According to Maslow, What Did Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, and Eleanor Roosevelt Have in Common?

Virtually, past now, are familiar with Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The model describes a series of successive, basic needs that must be satisfied before a man beingness tin can business organization themselves with the side by side level. One needs to eat before one tin worry about rubber, one needs to feel safe before seeking out belonging, one needs to feel dearest and belonging before one can establish cocky-esteem, and one needs to have cocky-esteem before they tin can accomplish the pinnacle of the hierarchy, self-appearing.

In his nearly comprehensive book on the subject, Motivation and Personality, Maslow described self-actualization equally the "full utilise and exploitation of talents, capacities, etc. Such people seem to be fulfilling themselves and to exist doing the best that they are capable of doing. […] They are people who accept developed or are developing to the total stature of which they are capable."

To develop this definition, Maslow studied friends, colleagues, college students, as well as nine historical figures that he believed had become self-actualized. The qualities of these figures, he argued, could shed light on the qualities of self-actualized individuals in full general. Though they all share characteristics of self-actualized people to one caste or another, some stand out more than than others.

Portrait of Abraham Lincoln

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1. Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln could be said to represent many of the qualities of cocky-actualized people, but Maslow chosen him out for 1 in detail: a philosophical, unhostile humor. "Probably," wrote Maslow, "Lincoln never fabricated a joke that hurt anybody else; it is too likely that many or even well-nigh of his jokes had something to say, had a function beyond only producing a laugh. They often seemed to be education in a more palatable form, akin to parables or fables."

In his book, Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, author David B. Locke wrote, "But with all the humor in his nature, which was more humor because information technology was sense of humor with a purpose (that constituting the difference between humor and wit) […] His period of sense of humor was a sparkling jump gushing out of a rock – the flashing water had a somber background which fabricated information technology all the brighter."

2. Thomas Jefferson

Today, Thomas Jefferson'south historical legacy is a bit mixed. Having argued that all men are created equal, his position equally a slave-owner seems contradictory. Still, Maslow considered Jefferson to be a cocky-actualized person, perhaps because of Jefferson's "democratic character structure," though this may exist the result of the thinking of 20^th century historians in regards to Jefferson'due south slavery practices.

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Self-actualized people, wrote Maslow, possess a "hard-to-get-at-tendency to requite a sure quantum of respect to any human being just because he is a human individual; our subjects seem not to wish to get beyond a certain minimum point, even with scoundrels, of demeaning. of derogating, of robbing of dignity."

This is certainly reflected in Jefferson's most famous slice of writing, the Declaration of Independence, which contended that all men possess unalienable rights. Information technology is, however, more than hard to square with his ambivalent position on slavery. Throughout his life, Jefferson expressed his dislike of slavery and introduced anti-slavery legislation, yet he endemic over 600 slaves and freed just 7. He besides believed blacks to be inferior — in this regard, Maslow may have picked a poor candidate.

3. Albert Einstein

Maslow argued that self-actualized people are firmly grounded in the real world, rather than the miasma of stereotypes, abstractions, expectations, and biases that near of united states of america experience. "They are therefore far more apt to perceive what is there rather than their own wishes, hopes, fears, anxieties, their own theories and beliefs, or those of their cultural group," he wrote.

Maslow argued that many first-class scientists possess this quality and that information technology drives them to acquire more nearly the unknown, the cryptic, and the unstructured. Most people like stability and are disturbed when reality doesn't seem to reverberate that desired stability. In this regard, Einstein is very much the opposite; he one time said "The nigh beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all art and science."

Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945, holds up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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4. Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt best exemplified the quality that Maslow called Gemeinshaftsgefuhl, a kind of psychologically healthy social connectedness and concern for other's well-being, even — or especially — when other'southward behavior is disgraceful or disappointing. Roosevelt was an extremely productive humanitarian and much loved for it. She has been described every bit "the First Lady of the World" and "the object of almost universal respect," and for good reason. Roosevelt was one of the earliest advocates for the ceremonious rights of African Americans, spoke out against the discrimination of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor, and oversaw the drafting of the Universal Annunciation of Man Rights.

5. Jane Addams

As an early feminist, social worker, and pacifist, Jane Addams best represents the sense of morality that Maslow believed self-actualized people to possess. To Maslow, the self-actualized private "rarely showed in their 24-hour interval-to-day living the chaos, the confusion, the inconsistency, or the conflict that are then common in the average person'southward ethical dealings."

Addams fought for women's correct to vote, documented the affect of typhoid fever on the poor, and worked diligently to bring an end to World War I, despite considerable criticism from the public later the U.Due south. joined the war. Rather than succumb to public force per unit area, withal, Addams maintained her position, in function due to the innate moral compass that self-actualized individuals possess. Considering of her work, she was rewarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.

William James

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6. William James

Known as the "father of American psychology," William James serves as an example of self-actualized people'south power to accept the self, nature, and others. In 1875, James offered the very outset U.S. class in psychology. Prior to James, serious research into the office of the human being heed was scant in the U.S.

Every bit a fellow, James experienced depression himself and often contemplated suicide. "I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist," wrote James, "merely I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality." In seeking to sympathise the human mind, James fits the neb for self-actualized people's ability to accept the globe around them without bias or prejudice. Maslow wrote that cocky-actualized individuals "see human nature every bit it is and not as they would prefer it to be. Their eyes come across what is before them without beingness strained through spectacles of various sorts to distort or shape or color the reality."

The nineteenth century is often referred to as the "aviary era," where a large number of mentally ill individuals were locked upwards, mainly to exist ignored and forgotten about. The work of early psychologists like James helped to dismantle this practice.

seven. Albert Schweitzer

Self-actualized people, wrote Maslow, "customarily have some mission in life, some job to fulfill, some problem exterior themselves which enlists much of their energies." Polymath and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Albert Schweitzer all-time exemplifies this quality.

In addition to being an accomplished theologian, Schweitzer was a driven medical missionary, returning to what is at present the country of Gabonese republic (then a French colony) twice to establish a functional infirmary. The infirmary was desperately needed, as Schweitzer saw more 2,000 patients in his first nine months there, treating leprosy, yellow fever, malaria, and many other diseases.

The fact that Maslow selected Schweitzer as indicative of the superlative qualities of self-actualized people reflects mid-century American attitudes, as well: Schweitzer would later be criticized as having a somewhat racist, paternalistic attitude towards the Africans he treated, reflected through statements similar "The African is indeed my brother, but my inferior blood brother." Though the good Schweitzer brought to the globe is undisputable, his personal attitudes may not truly reflect those of the cocky-actualized individual.

Aldous Huxley

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viii. Aldous Huxley

Some other quality that Maslow argued self-actualized people presented was frequent "peak" or "mystical" experiences. These were moments of ecstasy and awe that conveyed "the feeling of existence simultaneously more powerful and also more helpless than 1 ever was before" and "the confidence that something extremely of import and valuable had happened."

For science fiction author Aldous Huxley, pursuing mystical experiences was central to his work. Not only did his most famous work, Brave New Earth, criticize the pursuit of superficial pleasures, Huxley besides pursued deep experiences through the use of psychedelic drugs like mescaline and LSD. He wrote about his psychedelic experiences in The Doors to Perception. Regarding these experiences, Huxley wrote "The mystical feel is doubly valuable; information technology is valuable because it gives the experiencer a meliorate understanding of himself and the world and because information technology may help him to lead a less self-centered and more creative life."

9. Baruch Spinoza

Baruch Spinoza was a 17^thursday century philosopher who demonstrated the kind of autonomy and independence of culture that Maslow claims cocky-actualized individuals to possess. "Self-actualizing people," he wrote, "are not dependent for their main satisfactions on the real world, or other people or civilization or means to ends or, in general, on extrinsic satisfactions. Rather they are dependent for their ain evolution and continued growth on their own potentialities and latent resource."

Spinoza worked against the grain of the dominant culture at the time. For his rationalist philosophy and theological criticism, the Jewish community issued a cherem against him, similar to excommunication in Christianity.

His works in philosophy are today considered foundational to metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, though his greatest work, Ethics, was published subsequently his death in 1677. This work established him equally 1 of the Enlightenment's cracking thinkers, and despite being a somewhat famous philosopher prior to this, Spinoza lived a modest life as a lens grinder. He turned down being named the heir of his friend, Simon de Vries, turned down a prestigious bookish position at the University of Heidelberg, and adamantly persisted in writing a piece of work of biblical criticism that advocated for a secular, ramble regime, despite a possible threat to his life. Although he was despised by many in his ain time, fifty-fifty his enemies admitted that he lived "a saintly life."

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Source: https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/9-self-actualized-historical-figures/

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