Abraham Maslow

He married his first cousin Bertha in 1928 when he was just 20 years old. His marriage marked the beginning of a very happy family life for him. The couple had two daughters and shared a loving marriage that lasted till his death.

He had a history of heart problems and suffered a major heart attack in 1967. Three years later, in 1970 he had another heart attack and died.

The American Psychological Association presents the Abraham Maslow award to individuals for their outstanding and lasting contribution to the exploration of the farther reaches of human spirit.

He was born as the eldest of the seven children of Samuel and Rose Maslow in New York. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Russia.

He was raised in a multiethnic neighbourhood. His family was poor and his parents were very uncaring and indifferent. His father verbally abused and degraded him to the extent that the boy felt very unworthy. His mother was a selfish and cruel woman who never gave the children any love or care.

As the only Jewish boy in his neighbourhood, he was also made the victim of rampant anti-Semitism and was bullied by other boys because of his religion.

The various difficulties of his life forced him to seek refuge in the library where he discovered his love for reading.

He attended the Boys High school where he was a member of several academic clubs. He also edited the Latin Magazine and the school’s Physics paper for a year.

He became a member of the faculty at Brooklyn College in 1937 and worked there till 1951.

When the U.S. entered the World War II in 1941, Maslow was too old to enlist and was ineligible for the military. However, the horrors of wars, inspired a vision of peace un him and influenced his psychological ideas and helped him develop the discipline of humanistic psychology.

He was deeply influenced by his two mentors, the psychologist Max Wertheimer and anthropologist Ruth Benedict whose behaviour formed the basis for his research about mental health and human potential.

He proposed a theory of needs hierarchy in his 1943 paper ‘A Theory of Human Motivation’ in ‘Psychological Review’. This theory was explained in detail in his 1954 book ‘Motivation and Personality’.

He was of the view that human beings have a set of needs that need to be fulfilled hierarchically in order to achieve self-actualization. According to him the needs could be classified as: Physiological, Safety, Belongingness and Love, Esteem, Self-Actualization and Self-Transcendence needs.

His biggest contribution to the field of psychology is his Maslow’s Needs Hierarchy Theory which he first proposed in 1943. The hierarchy is a very popular framework in research and education in various fields like sociology, management, psychology, psychiatry, etc.