Rebecca L. Horton
University of Alaska Anchorage
In 1943, American psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed a theory of psychological health in his paper, “A Theory of Human Motivation". Maslow’s hierarchy is comprised of seven ascending stages. The first four stages are defined as deficiency needs, otherwise known as d-needs. The next set of three stages are described as growth needs. These are necessary to become the best one can be. In order to move along to a higher level of needs, a person would first need to fulfill a predominantly more important need, as each level’s completion depends on the completion of the level prior. In his writing, Abraham did not include a visual representation of his hierarchy, …show more content…
These are the most crucial needs an individual has in order to sustain human life. Physiological needs also happen to be the strongest needs of the hierarchy. They are the needs for food, water, shelter, and all other necessary functions involved in keeping a human within the normal homeostatic range. Once most or all of the physiological needs in the first stage are fulfilled, a person is able to focus on meeting their safety and security needs. These needs can be exhibited in the form of personal safety, financial security, job security, and being safe from external harm.
The third level of Maslow’s hierarchy is of love and belonging. The needs of this category are met through satisfactory relationships. A satisfactory relationship involves trust and acceptance, receiving and giving affection to one degree or another. Essentially, this stage can be described as the feeling of being involved with or accepted by others.
The fourth and final deficiency need is esteem, which is mainly driven by the longing to feel good, or happy of and with ourselves. Maslow’s paper defines two separate subclasses of esteem: the first is the desire for strength, adequacy, freedom and confidence in the face of the world. The second is founded on the desire for reputation or prestige, importance or …show more content…
At the time, the most popular belief was that children bonded with their mothers because mothers supplied them with milk to combat hunger. Hunger is a very stressful feeling, especially in infants with growing bodies that need constant nourishment. Due to the pleasure their mothers gave them from feeding them, the babies would start to identify their mother with the comfort of eating, thus creating the idea of love these infants felt for their mothers. Scientifically, Bowlby found there wasn’t much research that backed up this