Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionIII. Humanistic/Existential
Theories- Maslow: Holistic
Dynamic Theory
(^290) © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2009
of all one’s potential, and a desire to become creative in the full sense of the word
(Maslow, 1970). People who have reached the level of self-actualization become
fully human, satisfying needs that others merely glimpse or never view at all.
They are natural in the same sense that animals and infants are natural; that is, they
express their basic human needs and do not allow them to be suppressed by
culture.
Self-actualizing people maintain their feelings of self-esteem even when
scorned, rejected, and dismissed by other people. In other words, self-actualizers
are not dependent on the satisfaction of either love or esteem needs; they become
independent from the lower level needs that gave them birth. (We present a
more complete sketch of self-actualizing people in the section titled Self-
Actualization.)
In addition to these five conative needs, Maslow identified three other cate-
gories of needs—aesthetic, cognitive,and neurotic.The satisfaction of aesthetic and
cognitive needs is consistent with psychological health, whereas the deprivation of
these two needs results in pathology. Neurotic needs, however, lead to pathology
whether or not they are satisfied.
Aesthetic Needs
Unlike conative needs, aesthetic needsare not universal, but at least some people in
every culture seem to be motivated by the need for beauty and aesthetically pleasing
experiences (Maslow, 1967). From the days of the cave dwellers down to the present
time, some people have produced art for art’s sake.
People with strong aesthetic needs desire beautiful and orderly surroundings,
and when these needs are not met, they become sick in the same way that they be-
come sick when their conative needs are frustrated. People prefer beauty to ugliness,
and they may even become physically and spiritually ill when forced to live in
squalid, disorderly environments (Maslow, 1970).
Cognitive Needs
Most people have a desire to know, to solve mysteries, to understand, and to be cu-
rious. Maslow (1970) called these desires cognitive needs.When cognitive needs are
blocked, all needs on Maslow’s hierarchy are threatened; that is, knowledge is nec-
essary to satisfy each of the five conative needs. People can gratify their physiolog-
ical needs by knowing how to secure food, safety needs by knowing how to build a
shelter, love needs by knowing how to relate to people, esteem needs by knowing
how to acquire some level of self-confidence, and self-actualization by fully using
their cognitive potential.
Maslow (1968b, 1970) believed that healthy people desire to know more, to
theorize, to test hypotheses, to uncover mysteries, or to find out how something
works just for the satisfaction of knowing. However, people who have not satisfied
their cognitive needs, who have been consistently lied to, have had their curiosity sti-
fled, or have been denied information, become pathological, a pathology that takes
the form of skepticism, disillusionment, and cynicism.
284 Part III Humanistic/Existential Theories