Emotional Intelligence & THE ORGANIZATION OF NEEDS
Humanistic theories are concerned with defining the needs that are central to human functioning. Abraham Maslow (1908-1970), one of the early and influential humanistic thinkers, described human needs in terms of a pyramid.
At the bottom of the pyramid are the fundamentally physiological needs for food, air, water, and sex. Further up are needs for safety, love, esteem, and so on, up to self-actualization. Individuals organize
their lives around these needs, trying to gratify the needs at each level.
As each of the lower needs becomes gratified, more needs higher on the pyramid
emerge and require fulfillment. If at any level, our needs are not gratified,
conflict ensues. Until the conflict is resolved, we do not proceed to the
next level. Moreover, iflower needs cease to be satisfied, regression to lower
levels will occur until the lower needs are again being satisfied.
We first attempt to gratify our need for food. What we do in life is organized
around ways to achieve this goal. Once achieved, we go on to the next
need, the need for safety, and in doing so, we organize our life differently.
Once safety needs are gratified, needs for love, affection, and belongingness
emerge. Now the person feels keenly, as never before, the absence offriends,
sweetheart, spouse, or children. These needs can be very intense and can
dominate personality and motivation. The absence of love and affection
is seen as a major contributor to conflict and unhappiness. Until these needs
are gratified, the individual cannot proceed to the next level: the need for
esteem. Once the individual achieves competence, approval, and recognition,
thereby satisfying the need for esteem, he will proceed on to the level of
aesthetic and cognitive needs. These growth needs include the search for
knowledge, understanding, justice, beauty, order, and symmetry. Finally, at
the top level of the pyramid, the needs for self-fulfillment and self-actualization
will emerge, the "desire to become more and more of what one is, to
become everything that one is capable of becoming" (Maslow, 1968, p. 92).
Those at the top of the pyramid, self-actualizing people, tend to accept
themselves and others. They have a nonhostile sense of humor and appreciate
the novel and unexpected. They tend to be problem-centered rather than
ego-centered, concerned with problems that exist outside of themselves.
They have a mission in life. They like solitude more than most people, yet
they experience deep feelings of empathy, affection, and identification with
others. Because their fundamental needs have been gratified, they are
growth- rather than deficiency-motivated, and they tend therefore to be relatively
autonomous of their environment.
Self-actualizing people, however, are not without problems and conflicts.
They experience anxiety, guilt, sadness, self-castigation, conflict, and so on.
But for the most part, these experiences do not arise from deficiency-motivated
sources. Rather, life itself is often difficult and sad, and that fact is reflected
in the lives of self-actualizing people, as in the lives of all others.
Attention to self, to feeling and experiencing, and to the organization of
needs is what centrally marks the thinking of humanistic psychologists. In
fact, these concerns shade over imperceptibly to those of the existential psychologists.
For that reason, humanistic and existential are often hyphenated.
We turn now to the issues of concern to existential psychologists,
bearing in mind that no sharp distinction exists between their views and
those of the humanists.
At the bottom of the pyramid are the fundamentally physiological needs for food, air, water, and sex. Further up are needs for safety, love, esteem, and so on, up to self-actualization. Individuals organize
their lives around these needs, trying to gratify the needs at each level.
As each of the lower needs becomes gratified, more needs higher on the pyramid
emerge and require fulfillment. If at any level, our needs are not gratified,
conflict ensues. Until the conflict is resolved, we do not proceed to the
next level. Moreover, iflower needs cease to be satisfied, regression to lower
levels will occur until the lower needs are again being satisfied.
We first attempt to gratify our need for food. What we do in life is organized
around ways to achieve this goal. Once achieved, we go on to the next
need, the need for safety, and in doing so, we organize our life differently.
Once safety needs are gratified, needs for love, affection, and belongingness
emerge. Now the person feels keenly, as never before, the absence offriends,
sweetheart, spouse, or children. These needs can be very intense and can
dominate personality and motivation. The absence of love and affection
is seen as a major contributor to conflict and unhappiness. Until these needs
are gratified, the individual cannot proceed to the next level: the need for
esteem. Once the individual achieves competence, approval, and recognition,
thereby satisfying the need for esteem, he will proceed on to the level of
aesthetic and cognitive needs. These growth needs include the search for
knowledge, understanding, justice, beauty, order, and symmetry. Finally, at
the top level of the pyramid, the needs for self-fulfillment and self-actualization
will emerge, the "desire to become more and more of what one is, to
become everything that one is capable of becoming" (Maslow, 1968, p. 92).
Those at the top of the pyramid, self-actualizing people, tend to accept
themselves and others. They have a nonhostile sense of humor and appreciate
the novel and unexpected. They tend to be problem-centered rather than
ego-centered, concerned with problems that exist outside of themselves.
They have a mission in life. They like solitude more than most people, yet
they experience deep feelings of empathy, affection, and identification with
others. Because their fundamental needs have been gratified, they are
growth- rather than deficiency-motivated, and they tend therefore to be relatively
autonomous of their environment.
Self-actualizing people, however, are not without problems and conflicts.
They experience anxiety, guilt, sadness, self-castigation, conflict, and so on.
But for the most part, these experiences do not arise from deficiency-motivated
sources. Rather, life itself is often difficult and sad, and that fact is reflected
in the lives of self-actualizing people, as in the lives of all others.
Attention to self, to feeling and experiencing, and to the organization of
needs is what centrally marks the thinking of humanistic psychologists. In
fact, these concerns shade over imperceptibly to those of the existential psychologists.
For that reason, humanistic and existential are often hyphenated.
We turn now to the issues of concern to existential psychologists,
bearing in mind that no sharp distinction exists between their views and
those of the humanists.
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http://emotional-intelligence-training.weebly.com/
Of course you know the training method I recommend!
http://theliberatormethod.com/Welcome.html