self-actualization
Sign in to saveSelf-actualization, in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, is the highest personal aspirational human need in the hierarchy. It represents where one's potential is fully realized after more basic needs, such as for the body and the ego, have been fulfilled, and is recognised in psychological teaching as the peak of human needs. Maslow later added the category self-transcendence (which, strictly speaking, extends beyond one's own "needs").
~23 min read
Article
18 sectionsContents
- Abraham Maslow's theory
- Definition
- History and development of the concept
- Maslow's later-career ideas
- Characteristics of self-actualizers
- Discussion
- Kurt Goldstein's concept
- Concept
- Discussion
- Carl Rogers' concept
- In the New Age
- Real-world applications
- Self-actualisation in workplace settings
- Criticism
- Cross-cultural perspectives
- See also
- References
- Further reading
Self-actualization, in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, is the highest personal aspirational human need in the hierarchy. It represents where one's potential is fully realized after more basic needs, such as for the body and the ego, have been fulfilled, and is recognised in psychological teaching as the peak of human needs. Maslow later added the category self-transcendence (which, strictly speaking, extends beyond one's own "needs").
Self-actualization was coined by the organismic theorist Kurt Goldstein for the motive to realize one's full potential: "the tendency to actualize itself as fully as [...] the drive of self-actualization." Carl Rogers similarly wrote of "the curative force in psychotherapy ''man's tendency to actualize himself, to become his potentialities'' [...] to express and activate all the capacities of the organism."