

tion, feeling of responsibility” (Lowry,

1973, p. 87). Maslow was forced to

conclude that emotional security and

good adjustment were not dependable

predictors of a Good Human Being.

Maslow faced additional handi-

caps in his quest for whom he now

called the “self-actualizing person.”

First, he was trying to find a personal-

ity syndrome that had never been

clearly identified. Second, many of the

people he believed to be self-actualiz-

ing refused to participate in his search.

They weren’t much interested in what

Professor Maslow was trying to do.

Maslow (1968a) later commented that

not one single person he identified as

Jane Addams was an activist and social worker

who founded the profession of social work. She

won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, becoming

the first American woman to win a Nobel Prize.

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