Maslow & Fromm: Human Needs & Personality Theories
Maslow’s Theory of Needs
Maslow defines a need as a state of deficit experienced as a motive, which is a conscious desire or impulse for a specific thing. Higher needs are considered instinctoid, resembling instincts. These needs exist in a hierarchy governed by the principle of prepotency (lower needs must be met before higher ones). Deprivation of these needs can lead to pathology, falling into categories like neurosis, psychosis, and personality disorders.
Higher needs can be characterized as remnants of instinct or instinctoid tendencies. Under favorable conditions, they feel like impulses and are satisfied through learning. Basic needs are related to more complex patterns of behavior, known as drives.
Needs related to growth and development serve as goals and have specific reasons behind them.
Hierarchy of Needs
The lower needs, or deficit needs, are (in order of potency):
- Physiological Needs: Necessary for survival (e.g., air, food, water, shelter).
- Safety Needs: Include security, stability, and the preservation and maintenance of the body.
- Love and Belongingness Needs: Socially oriented needs, such as being part of a group or family, or having intimate relationships.
- Esteem Needs: Relate to self-assessment, self-respect, and respect from others.
- Self-Actualization Needs: Refer to the requirement for personal growth and fulfilling one’s potential.
Other Needs Discussed by Maslow
- Need for Transcendence: Concern for others, putting the common good first, and seeking connections beyond the self.
- Cognitive Needs: The need to know and understand; these operate as a dynamic force, independent of their utility for satisfying other needs.
- Aesthetic Needs: Associated with beauty, balance, and art.
Fromm’s Perspectives
According to Fromm, ethics deals with the ideal standards of conduct for humanity, while mental hygiene is concerned with promoting mental health and optimal functioning.
Fromm’s Basic Psychological Needs
Fromm outlines five basic psychological needs:
- Relatedness: The need for meaningful human contact, love, and relationships.
- Rootedness: The need to feel we belong or are part of our social environment.
- Transcendence: The need to rise above our animal nature, to create or destroy; the feeling of having control over circumstances and expressing creativity.
- Sense of Identity: The need for acceptable roles through which we are known and with which we identify.
- Frame of Orientation: The need for a stable and consistent way of perceiving and understanding the world; the need for meaning.
Conscience Types
Conscience is a regulatory agency within the personality, making it possible to observe, reflect, and evaluate behavior.
- Authoritarian Conscience: Akin to Freud’s superego, where external rules and authority figures are internalized. It can be a source of guilt or self-restraint.
- Humanistic Conscience: Our own inner voice, guiding us toward self-realization and expressing our full potential. It involves care and concern for ourselves with love; it feels like well-being or self-dissatisfaction.
Existential and Historical Dichotomies
- Existential Dichotomies: Fundamental contradictions inherent in human existence that cannot be resolved, such as the desire for perfection while living with imperfection, or the conflict between life and death.
- Historical Dichotomies: Inconsistencies and contradictions created by society or history that could potentially be resolved or avoided.
Character Orientations
Fromm described character orientations as ways individuals relate to the world. Non-productive orientations represent failures in the main tasks of living:
- Receptive Orientation: An exaggeration of dependence; life unfolds by depending on others. Features include being nice, submissive, and passive.
- Exploitative Orientation: Focused on taking things from others in an aggressive and insensitive manner.
- Hoarding Orientation: Emphasis on conservation, saving, and safety; holding onto possessions, feelings, or thoughts.
- Marketing Orientation: Perceiving oneself and others as commodities to be sold or exchanged to meet needs.
- Productive Orientation: The healthy orientation, integrating positive features of the non-productive types in an appropriate balance. It includes the capacities to receive, take, store, share, produce, and love productively.
- Necrophilous Orientation: A non-productive orientation toward death, decay, and destruction.
- Biophilous Orientation: The love of life and growth; an affirmation of human values.
Freedom From vs. Freedom To
Fromm distinguished between two types of freedom:
- Freedom From: A negative form of freedom where external restrictions are removed, but the individual may feel isolated and unable to act meaningfully (escape from freedom).
- Freedom To: A positive form of freedom involving spontaneous activity, taking action, realizing one’s potential, and connecting authentically with others.
For Fromm, the most productive form of love is one that allows the fullest development of individuality while maintaining connection and care.