P2AP3* - What they say 1.1(Abraham Maslow**)

 NEED TO KNOW

 

The word psychology literally means, "study of the soul"

 

If we look into the history of psychology it begins with structuralism, functionalism and graduates to the more familiar psychoanalysis, behaviorism, humanism and then gestalt, extensivism and Cognitivism. Hmmm...dont think i am getting anywhere with that.

 

We have to start somewhere...well, most things start with what the humans call "need". To most psychologists, need is a psychological feature that arouses an organism to action toward a goal, giving purpose and direction to behavior.

 

According to Abraham Maslow, needs are classified as physiologial, safety and social, love and belongingness, self-esteem and finally self actualisation. He says that on the satisfaction of one need(starting from the base of the pyramid), the next need arises and so on.

 

Long long ago, humans lived in communities where satisfation of needs were taken care of by the community as a whole; food, shelter, safety et al...were for everyone, and everyone worked in unison for the same.

 

As times changed and populations grew, it became far more difficult to manage such a feat. Large families called joint families emerged, they stayed together, had their own businesses, which were mostly ancestoral that the generations passed on. As people grew older they passed on the responsibilities of taking care of the family to the younger generations and went on to satisfy their esteem and self actualisation needs...which probably included service to man and to god.

 

Joint families later on disintegrated into what the humans now call nuclear families.  Parents who have strived hard even for the basic needs, do not want their children to go through the same. They work hard most of the time to provide for their children, what they have had to work for. In the process, the physiological needs and general safety needs are satisfied.

 

Festivals, vacations, weekend family outings, occassions, meeting friends were the only kind of social interactions that humans depended upon for their love and belongingness needs. Success in their individual careers, success of their children at school and improvement in social status formed a part of their esteem needs.

 

Now key question is...Does this hierarchy of needs even apply to the humans today? This needs to be looked into a bit in detail.

 

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*In Pursuit of perspicuity about plebians of a particular planet
**Abraham Harold Maslow (April 1, 1908 – June 8, 1970) was an American psychologist who was best known for creating Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in priority, culminating in self-actualization