Self-actualization is not only the final station of our journey, but also the journey itself and the driving force behind it. This is the minute-by-minute actualization of all our felt and even just anticipated possibilities.
Self-actualization is a process, it assumes that every time we make a choice, we choose that it is more worthy to remain honest rather than lie, that it is more honest not to steal than to steal, or, to generalize, we make each of the choices that confront us in favor of personal growth
I found that... the concept of self-actualization turned out to be very similar to Rorschach's inkblots. More often than not, using this concept told me more about the person using it than the reality behind the concept itself.
This finding means that for many people, the only definition of a meaningful life they can imagine is “not having something important and striving to find it.” But we know that self-actualizing people, even if all their basic needs are already satisfied, find life filled with even deeper meaning, since they can live, so to speak, in the realm of Being
... what I observed in the satisfaction of needs led only to temporary happiness, which in turn was replaced by a new and (as could be foreseen) deeper dissatisfaction. It seems that man's hope for eternal happiness is impossible. Of course, happiness comes, it is achievable and real. But it seems that we will have to come to terms with its inherent fleetingness, especially if we are attracted by its deepest manifestations. Peak experiences are short-lived, they cannot last. Deep happiness is temporary, it is not permanent.
After a period of happiness, joyful excitement and a feeling of fullness of life, the perception of what has been achieved will inevitably come for granted and anxiety, dissatisfaction and a desire for more will arise!
... it is very easy to destroy or suppress a person’s potential so much that a full-fledged personality seems to us like something like a miracle, such an improbable case that it leaves us in awe. But at the same time, it is encouraging that self-actualizing people nevertheless exist, and therefore, you can cope with all the challenges and emerge victorious.
If you intend to become less of a person than your abilities allow, I warn you that you will be a deeply unhappy person.
To me, existentialism essentially means an emphasis on the concept of identity, originality and the experience of oneself as a sine qua non (sine qua non) of human nature and any philosophy and science of human nature
It is extremely important for psychologists that existentialists can combine psychology with philosophical foundations, which others have not yet been able to do. Logical positivism was a mistake, especially for clinical and personality psychologists.
From European authors we can and should borrow a serious emphasis on what they call “philosophical anthropology,” which is an attempt to define man, to distinguish between man and other species, between man and other objects, between man and machine.
European phenomenologists, with their painfully neat, laborious demonstrations, can teach us that the best way to understand another person's being, or at least the way necessary to make some assumptions, is to stand in his Weltanschauung (worldview) and become able to see his world through his eyes
what we call "normal" in psychology is actually the psychopathology of the normal, so undramatic and so widespread that we usually don't even notice it. The existential study of authentic personality and authentic being helps to throw counterfeits, life illusions and fears into the fire, which helps to see them as a disease, even a widespread one.
The existentialist emphasis on the total isolation of the individual is a useful reminder to those of us working on future concepts of decision making, responsibility, choice, growth, autonomy, and identity.
Existentialists help us see the limitations of verbal, analytical, conceptual rationality. They are adjacent to the current trend in psychology that calls for a return to primary experiences that precede any conceptualization or abstraction
I don't think we need to take the European existentialists too seriously when they talk about fear, suffering, illness and the like, for which the only remedy, in their opinion, is endurance. This highly intellectual whining about lofty topics turns out to be an eternal source of failure at work.
Life is a process of constant choice. At every moment a person has a choice: either retreat or advance towards the goal. Either a movement towards even greater fear, fears, protection, or a choice of goal and growth of spiritual forces. Choosing development instead of fear ten times a day means ten times moving towards self-realization
Popular American psychologist, founder of humanistic psychology. The so-called “Maslow’s Pyramid”, sometimes attributed to Maslow, is a diagram that hierarchically represents human needs. Maslow's quotes can be classified as philosophical and reflective.
● Life is a process of constant choice. At every moment a person has a choice: either retreat or advance towards the goal. Either a movement towards even greater fear, fears, protection, or a choice of goal and growth of spiritual forces.
● If you intend to become a lesser person than your abilities allow, I warn you that you will be a deeply unhappy person.
● To be at peace with oneself, a person must be what he can be.
● Love relates to higher needs, therefore it pushes into the background the satisfaction of lower needs; the satisfaction of a higher need brings stronger pleasure.
● Children do not need to be taught to be curious. But by accustoming them to the existing order of things, you can teach them not to be curious.
● To avoid disappointment in people, you need to get rid of illusions. Learn to accept people as they are. There are no perfect people. You can find good people, but even they can be selfish, irritable and gloomy at times.
● A satisfied desire ceases to be a desire. The body is dominated by unsatisfied needs, which determine behavior.
● The best way to understand another human being - at least in some cases a useful way - is to enter into his worldview and see his world through his own eyes.
● Of course, at the level of ideal communication (which I call the realm of Being), concepts such as freedom, independence, comprehension, trust, will, dependence, reality, another person, alienation, absolution, etc., have a very complex and rich content that they are deprived of in everyday life, tormented by deficits, desires, needs, self-preservation, dichotomies and polar opposites.
● I found that... the concept of self-actualization turned out to be very similar to Rorschach's inkblots. More often than not, using the concept told me more about the person using it than the reality behind the concept itself.
● After a period of happiness, joyful excitement and a sense of fullness of life, there will inevitably come a perception of what has been achieved for granted and there will be anxiety, dissatisfaction and a desire for more.
● All life is learning, and everyone in it is a teacher and an eternal student.
Abraham Maslow. Motivation and personality. St. Petersburg, Peter, 2006, 352 p. – “Masters of Psychology” series:
1. “As we move along the phylogenetic scale and as the role of instincts decreases, the individual’s dependence on culture as a tool of adaptation becomes greater and greater” (p. 54).
2. “a satisfied desire ceases to be a desire. The body is dominated by unsatisfied needs, which determine behavior” (p. 63).
3. “the preconditions for satisfying basic needs are freedom, the threat to freedom is a threat to the needs themselves (p. 69).
4. “any behavior is polydeterministic, that is, it has complex motivation” (p. 76).
5. “With regard to the motivational determinants themselves, any behavior is more likely determined by several or all of the basic needs than by just one of them” (p. 76)
6. “satisfying any need, on the one hand, eliminates it, and on the other, allows other, weaker needs, which have hitherto been in a suppressed state, to come to the fore and express themselves. The flow of needs is continuous. Satisfying one of them leads to the emergence of a new one (p. 102).
7. “we can define the identification of love as the merging of individual hierarchies of needs... Two truly loving people will respond to each other's needs as their own. The needs of one's neighbor become one's own needs (p. 110).
8. “the highest motive is to have no motives” (p. 121).
9."self-actualization is more likely motivated by developmental needs than by a lack of something. This is the second naivety, an easy state (p. 121).
10. “coping is behavior... is an attempt to compensate for an internal deficit with the help of external positive stimuli” (p. 121)
11. “what is the norm, that is, what is desirable” (p. 172)
12. “Obviously, having found out what the “average” is, one must ask the question: is this average desirable? (p.172).
13. “Adaptation means passively accepting the appearance that is prescribed by culture and environment” (p. 173).
14. “Deprivation of love leads to illness” (p. 180).
15. “average, so-called normal and well-adjusted people often have no idea who they are, what they want or what they think” (p. 194).
16. “love relates to higher needs, therefore it pushes into the background the satisfaction of lower needs, the satisfaction of a higher need brings stronger pleasure” (p. 215).
17. “democratic respect for the right of people to make their own, even erroneous, decisions” (p. 245).
18. “the goal of psychoanalysis as psychotherapy is to integrate the personality” (p. 228).
19. “to the extent that creativity is constructive, unifying and integrating, it depends on the internal integration of a person” (p. 225).
20. “love is an attitude towards another person as an end, and not as a means to achieve an end” (p. 219).
21. “love as self-reward (p. 217).”
22. “One of the important aspects of a healthy love relationship is the so-called identification of needs, or the creation of a single hierarchy of basic needs of both partners.
As a result, everyone feels the partner's needs as their own, while simultaneously perceiving their own needs as partly belonging to the other person. The “I” of each partner now extends to two people, who in the psychological sense become a single whole, a single personality, one “I” (p. 216).
