Abraham Harold Maslow

By: Daniel Roman  

            Abraham Harold Maslow was born on April 1, 1908 in Brooklyn, New York, he was a psychologist know for many theories and discoveries, one of them being the Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs. The oldest of seven, Maslow went to the City College of New York after high school, eventually dropped out and in 1927 he transferred to Cornell, leaving a semester later due to cost and low grades, he return to the city college where he graduated. He followed his education to the University of Wisconsin to study psychology for his masters. He went on to graduate in 1931 with his masters. Later his thesis was published in as two articles in 1934. After his education, Maslow continued to educate himself along the side of his research of the same manner of his thesis. He did a bulk of his research at Columbia University. It was during these times where he had two of his major breakthroughs for which he is known today. The Humanistic theories of self-actualization believe that every person has a strong desire to realize his or her full potential, to reach a level of “self-Actualization”, the main goal was to emphasize the positive potential of a human being. Later during his career after various forms of his previous breakthroughs he was able to put together the hierarchy of human needs.

            As a humanist Maslow understood the importance of “self”, and how it played an important role in the human behavior. For instance when you tell a dog to lay down you give him or her a treat as a reward.  A child to get them to do anything you go ahead and give them an ice cream and they will be happy to help. When you ask a grown up to do something, they react a little different; they believe they are in title to believe they have the freedom to choose because they have a “will”. Maslow understood that our behavior was primarily based upon how we meet our human needs. Each individual self has needs. Those selves are motivated to meet their needs, which determine our personalities and our behavior.  Maslow used the imagery of the pyramid with the based being the most important.  The peak is the least important to a person’s behavior, but it becomes the most important to their ability to contribute to society. Physiological needs, are the base of the human life, such as food, water, and sex. Someone who is hungry that’s that first thing they will think off in the morning, it becomes a priority. Safety needs kick in after we have met our physiological needs, we will then seek for shelter and safety from those who can cause harm. After both of those are met humans seek for love. The idea is based on community and companionship, finding people we can intertwine with and build relationships with. According to Maslow this is the most important aspect need, human seek for love in every corner.  Self esteem is the need to feel good about one self, and liking one self. Experiencing and achieving things in life, and as one succeed we learn to like one self. Once one has met all the prior needs they can look into helping others. They are able to work for the benefit of society since they are well rounded themselves. Once one is at this level is when one can truly feel self-aware, care, and understanding. These fundamentals are playing a very important role in my thesis, and are partially helping make design decisions.