A Newly Formulated Psychology — Self-Actualization Psychology

While there is no such thing yet, Maslow pioneered the beginnings of Self-Actualization Psychology. So while you won’t find that phrase in psychology books, or in any directory of courses, or degree programs yet, I’m predicting that it is a psychological model in the making.

Throughout his life, Maslow had wanted to write a psychology textbook, but his fragile health in mid-life and his busy life after the publication of Motivation and Personality and his untimely death in 1970 at only 62 meant that he never wrote that textbook. So even today, some 36 years later, there’s not even a textbook on Self-Actualization Psychology.

Yet in another sense Self-Actualization Psychology is present. At least the idea, the premises, and the vision of this kind of psychology are everywhere. Today the idea of a positive psychology based on the premises that human nature is basically good, that people have all the resources they need, that people are natural learners, that they will grow and develop, that they will naturally move to actualizing their best potentials when there are “good conditions” and interferences are removed, and so on—these ideas are at the core of many of the offsprings of the Human Potential Movement. You can find them in Humanistic Psychology, Positive Psychology, Cognitive Psychology models, Ericksonian models, Brief Psychotherapy, Narrative, etc.

So even though the Third Force in Psychology never became an official School of Psychology and even though the Human Potential Movement did not succeed as a school, the premises and vision of “actualizing all of our potentials,” becoming “fully human,” and becoming fully responsible human beings has spread into a hundred off-springs of the Human Potential Movement.

In fact, NLP, based on directly on the work of two key players in the Human Potential Movement, Fritz Perls and Virginia Satir, is one of the off-shoots of that movement. The premises of the human potential movement was even brought over directly into NLP so that every NLP practitioner has learned them. They were re-labeled and colonized in such a way as to become what today we call “the NLP Presuppositions.” Where did these ideas come from? From Maslow, Carl Rogers, Rollo May, Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, etc.

So in extending Maslow’s work and in creating Self-Actualization Psychology, what is it? What makes up this new form of psychology? Here’s what Maslow developed:

1) Modeling the bright side of human nature.

Self-Actualization psychology studies “the best specimens” of the human race to catch a vision about what’s possible for human beings and the structure and variables of the most highly desired experiences. That makes SA psychology about generative change and the highest possible development. It is not about remedial change or pathology,

2) The developmental level of needs.

SA psychology is a developmental psychology. It views our biological needs as the source of our drives and urges and which progresses developmentally. We first experience the lower or basic needs then progressively move up to the higher needs.

3) The hierarchical movement from lower to higher.

The needs are not only developmental but hierarchical. Because the lower needs are prepotent, we move from the lower to the higher. The lower are driven by deficiency, the higher by expression.

4) The higher can become more dominating than the lower.

Once we have reached the higher growth or being-needs, the higher needs can be felt as strongly as the lower needs, they can even over-ride the lower needs. Maslow recognized this but often said he didn’t understand how it occurs.

5) Progressing, growing, and developing necessitates active responsiveness.

While growth is innate and organic, it can be interfered with, sabotaged, stunted, and we can become stuck at any level. To move forward on the path to self-actualization necessitates initiative, responsibility, acceptance of reality, ego-strength, flexibility, openness, and continuous learning. We have to choose growth.

6) The higher levels of peak experiences of self-actualizers.

While self-actualizing is a potential for all, it is not actual. As we choose it, engage in the processes that facilitate it, we have to embrace anxiety because at the self- actualization level, we are forever restless and anxious. We are forever expanding and growing and discovering or creating more of who we are and what we can become. It is a never-ending process.

These premises describes Self-Actualization Psychology at the time of Maslow’s death in 1970. Yet because it offered an exciting view of the future, a hundred splinter groups arose from it, each pursuing its own version of this vision. That was both fortunate and unfortunate. Fortunate because it generated a great deal of excitement about various facets of self-actualization and ways to unleash potentials in people. Yet unfortunate because this led to the dispersing of the Human Potential Movement.

Now to create a complete model we have to have four things: theory, variables, guidelines, and patterns. So one of the first things I did was to take the premises and models of Maslow and Rogers and formulate them to create

• A conceptual theory of self-actualization
• A set of components, elements, and variables to work with in actualizing one’s potentials
• A set of guidelines for using these variables
• And a set of patterns or processes that facilitate unleashing potentials.

Of course, in doing this, I have been able to see its strengths and weaknesses and what yet needed to be done to create a more fully developed Self-Actualization Psychology. In Neuro- Semantics, this has led to the Matrix of Self-Actualization and the Self-Actualization Quadrants.

7) The role of meaning in the hierarchy of needs.

Our “needs,” being instinctoids and not instincts with content information, are empty of content. That opens up a space wherein we have to find and create meaning. Maslow and others missed this cognitive nature of our drives. We make meaning by how we “think” and that includes the dozen or more kinds of meanings that we make and layer reflexively as we think (the Meta-States model).

8) The holoarchy as a volcano of human needs.

The hierarchy (and pyramid) turns out to actually be holoarchy as it operates as a hologram with embedded holons within holons all the way up. That’s because our self- reflexive consciousness keeps layering meanings upon meanings. So our meaning- making is not linear but non-linear and always in flux. Instead of a static and rigid pyramid, our meaning-endowed-needs swirl round and round creating our emotions and motivations (the Matrix model).

9) The psycho-logics of human needs.

What’s “logical” in our needs makes sense from within, not from without. This makes our needs psycho-logical. And the psycho-logics of our needs depends on our meanings (understandings, beliefs, intentions, etc.).

10) We unleash our potentials via a crucible.

Our boiling needs embedded and informed by our hot, confused, and swirling thoughts (meanings) need a place so that something new can emerge. We call this place, the crucible. Having potential is not sufficient. For potential to become actuality, we have to hold these energies with awareness, acceptance, exertion, honesty, appreciation, challenge, etc.

Self-Actualization Psychology is the larger frame of Neuro-Semantics. This is what we are all about—actualizing people and organizations, families and countries so that each and every person can become fully alive/ fully human and then as groups and communities, we can actualize ourselves culturally to create self-actualizing companies, corporations, and even countries.