Heroes and Cultural Identity Project

SCE Heroes - Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow (1809 -1882)

The humanistic approach was put forward in response to concerns about the ideas, concepts and theories that predominated psychology and social sciences as a whole up to around the 1950s. Up to this point psychologists mostly argued that behaviour was the direct product of either learning processes (behaviourism) or psychodynamics (Freudian theories), biological and evolutionary explanations.

These schools of thought were not agreed by all and the likes of Maslow, Rogers and others began to question what were the beliefs of the time in relation to how behaviour occurred. They thought that what had been explained up to this point was rather deterministic and did not take into account the fact that people could also choose how to behave sometimes in spite of the fact that they also responded to the stimuli that they had learned. Maslow believed that human beings could deny the essence of behaviourism, psychodynamics or even their physiological construct and choose to live the life they wished to live. However, it came to his understanding that all human behaviour was MOTIVATED by specifics around them, and that we all had to meet specific needs before reaching our true potential and get to what he referred to as SELF ACTUALISATION.

He designed a 'pyramid of needs'

One could argue that he is a hero because he clearly tell us that we not only have the power to choose and determine the course of our lives but we also can become what we wish to become by making sure to follow his recipe, which is a recipe for success at the individual level, group level and beyond.