tic psychologists, and argues instead for a
complete surrender model of love. I find
both of these things highly problematic, and
even potentially dangerous.
Letʼs start with the first point, about the
misrepresentation of Maslowʼs hierarchy of
needs. The past few years it has been pure
intrinsic joy to attempt to read everything—
published or unpublished—that was writ-
ten by the humanistic psychologists. I read
over 1,000 pages of Maslowʼs personal jour-
nal, as well as have visited library archives
looking at unpublished notes, correspon-
dences, and the like. I would even go so far
to say that I feel a deep friendship with
Maslow, even though I fully recognize itʼs
not a very symmetrical relationship.
Itʼs very clear, especially in his later writ-
ings, that Maslow strongly believed in the
importance of transcending oneʼs self and
finding oneʼs unique purpose that best
helps others. Hereʼs the truth about what
Maslow actually thought about self-actual-
ization, and then later in his life what he
actually thought about the importance of
self-transcendence. As weʼll see, both
self-actualization and self-transcendence
are not at odds with each other, but they
actually need each other.
Self-Actualization
In an unpublished essay written in October
1966 called “Critique of Self-Actualization
Theory,” Maslow attempted to make hu-
manistic psychologyʼs tacit assumptions
explicit. Among various explicit axioms of
self-actualization, he noted that:“A[n] assumption of self-actual-
ization theory is that it very strongly re-
quires a pluralism of individual differ-
ences .... Such a true acceptance of indi-
vidual differences has several key
implications that should be stated brief-
ly ... it means that we try to make a rose
BETTMANNGETTY IMAGESAbraham Maslow, creator of the
famous hierarchy of human needs