Abraham Maslow - Further Reaches of Human Nature

"First, self-actualization means experiencing fully, vividly, selflessly, with full concentration and total absorption. It means experiencing without the self-consciousness of the adolescent. At this moment of experiencing, the person is wholly and fully human. This is a self-actualizing moment. This is a moment when the self is actualizing itself." (43386948)

"Second, let us think of life as a process of choices, one after another. At each point there is a progression choice and a regression choice. There may be a movement toward defense, toward safety, toward being afraid; but over on the other side there is the growth choice. To make the growth choice instead of the fear choice a dozen times a day is to move a dozen times a day to­ ward self-actualization. Self-actualization Is an ongoing process: it means making each of the many single choices about whether to lie or be honest, whether to steal or not to steal at a particular point, and it means to make each of these choices as a growth choice. This is movement toward self-actualization, to talk of self-actualization implies that" (43386948)

"Third. To talk of self-actualization implies that there is a self to be actualized. A human being is not a tabala rasa, not a lump of clay or Plasticine. He is something which is already there. at least a "cartilaginous" structure of some kind. A human being is, at minimum, his temperament, his biochemical balances, and so on. There is a self, and what I have sometimes referred to as "listening to the impulse voices" means letting the self emerge. Most of us, most of the time (and especially does this apply to children, 'young people), listen not to ourselves but to Mommy's interjected voice or Daddy's voice or to the voice of the Establishment, of the Elders, of authority, or of tradition."

"But then I stopped myself: What was I saying? I know little about Scotches. All I knew was what the advertisements said. I had no idea whether this one was good or not; yet this is the kind of thing we all do. Refusing to do it is part of the ongoing process of actualizing oneself. Does your belly hurt? Or does it feel good? Does this taste good on *your* tongue? Do *you* like lettuce?"

"Fourth. When in doubt, be honest rather than not.... Looking within oneself for many of the answers implies taking responsibility. That is in itself a great step toward actualization. This matter of responsibility has been little studied; It doesn't turn up in our textbooks, for who can investigate responsibility in white rats? Yet it is an almost tangible part of psychotherapy. In psychotherapy, one can see it, ean feel it, can know the moment of responsibility. Then there is a clear knowing of what it feels like. This is one of the great steps. Each time one takes responsibility, this is an actualizing of the self." (43386948)

"Fifth. We have talked so far of experiencing without self­awareness, of making the growth choice rather than the fear choice, of listening to the impulse voices, and of being honest and taking responsibility. All these are steps toward self-actualization, and all of them guarantee better life choices. A person who does each of these little things each time the choice point comes will find that they add up to better choices about what is constitutionally right for him. He comes to know what his destiny is, who his wife or husband will be, what his mission in life will" (43386948)

"Sixth, self-actualization is not only an end state but also the process of actualizing one's potentialities at any time, in any amount. It is. for example, a matter of becoming smarter by studying if one is an intelligent person. Self-actualization means using one's intelligence. It does not mean doing some far-out thing necessarily. but it may mean going through an arduous and demanding period of preparation in order to realize one's possibilities. Self-actualization can consist of finger exercises It a piano keyboard. Self-actualization means working to do well the thing that one wants to do. To become a second-rate physician is not a good path to self-actualization. One wants to be first-rate or as good as he can be." (43386948)

"Seventh. Peak experiences are transient moments of self-actualization. They are moments of ecstasy which cannot be bought. cannot be guaranteed, cannot even be sought. One must be. as C. S. Lewis wrote, "surprised by joy." But one can set up the conditions so that peak experiences are more likely, or one can perversely set up the conditions so that they are less likely. Breaking up an illusion, getting rid of a false notion, learning what one is not good at. learning what one's poten­ tialities are not-these are also part of discovering what one is . in fact." (43386948)

"inspiration to strike so that they can say, "At 3:23 on this Thursday I became self-actualized'" People selected as self-actualizing subjects, people who fit the criteria, go about it in these little ways: They listen to their own voices; they take responsibility; they are honest; and they work hard. They find out who they are and what they are, not only in terms of their mission in life. but also in tenns of the way their feet hurt when they wear such and such a pair of shoes and whether they do or do not like euplanl or stay up all night if they drink too much beer. All this is what the real self means. They find their own biological natures, their congenital natures, which are irreversible or difficult to change." (43386948)

"The trouble is, if you know a lot of scientists, that you soon learn that something is wrong with this criterion be­ cause scientists as a group are not nearly as creative generally as you would expect. This includes people who have dis­covered, who have created actually, who have published things which were advances in human knowledge. Actually, this is not too difficult to understand. This finding tells us something about the nature of science rather than about the nature of creativeness. If I wanted to be mischievous about it, I could go so far as to define science as a technique whereby noncreative people can create. This is by no means making fun of scientists. It's a wonderful thing it seems to me, for limited human beings, that they can be pressed into the service of great things even though they themselves are not great people. Science is a technique, social and institutionalized, whereby even unintelli­ sent people can be useful in the advance of knowledge. That is as extreme and dramatic as I can make it. Since any particular scientist rests so much in the arms of history, stands on so many shoulders of so many predecessors, he is so much a part of a huge basketball team, of a big collection of people, that his own shortcomings may not appear. He becomes worthy of reverence, worthy of great respect through his participation in a great and respect-worthy enterprise. Therefore, when he dis­ covers something, I have learned to understand this as a product of a social institution, of a collaboration. If he didn't discover it, somebody else would have pretty soon. Therofore, it seems to me that selecting our scientists, even though they have created, is not the best way to study the theory of creativeness." (43386948)


"We are a species and we are different from other species. If this is so. if you can accept this instead of the tabula rasa model. the person as pure clay which is to be molded or reinforced into any predesigned shape that the arbitrary controller wants, then you must also accept the model of therapy as uncovering. unleashing, rather than the model of therapy as molding, creating and shaping. And this would be true also for education. The basic models generated by these two different conceptions of human nature would be dif­ferent -- teaching. learning. everything." p76

"Being and Becoming are, so to speak, side by side, sImul­taneously existing, now. Traveling can give end-pleasure; it need not be only a means to an end. Many people discover too late that the retirement made possible by the years of work doesn't taste as sweet as the years of work did." 108

Acceptance. Another kind of fusion of fact and valuc comes from what we call acceptance. Here the fusion comes not so much from an improvement of actuality, the is. but from a scaling down of the ought. from a redefining of expectations so that they come closer and closer to actuality and therefore to attainability. 108

What I should like to maintain is that many of these dynamic characteristics of facts, these vectorial qualities, CaU well within the semantic jurisdiction of the word "value." At the very least, they bridge the dichotomy between fact and value which is conventionally and unthinkingly held by most scientists arid philosophers to be a defining characteristic of science itself. Many people define science as morally and ethically neutral, as having nothing to say about ends or oughts. They thus open'the door to the inevitable consequence that if ends have to come from somewhere, and that iC they cannot come from know­ ledge, then they must come from outside of knowledge. 115

the Spinozistic principle that true freedom consists of accepting and loving the inevitable, the nature of reality. P119