Pioneers of Positive Psychology (Part 1)
Several humanistic psychologists, most notably Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and Erich Fromm, developed theories and practices related to human happiness and flourishing. Nonetheless, recent empirical support has emerged for those approaches, and scholars have advanced their ideas. Positive Psychology owes its success to the efforts and contributions of numerous pioneers (in addition to Martin Seligman), such as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Christopher Peterson, Sonja Lyubomirsky, Barbara Fredrickson, Ed Diener, Paul Wong, and many more scientists who have worked hard to bring people happiness and well-being.
Abraham Maslow
Abraham Maslow (1908 – 1970) was an American psychologist best known as one of the founders of humanistic psychology. He created Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and emphasised the importance of focusing on people’s positive qualities rather than treating them as a “bag of symptoms.”
Maslow felt that Freud’s psychoanalytic theory and Skinner’s behavioural theory were too focused on the negative or pathological aspects of existence and neglected human beings’ potential and creativity. He wanted to know what constitutes positive mental health and urged people to acknowledge their basic needs before addressing higher needs and, ultimately, self-actualisation.
To prove that humans are not blindly reacting to situations but trying to accomplish something significant, Maslow studied mentally healthy individuals instead of people with serious psychological issues. He focused on self-actualising people, arguing that they exhibit a coherent personality and represent optimal psychological health and functioning.
Beyond fulfilment of needs, Maslow envisioned moments of extraordinary experience, known as Peak Experiences, which are profound moments of love, understanding, happiness or rapture, during which a person feels whole, alive, self-sufficient and yet a part of the world, more aware of the truth, justice, harmony, goodness, and so on. Self-actualising people are more likely to have peak experiences. In other words, these "peak experiences" or states of flow (as Csikszentmihalyi called them) are the reflections of realising one’s human potential and represent the height of personality development.
Maslow referred to his work as “positive psychology”, which (since 1968) has influenced the development of modern Positive Psychotherapy. Since 1999, Maslow’s work has revived interest among positive psychology pioneers, such as Martin Seligman. Maslow’s work has also inspired transcultural humanistic-based psychotherapy, which Nossrat Peseschkian founded.
Maslow is also known for Maslow’s hammer, popularly phrased as "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" (from his book The Psychology of Science, published in 1966). In the 1950s, Maslow became one of the founders and a driving force behind the humanistic psychology school of thought. His theories, including the hierarchy of needs, self-actualisation, and peak experiences, became fundamental to the humanist movement.
Most psychologists of his time focused on the neurotic and negative aspects of human nature, which they considered abnormal. On the other hand, Maslow shifted his focus to the positive aspects of mental health. His interest in human potential, in seeking peak experiences, and in improving mental health through personal growth had a lasting influence on the science of psychology and on most therapeutic approaches in mental health practice.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Maslow first introduced the hierarchy of needs in a paper about human motivation in 1943. He later extended the idea to include his observations of humans' innate curiosity. He created a classification system that reflected the universal needs of society as its base, proceeding to more developed motivations. This perspective implies that for the motivation of the next stage to arise, the previous stage must be satisfied first. Additionally, each level contains an internal resolution that must be met to complete it. The goal in Maslow's theory is to attain the fifth and final stage of self-actualisation.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Every person is capable and desires to move up the hierarchy toward self-actualisation. Unfortunately, progress could be disrupted when someone fails to achieve lower-level needs. Adverse life experiences, such as divorce and job loss, may cause an individual to fluctuate between levels of the hierarchy. Therefore, not everyone will move steadily through the hierarchy and may move back and forth between the different levels of needs.
In a nutshell, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a motivational theory containing a five-tier model of human needs. Needs lower down in the pyramid must be satisfied before individuals attend to needs higher up. From the bottom of the hierarchy upwards, the needs are physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualisation.
Maslow’s theory was fully expressed in his 1954 book: Motivation and Personality. The hierarchy remains a popular framework in sociology, psychology and management training. Maslow’s hierarchy has been revised over time. The original hierarchy states that a lower level must be completely satisfied and fulfilled before moving on to a higher pursuit. However, nowadays many scholars prefer to view these levels as interrelated criteria rather than sharply separated.
The most fundamental four layers of the pyramid contain what Maslow called “deficiency needs” (or d-needs): self-esteem, friendship and love, security, and physiological needs. If these needs are not met (except for physiological needs), there may be no visible indication of the deficit, but the individual will feel inadequate, anxious, and tense. Maslow also coined the term "meta motivation" to describe the motivation of people who go beyond basic needs and strive for continual improvement.
The human brain is a complex system and has parallel processes running simultaneously. Thus, many different motivations across various levels of Maslow’s hierarchy can occur simultaneously. Maslow spoke clearly about these levels and their satisfaction with terms such as “relative”, “general” and “primary”, stating that a specific need may dominate at certain points in life. Still, he focused on identifying the basic types of motivation and the order in which they tend to show up.
Physiological needs include homeostasis, health, food and water, sleep, clothing and shelter. Safety and security needs include personal security, emotional security, financial security, health and well-being, and protection from accidents and illness and their adverse impacts. Social belonging needs consist of friendships, intimacy and family.
Humans need to feel respected, which also includes having self-esteem and self-respect. Esteem represents the desire to be accepted and valued by others. People often engage in an activity (profession or hobby) to gain respect, recognition and a sense of value. Low self-esteem (inferiority complex) may result from imbalances between expectations and reality at any stage of life. Maslow identified two types of esteem: a "lower version” and a "higher version”. The lower version of esteem is the need for respect from others and may include a need for status, recognition, fame, prestige and attention. The higher version manifests as a need for self-respect and can consist of strength, competence, mastery, self-confidence, independence, and freedom.
Although recent research appears to validate the existence of universal human needs, the hierarchy proposed by Maslow is academically crucially contested. Nonetheless, it has widespread influence outside academia and as Uriel Abulof (senior lecturer of politics at Tel-Aviv University) argues, “the continued resonance of Maslow’s theory in the popular imagination, however unscientific it may seem, is possibly the single most telling evidence of its significance: it explains human nature as something that most humans immediately recognise in themselves and others.”
Self-actualisation/Transcendence
Maslow describes self-actualisation as the desire to accomplish everything that one can and become the most that one can be. Maslow believed that to understand this level of motivation (or need), the person must have met the previous needs and mastered them. Self-actualisation is understood as the goal or explicit motivation, with earlier stages in Maslow’s Hierarchy facilitating it. Individuals motivated to pursue such goals seek and understand how their needs, relationships and sense of self are expressed through their behaviours.
Self-actualisation is the highest level in Maslow’s hierarchy and refers to the realisation of a person’s potential (self-fulfilment and peak experiences). Maslow’s idea of self-actualisation has commonly been interpreted as “the full realisation of one’s potential” and as one’s “true self.” According to Maslow, a more explicit definition of self-actualisation is “intrinsic growth of what is already in the organism or more accurately of what is the organism itself”. Self-actualisation is growth-motivated rather than deficiency-motivated.
Self-actualisation occurs when people take full advantage of their talents while still being mindful of their limitations. This term is also used informally to refer to an enlightened maturity characterised by achieving goals, accepting oneself and an ability to self-assess realistically and positively.
In his later years, Maslow explored a further dimension of motivation while criticising his original vision of self-actualisation. He argued that people find their highest fulfilment in giving themselves to something beyond their ego (transcendence), such as altruism or spirituality.
Transcendence refers to the highest and most inclusive or holistic level of human consciousness, behaving and relating, as ends rather than means to oneself, significant others, other human beings, other species, nature and the cosmos.
Self-transcendence is a personal quality that involves extending our boundaries to include spiritual ideas, such as humanity and nature (the universe). Viktor Frankl wrote, "The essentially self-transcendent quality of human existence renders man a being who reaches out beyond himself."
According to Dr Pamela G Reed (University of Arizona), self-transcendence is: “the capacity to expand self-boundaries intra-personally (toward greater awareness of one’s philosophy, values and dreams), interpersonally (to relate to others and one’s environment), temporally (to integrate one’s past and future in a way that has meaning for the present), and trans-personally (to connect with dimensions beyond the typically discernible world).”
Further Reading
Maslow, A.H. (1943). "A theory of human motivation”. Psychological Review. 50 (4): 370–96.
Deckers, Lambert (2018). Motivation: Biological, Psychological, and Environmental. Routledge Press.
Maslow, A. (1954). Motivation and personality. New York, NY: Harper. ISBN 978-0-06-041987-5.
Goble, F. (1970). The third force: The psychology of Abraham Maslow. Richmond, CA: Maurice Bassett Publishing.
Maslow, Abraham H. (1996). “Critique of self-actualisation theory". In E. Hoffman (ed.). Future Visions: The unpublished papers of Abraham Maslow.
Abulof, Uriel (2017-12-01). "Introduction: Why We Need Maslow in the Twenty-First Century". Society. 54 (6): 508–509.
Garcia-Romeu, Albert (2010). “Self-transcendence as a measurable transpersonal construct" (PDF). Journal of Transpersonal Psychology. 421: 26–47.
Carl Rogers
Carl Rogers (1902 – 1987) was an American psychologist and one of the founders of the humanistic approach to psychology. Rogers is the founding father of psychotherapy research and was honoured for his pioneering contributions (1956 & 1972) by the American Psychological Association (APA).
Rogers’s unique, person-centred approach to understanding personality and human relationships has been used in psychotherapy, counselling, coaching, education, business and other settings where rapport is essential. A person-centred approach, also known as Rogerian psychotherapy (since 1940) or person-centred psychotherapy, is a form of therapy (counselling or coaching) that seeks to facilitate clients’ self-actualising tendency (an inbuilt desire toward growth and fulfilment) through acceptance, unconditional positive regard and empathic understanding.
Rogers wrote his first book, The Clinical Treatment of the Problem Child, in 1939, while working as a lecturer at the University of Rochester in New York. It was based on his experience in working with troubled children. He wrote his second book, Counselling and Psychotherapy, in 1942, when he was a professor of clinical psychology at Ohio State University. He also taught psychology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (1957–63), during which time he wrote one of his best-known books, On Becoming Person (1961). His other books include Carl Rogers on Personal Power (1977) and Freedom to Learn for the 80s (1983). He wrote 16 books and many more journal articles describing his theories.
Rogers’ theory of the self is humanistic, existential, and phenomenological (the study of things as they appear in our conscious experience). It is based on propositions that describe how individuals (organisms) exist in a continually changing world of experience (phenomenal field). This adaptable field is the "reality" of the individual who reacts to it as experienced and perceived. A portion of the total of this perceptual field gradually becomes differentiated as the self (I or me), with one basic tendency: striving to actualise, maintain and enhance itself, and as such, the behaviours of the organism are goal-directed attempts to satisfy the needs of the organism as experienced, in the perceived field.
In developing the self-concept, he saw conditional and unconditional positive regard as key. Those raised in an environment of unconditional positive regard can actualise themselves fully. Those raised in an atmosphere of conditional positive regard feel worthy only if they match some conditions (what Rogers described as conditions of worth) that have been laid down for them by others.
Rogers identified the “real self” as the aspect of one’s being, established in the actualising tendency that follows organismic valuing (based on one’s inner nature and purpose) and needs, and that receives positive regard and self-regard. In other words, it is the "you" that you will become if all goes well.
On the other hand, to the extent that our society is out of sync with our actualising tendency, and we are forced to live with conditions of worth (including authenticity, autonomy, internal locus of evaluation and unconditional positive regard), and receive only conditional positive regard, we develop an “ideal-self”. By ideal, Rogers means not real, which is always out of our reach, the standard we cannot meet. This gap between the real/authentic self and the ideal self, the “I am, and the I should be”, is called incongruity.
For Rogers, the concepts of congruence and incongruence were crucial ideas. He believed that a fully congruent person is not at the mercy of experiencing positive regard. They can lead authentic, genuine lives. On the other hand, incongruent individuals, in their pursuit of positive regard, lead lives that include various fallacies and do not realise their potential. Conditions imposed by those around them force them to give up their true, authentic lives to meet others' approval. They live lives that are not true to themselves and who they are. Rogers suggested that the incongruent individuals, who are always on the defensive and cannot be open to all experiences, are not functioning ideally and may even be malfunctioning.
Rogerian rhetoric is a conflict-resolution technique that seeks common ground rather than a polarising debate. In the Rogerian strategy, participants in a discussion collaborate to find areas of shared experience, allowing the speaker and the audience to open their worlds to each other. There is the possibility, at least, of persuasion in this attempt at mutual understanding. In this state of sympathetic understanding, we can recognise both the diversity of worldviews and our freedom to choose among them.
Erich Fromm
Erich Seligmann Fromm (1900-1980) was a German social psychologist and philosopher who fled the Nazi regime and settled in the US. He became one of the founders of The William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry in New York and was associated with the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory.
After the Nazi takeover, Fromm moved first to Geneva and then to Columbia University in New York (1934). Together with Karen Horney and Harry Stack Sullivan, Fromm belongs to a Neo-Freudian school of psychoanalysis.
Fromm’s books were known for their social and political commentary and philosophical and psychological underpinnings. Escape from Freedom (1941), known as Fear of Freedom in Britain, is often cited as one of the founding conceptions of political psychology. His second important work, Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics (1947), continued and enriched the ideas reflected in Escape from Freedom. These books outlined Fromm’s theory of human character as a natural outgrowth of Fromm’s view of human nature. Fromm’s most popular book was The Art of Loving, an international bestseller first published in 1956. This book was a review and complemented the theoretical principles of human nature found in Fromm’s previous books.
“The situation of humankind is too serious to permit us to listen to the demagogues, least of all demagogues attracted to destruction or even to the leaders who use only their brains and whose hearts have hardened. Critical and radical thought will only bear fruit when blended with the most precious quality man is endowed with the love of life. ”
Central to Fromm's worldview was his interpretation of the Talmud (the primary source of Jewish law) and Hasidism (a Jewish religious group that arose as a spiritual revival movement in Ukraine in the 18th century – today, most Hasidic Jews reside in Israel and the US). However, in 1926, Fromm turned away from orthodox Judaism and towards secular interpretations of scriptural ideals. Fromm was reportedly an atheist for the rest of his life, but described his position as non-theistic mysticism (extraordinary experiences during alternate states of mind).
Beyond a simple condemnation of authoritarian value systems, Fromm used the story of Adam and Eve as an allegorical explanation for human biological evolution and existential angst. When Adam and Eve ate from the “Tree of Knowledge”, he interpreted that they became aware of themselves as beings separate from nature while still being part of it. Therefore, they felt “naked” and “ashamed”. They had evolved into earthy human beings, conscious of themselves, their mortality and powerlessness before nature’s forces. They were no longer united with the universe as they were in their instinctive, heavenly existence. According to Fromm, human awareness of being disunited from nature is a source of guilt and shame. He suggested that the solution to this existential dichotomy is to develop one's uniquely human powers of love and reason.
However, Fromm distinguished his concept of love from unreflective popular notions and Freudian paradoxical love. He considered love an interpersonal, creative capacity rather than an emotion. Fromm differentiated this creative capacity from what he thought to be different forms of narcissistic neuroses and sadomasochistic (sexual gratification from pain and humiliation) tendencies commonly held out as proof of "true love". Fromm viewed the experience of "falling in love" as evidence of one's failure to understand the true nature of love, which he believed had the common elements of care, responsibility, respect and knowledge. Fromm asserted that few people in modern society have respect for the autonomy of their fellow human beings, much less an objective understanding of what other people genuinely want and need.
Fromm suggested seven basic needs: 1) Transcendence, transcending our nature by creating and caring for people or things; 2) Rootedness, establishing roots, feeling at home in the world and being able to grow beyond the security of our home and establish ties with the outside world; 3) Sense of Identity, a sense of uniqueness, individuality, and selfhood; 4) Frame of Orientation, understanding the world and our place in it; 5) Excitation and Stimulation, striving for a goal rather than simply reacting; 6) Unity, oneness between a person and the nature and 7) Effectiveness, the need to feel accomplished.
Fromm’s brand of socialism rejected both Western capitalism and Soviet communism, which he saw as dehumanising. He became one of the founders of socialist humanism, promoting the early writings of Marx and his humanist messages to the US and Western European public. For a period, Fromm was also active in US politics. He joined the Socialist Party of America in the mid-1950s. He did his best to help them provide an alternative viewpoint to McCarthyism trends (making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence). This alternative viewpoint was best expressed in his 1961 paper “May Man Prevail? An Inquiry into the Facts and Fictions of Foreign Policy”.
Fromm was a co-founder of SANE in 1957 (the earlier name for Peace Action), inspired by the concepts introduced in his book, The Sane Society. The group aimed to alert people of the threat of nuclear weapons. Fromm’s most robust political activism was in the international peace movement fighting against the nuclear arms race and the US involvement in Vietnam.
To Have or To Be (1976) was Erich Fromm’s last major work, where he argues that two ways of existence were competing for the spirit of humankind: having and being. The having mode looks at things and material possessions through the lens of aggression and greed. The being mode is rooted in love and is concerned with shared experience and productive activity. The dominance of the having mode (as he argued in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness) brought the world to the edge of disaster. Fromm argued that only a fundamental change in human character from a dominance of the having mode to the superiority of the being mode of existence could save us from a psychological and economic catastrophe.
Further Reading
Erich Fromm, [1973] 1992, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, New York: Henry Holt.
Erich Fromm, [1955] 1990 The Sane Society, New York: Henry Holt.
Fromm, Erich "Escape from Freedom" New York: Rinehart & Co., 1941.
Fromm, Erich. Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx & Freud. London: Sphere Books, 1980.
The Glaring Facts. “Erich Fromm & Humanistic Psychoanalysis Archived 21 January 2013, at the Wayback Machine.” The Glaring Facts, n.d. Web. 12 November 2011.
Funk, Rainer. Erich Fromm: His Life and Ideas. Translators Ian Portman, Manuela Kunkel. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2003.
Martin Seligman
Martin Seligman (August 1942) is a professor of psychology and the director of Positive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Martin Seligman is a founding member of modern positive psychology (though Abraham Maslow coined the term). He was elected president of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1998, when he used his inaugural speech to launch the positive psychology movement.
Seligman has written about positive psychology topics in books such as The Optimistic Child, Child’s Play, Learned Optimism, Authentic Happiness and Flourish. His most recent book, The Hope Circuit: A Psychologist’s Journey from Helplessness to Optimism, was published in 2018.
Seligman concluded that happiness has three dimensions (the Authentic Happiness Theory): Pleasant, Good, and Meaningful Lives. The pleasant life is realised if we learn to savour and appreciate basic pleasures such as companionship, the natural environment and biological needs. The good life is achieved through discovering our unique character strengths (virtues) and employing them creatively to enhance our lives. The meaningful life is a stage where we find deep fulfilment by using our unique strengths for a purpose greater than ourselves. Seligman’s theory is brilliant because it reconciles two conflicting views of human happiness: the individualistic approach, which emphasises taking care of ourselves and nurturing our strengths, and the altruistic approach, which tends to downplay individuality and emphasises sacrifice for a greater purpose.
Seligman describes five factors of well-being (PERMA Well-being Theory): Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and purpose, and Accomplishment. Unlike the previous theory, in which character strengths were relevant only to engagement, here character strengths are relevant to maximising the well-being experienced across all five factors. High levels of well-being lead to flourishing, which is described as thriving, being full of vitality and prospering both as individuals and groups.
Character Strengths and Virtues
One notable contribution that Seligman has made to positive psychology is his cross-cultural study, which created an authoritative classification and measurement system for human strengths. He and Christopher Peterson, a leading expert on hope and optimism, developed a classification system to help psychologists measure the effectiveness of positive psychology. They were surprised to find six virtues valued in almost every culture and cherished for themselves (not as means to another end). Our core strengths stem from these six classes of virtues (the highest human qualities), comprising more than twenty measurable character strengths.
Wisdom and Knowledge, which include Creativity, Curiosity, Judgement, Open-mindedness, Love of Learning, and Perspective.
Courage, which includes Bravery, Perseverance, Honesty, and Zest.
Humanity, which provides for Love, Kindness, and Social Intelligence.
Justice, which includes Teamwork, Fairness, and Leadership.
Temperance, which includes Forgiveness, Humility, Prudence, and Self-regulation.
Transcendence, which includes Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence, Gratitude, Hope, Humour, and Spirituality.
Also see Character Strengths & Virtues
