When Abraham Maslow first shared his pioneering vision of a
"comprehensive human psychology" in early 1968, he stood at the pinnacle
of his international acclaim and influence.
His election as president of the American Psychological Association
some months before capped an illustrious academic career spanning more
than 35 productive years, during which Maslow had steadily gained the
high regard--even adulation--of countless numbers of colleagues and
former students. His best-known books, Motivation and Personality and
Toward a Psychology of Being, were not only being discussed avidly by
psychologists, but also by professionals in fields ranging from
management and marketing to education and counseling. Perhaps even more
significantly, Maslow's iconoclastic concepts like peak experience,
self-actualization, and synergy had even begun penetrating popular
language.
Nevertheless, it was a very unsettling time for him: Recovering
from a major heart attack, the temperamentally restless and ceaselessly
active Maslow was finding forced convalescence at home to be almost
painfully unbearable. Suddenly, his extensive plans for future research,
travel, and lecturing had to be postponed. Although Maslow hoped for a
speedy recovery, frequent chest pains induced a keen sense of his own
mortality. As perhaps never before, he began to ponder his career's
accomplishments and his unrealized goals.
In 1968 PSYCHOLOGY TODAY was a precocious one-year-old upstart, but
such was its prestige that it was able to attract perhaps the country's
most famous psychologist for an interview.
Maslow likely regarded the PT interview as a major opportunity to
outline his "comprehensive human psychology" and the best way to
actualize it. At 60, he knew that time permitted him only to plant seeds
(in his own metaphor) of research and theory and hope that later
generations would live to see the flowering of human betterment. Perhaps
most prescient at a time of global unrest is Maslow's stirring vision of
"building a psychology for the peace table." It was his hope that through
psychological research, we might learn how to unify peoples of differing
racial and ethnic origins, and thereby create a world of peace.
Although the complete audiotapes of the sessions, conducted over
three days, disappeared long ago under mysterious circumstances, the
written condensation that remains provides a fascinating and
still-relevant portrait of a key thinker at the height of his prowess.
Intellectually, Maslow was decades ahead of his time; today the
wide-ranging ideas he offers here are far from outdated. Indeed, after
some twenty-odd years, they're still on the cutting edge of American
psychology and social science. Emotionally, this interview is significant
for the rare---essentially unprecedented--glimpse it affords into
Maslow's personal history and concerns: his ancestry and upbringing; his
mentors and ambitions; his courtship, marriage, and fatherhood; and even
a few of his peak experiences.
Maslow continued to be puzzled and intrigued by the more positive
human phenomenon of self-actualization. He was well aware that his theory
about the "best of humanity" suffered from methodological flaws. Yet he
had become ever more convinced of its intuitive validity, that
self-actualizers provide us with clues to our highest innate traits: love
and compassion, creativity and aesthetics, ethics and spirituality.
Maslow longed to empirically verify this lifelong hunch.
In the two years of his life that remained, this gifted
psychologist never wrote an autobiography, nor did he ever again bare his
soul in such a public and wide-ranging way. It may have been that Maslow
regarded this unusually personal interview as a true legacy. More than 20
years later, it remains a fresh and important document for the field of
psychology.
Mary Harrington Hall, for PSYCHOLOGY TODAY: A couple of William B.
Yeats's lines keep running through my head: "And in my heart, the daemons
and the gods wage an eternal battle and I feel the pain of wounds, the
labor of the spear." How thin is the veneer of civilization, and how can
we understand and deal with evil?
Abraham H. Maslow: It's a psychological puzzle I've been trying to
solve for years. Why are people cruel and why are they nice? Evil people
are rare, but you find evil behavior in the majority of people. The next
thing I want to do with my life is to study evil and understand
it.
PT: By evil here, I think we both mean destructive action without
remorse. Racial prejudice is an evil in our society which we must deal
with. And soon. Or we will go down as a racist society.
Maslow: You know, when I became A.P.A. president, the first thing I
wanted to do was work for greater recognition for the Negro
psychologists. Then I found that there were no Negroes in psychology, at
least not many. They don't major in psychology.
PT: Why should they? Why would I think that psychology would solve
social problems if I were a Negro living in the ghetto, surrounded by
despair?
Maslow: Negroes have really had to take it. We've given them every
possible blow. If I were a Negro, I'd be fighting, as Martin Luther King
fought, for human recognition and justice. I'd rather go down with my
flag flying. If you're weak or crippled, or you can't speak out or fight
back in some way, then people don't hesitate to treat you badly.
PT: Could you look at evil behavior in two ways: evil from below
and evil from above? Evil as a sickness and evil as understood
compassionately?
Tags:
Abraham Maslow,
adulation,
American Psychological Associa,
american psychological association,
chest pains,
convalescence,
countless numbers,
evil,
famous psychologist,
hate,
human psychology,
illustrious academic career,
international acclaim,
keen sense,
known books,
management and marketing,
motivation and personality,
peak experience,
plant seeds,
psychologist,
research travel,
self actualization,
speedy recovery
