How Maslow Set the Health Frame in Psychology

A paradigm shift was in the making during the 1940s as Maslow began modeling self-actualizing people. He had picked up on this from his relationship with Alfred Adler, Ruth Benedict, Max Wertheimer his studies of the Blackfoot Indians in Canada, etc. Then the second World War occurred, and for Maslow that event called forth from him a new vision and mission for his life. The result? He created a new model of human motivation and so changed the face of psychology with his 1954 classic, Motivation and Personality.

When I first read it in the 1970s I didn’t realize just how radical or transformative his work was. And there was a reason for that. By the 1970s, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, distinction between higher and lower needs, and exploration into the bright side of human personality, into peak experiences and self-actualization had already permeated psychology and had become fairly common knowledge. That’s how quickly the “Third Force” of psychology, namely, Self- Actualization or Humanistic Psychology got a favorable hearing.

Maslow’s challenging question in his first works and speeches was this:

Have we not studied enough about how people become sick and neurotic? What do we know about how people grow, develop, become well, and transcend their problems and circumstances? What is possible for humans? What distinguishes the healthiest humans, the most mature, and those who contribute the most?

In this Maslow set a health frame for the field of psychology which began a revolution in psychology that has all but relegated Psychoanalysis and Behaviorism (the first and second forces) to a back seat as a hundred new therapies and psychologies. From Logotherapy, client- centered therapy, Reality Therapy, dozens of Cognitive therapies, Brief psychotherapy, Ericksonian, NLP, etc. up to Neuro-Semantics—there have been an explosion of therapies that begin from an entirely new and different premise, from the premise that we are made to grow, develop, and self-actualize, that human nature is basically good and that given the right conditions, people will want to move beyond the lower needs to the higher needs.

None of this means that the sick frame that Freud and others began with was wrong, only that it was limited. Further, it makes perfect sense that psychology began with an exploration into neurosis, disease, psychopathology, and mental ill-health. That was the first and most demanding need—to understand what was going on with those who were severely suffering, but whose suffering didn’t seem to have any physiological source. Freud began with hysterics.

But after the first fifty years of psychology, psychological knowledge of humans, human nature, growth and development, emotions, needs, etc. were based almost entirely upon the disease model. It was based upon the study of those hurt and traumatized. It was not based upon those who were the best specimens, the superior men and women in terms of mental and emotional health. That’s what Maslow did.

Studying Behaviorism and working with Harry Harlow, the original researcher with monkeys and chimpanzees, Maslow learned and really valued the insights of Behaviorism. Later he received Psychoanalysis and worked with Karen Horney, Alfred Adler, and others. But then he met two professors in his graduate work who could not be explained with all of the tools and models of psychology: Ruth Benedict and Max Wertheimer. They seemed like a different kind of human beings given his psychological studies. None of the principles, tools, or models enabled him to understand them.

The presence of these two self-actualizing people was the original initiative that launched his modeling project. So he set out to understand and model mentally and emotionally healthy individuals, self-actualizers whom he later called “peak-experiencers.” In this way he set the growth frame in psychology and shifted the assumptions and premises of psychology from the “cruel or nasty animal” model of Freud to an uniquely human model.

This created the new psychology of Self-Actualization which exploded on the scene and during the 1960s worked along with a lot of the cultural factors to create so much of the counter-culture movement at that time and the exploration into the farther reaches of human consciousness. Encounter-groups, growth groups, wild and crazy psychotherapies, etc. arose at that time. This plus the untimely death of Maslow in June of 1970 led the “Third Force” movement of Humanistic Psychology to never become a full-fledge “School of Psychology.”

So here we are some 35 years later and surprise of surprise— there has been almost nothing written or developed upon Maslow’s work in all of that time. Without a single leader to step into Maslow’s shoes, while the new paradigm of the bright side of human nature is well accepted and while there are many millions interested in self-actualization —the focus has been scattered into hundreds of competing camps, schools, models, and personalities.

What’s tragic about this is that during all this time, Maslow’s models have not grown or developed. Nor has there been much confirming research on self-actualization. In this, Maslow was too successful in getting people to step out of the old paradigm and imagining all kinds of new possibilities and yet simultaneously he was also completely unsuccessful in leading the movement.

What’s the next step? What is missing in the Maslow models? What can Neuro-Semantics add to the field of self-actualization? A great deal! Neuro-Semantics can supply the one element that Maslow missed— the role of meaning in our psychology. Neuro-Semantics can also rescue Maslow’s work from the static and rigid implications of the metaphor that he used (the Hierarchy). Neuro-Semantics can give Maslow’s impetous of self-actualization a fresh remake with a systemic model and integrate the world of Csikszentmihalyi on “flow.” These are the things that I’ve incorporated in the new training workshop — The Ultimate Self-Actualization Workshop: Unleashed!