What is self-actualization?

Introduction

Self-actualization—as a concept, a theory, and a model—has extended the domain and impact of psychology. Humanistic psychology—a branch of psychology that emphasizes growth and fulfillment, autonomy, choice, responsibility, and ultimate values such as truth, love, and justice—has become an important paradigm for understanding personality, psychopathology, and therapy. Applications have been extensive in education, counseling, religion, and business. Suggesting action and implying consequences, self-actualization holds clear and significant implications regarding the dimensions of psychology, the basic conception of humankind, and the functions and organization of society.

Self-actualization is often defined as a process of growing and fulfilling one’s potential, of being self-directed and integrated, and of moving toward full humanness. The most complete description of the self-actualizing person has been provided by the psychologist Abraham Maslow, who devoted much of his professional life to the study of exceptional individuals. Maslow abstracted several ways in which self-actualizing people could be characterized.

Characterizing Self-Actualizers

Compared with ordinary or average persons, self-actualizing persons, as Maslow describes them, may be characterized as follows: They show a more efficient and accurate perception of reality, seeing things as they really are rather than as distortions based on wishes or neurotic needs. They accept themselves, others, and nature as they are. They are spontaneous both in behavior and in thinking, and they focus on problems outside themselves rather than being self-centered. Self-actualizing persons enjoy and need solitude and privacy; are autonomous, with the ability to transcend culture and environment; have a freshness of appreciation, taking pleasure and finding wonder in the everyday world; and have peak experiences or ecstatic, mystic feelings that provide special meaning to everyday life. They show social interest, which is a deep feeling of empathy, sympathy, identification, and compassionate affection for humankind in general, and have deep interpersonal relationships with others. They carry a democratic character structure that includes humility, respect for everyone, and an emphasis on common bonds rather than differences; they distinguish between means and ends, and they possess a clear sense of ethics. Self-actualizers have a philosophical and unhostile sense of humor, and they are creative and inventive in an everyday sense. They are resistant to enculturation, with a degree of detachment and autonomy greater than that found in people who are motivated simply to adjust to and go along with their own in-groups or society. Their value system results from their great acceptance of self and others and easily resolves or transcends many dichotomies (such as work/pleasure, selfish/unselfish, good/bad) that others view as absolute opposites.

Carl R. Rogers, another influential humanistic psychologist, characterized the fully functioning person in ways that parallel Maslow’s description. Rogers’s theory holds that people have an actualizing tendency, which is an inherent striving to actualize, maintain, and enhance the organism. When people function according to valuing processes based within them and are therefore following their actualizing tendency, experiences can be accurately symbolized into awareness and efficiently communicated. Thus, according to Rogers, full humanness involves openness to experiences of all kinds without distorting them. People thus open to experience will show a flexible, existential kind of living that allows change, adaptability, and a sense of flow. These people trust their own internal feelings of what is right, and they use the self as their basis for and guide to behavior. Rogers, like Maslow, holds that such people do not necessarily adjust or conform to cultural prescriptions, but nevertheless they do live constructively.

Rogers, Maslow, and most self-actualization theorists present an optimistic and favorable view of human nature. Unlike Sigmund Freud and classical psychoanalysts, who believed humans to be basically irrational and human impulses to require control through socialization and other societal constraints, self-actualization theorists regard human nature as constructive, trustworthy, positive, forward moving, rational, and possessing an inherent capacity to realize or actualize itself.

Positive and Negative Reaction

Although Maslow approached his study of growing individuals from a somewhat more absolute, rational theoretical perspective than Rogers, who came from a more relativistic, phenomenological, and clinical direction, the theorizing and empirical observations of both psychologists converge on a similar description of a self-actualizing or a fully functioning person who makes full use of capacities and potentialities. Such descriptions have aroused much positive as well as negative reaction. One reason is the implicit suggestion that humankind can or should be self-actualizing. The values of actualizing one’s self—of fulfilling one’s potentials and possessing the characteristics described by Maslow and Rogers—are always implied. Thus, self-actualization is more than a psychological construct; it becomes a possible ethic. Many humanistic proponents have viewed values as necessary in their theorizing; Maslow made an impassioned plea that values, crucial to the development of humanistic psychology, be integrated into science.

Critics of self-actualization theory have argued that it reflects the theorists’ own values and individualist ideology; that it neglects sociohistorical and cultural changes by being rooted in unchanging biology; that there may be social-class or cultural bias in the descriptions; that the concept may be misused and encourage the creation of a cultural aristocracy of “superior” people; and that many people may well choose an ideal self that does not match Maslow’s characterization. In addition, critics have misunderstood the concept by erroneously thinking that self-actualizing is synonymous with selfishness and self-indulgence or is consistent with asocial or antisocial behavior. In fact, Maslow and Rogers described self-actualizers as not being overly concerned with themselves, but as typically engaged in larger issues and problems such as poverty, bigotry, warfare, and environmental concerns; as having a highly ethical nature; and as having relationships with others that have a positive and even therapeutic quality.

The various criticisms and arguments surrounding self-actualization have led to clarifications and improvements in understanding the concept, and they attest to the vitality of this major, provocative, and influential psychological construct.

A Positive Growth Model

Self-actualization presents a growth model that can be and has been used in diverse areas such as counseling, education, and business. In addition, there are implications for people’s way of conceptualizing humankind and for structuring institutions and organizing society.

As a model for therapists and counselors and their clients, self-actualization is an alternative to the medical or illness model, which implies that the person coming to the therapist is beset by disease and requires a cure, often from some external source or authority. The self-actualization model represents a positive process, a fostering of strengths. It is concerned with growth choices, self-knowledge, being fully human, and realizing one’s potential; yet it also encompasses an understanding of anxiety, defenses, and obstacles to growth. Psychological education, facilitation of growth, self-help and self-learning, and counseling to deal with problems of living and with dysfunctional defenses all are implied in the self-actualization model for human fulfillment and actualization of potentials. This model also avoids problems associated with an adjustment model, in which therapists may socialize conformity or adjustment to a particular status quo or societal mainstream.

Rogers employed the model in his nondirective, person-centered therapy, later called the person-centered approach. Grounded in trust and emphasizing the therapist’s unconditional positive regard, empathy, and genuineness, this therapy system allows the client’s natural and healthy growth tendencies and organismic valuing processes to determine choices and behaviors. Much research has supported the importance of these therapist characteristics and has documented the increased congruence and process of growth of clients, beginning with Rogers’s own empirical research explorations. Rogers’s approach to counseling has become one of the most influential in the psychotherapy field.

Use in Workplace Management

Maslow’s application of self-actualization theory to management represents another very influential contribution. Douglas McGregor described a humanistic theory of management (theory Y) that respects human rights and treats workers as individuals. This theory was contrasted with theory X, a managerial view that holds that people dislike work and must therefore be controlled, coerced, conditioned, or externally reinforced to obtain high work productivity. Maslow’s own book on management assumes the existence of higher needs in all workers that, if met in the world of work, would demonstrate the inherent creativity and responsibility of workers and result in greater satisfaction, increased self-direction, and also greater work productivity. Many influential management theorists, including McGregor, Rensis Likert, and Chris Argyris, have acknowledged Maslow’s influence. Many field and research studies have supported the value of the self-actualization model as applied to management. Maslow contended that such enlightened management policies are necessary for interacting with a growing, actualizing population; in the world of work, as elsewhere, the highest levels of efficiency can be obtained only by taking full account of the need for self-actualization that is present in everyone.

Examining Synergic Societies

One of the major conclusions and implications stemming from the self-actualization model is that a synergic society can evolve naturally from the present social system; such a society would be one in which every person may reach a high level of fulfillment.

Ruth Benedict
tried to account for differences in societies that related to the overall human fulfillment they could afford their citizens. She prepared brief descriptions of four pairs of cultures. One of each pair was an insecure society, described as nasty, surly, and anxious, with low levels of moral behavior and high levels of hatred and aggression. The contrasting culture was a secure one, described as comfortable, showing affection and niceness. The concept of synergy differentiated these two groups. In high-synergy societies, social arrangements allowed for mutually reinforcing acts that would benefit both individual people and the group; these societies were characterized by nonaggression and cooperation. In low-synergy societies, the social structure provided for mutually opposed and counteractive acts, whereby one individual could or must benefit at the expense of others; these were the cultures in which aggression, insecurity, and rivalry were conspicuous.

Roderic Gorney described how the absolute amount of wealth in a society did not determine the degree of synergy or quality of life in that society. More crucial, he found, were the economic arrangements within the society—whether the resources were concentrated among a “have” group (low synergy) or were dispersed widely to all (high synergy). Gorney argued that low-synergy arrangements in societies promoted higher levels of aggression and mental disorder. Thus, to minimize aggression and mental disorder and to promote self-development and zestful investment in living and learning, Gorney specified that a society should increase the degree of synergy fostered by its institutions.

Thus, the self-actualization model and theory have clear implications for societies and their political and economic structures. The model suggests action and implies consequences. It stresses a particular type of relationship between the society and the individual as a social being. The commingling of individual and social concerns and involvements translates self-actualization theory into practical consequences and is precisely what Maslow described as characterizing his self-actualizers. Self-actualizing people easily resolve superficial dichotomies, and choices are not inevitably seen as “either/or.” Work and play, lust and love, self-love and love for others need not be opposites. Maslow described the individual-societal holism by noting that self-actualizing people were not only the best experiencers but also the most compassionate people, the great reformers of society, and the most effective workers against injustice, inequality, and other social ills.

Thus, what self-actualization theory suggests is an integration of self-improvement and social zeal; Maslow held that both can occur simultaneously.

Influences and Contributors

The development of the self-actualization concept was influenced by many sources. Carl Jung, Otto Rank, and Alfred Adler, departing from Freud’s classical psychoanalytic formulations, emphasized the importance of individuality and social dimensions. Jung, credited with being the first to use the term “self-actualization,” developed the concept of the self as a goal of life; self-actualization meant a complete differentiation and harmonious blending of the many aspects of personality. Rank emphasized the necessity of expressing one’s individuality to be creative. Adler described self-actualization motives with the concept of striving for superiority or for perfection; this innate striving, or great upward drive, was a prepotent dynamic principle of human development. Adler also believed that a constructive working toward perfection (of self and society) would result from a loving, trustworthy early social environment.

Kurt Goldstein, the first psychologist who explicitly used self-actualization as the master motive or most basic sovereign drive, was a leading exponent of organismic theory; this approach emphasized unity, consistency, coherence, and integrity of normal personality. Goldstein held self-actualization to be a universal phenomenon; all organisms tend to actualize their individual capacities and inner natures as much as possible. Prescott Lecky also propounded the achievement of a unified and self-consistent organization as the one developmental goal; his concepts of self-consistency and unified personality have much in common with organismic theory. Later, Gordon Allport stressed methods for studying the unique and undivided personality; he described motivation for normal adults as functionally autonomous, and in the individual’s conscious awareness. Fritz Perls’s Gestalt therapy emphasized here-and-now awareness and integrated personality.

Sociology and cultural anthropology influenced other theorists. Karen Horney spoke of the real self and its realization; Erich Fromm wrote of the “productive orientation,” combining productive work and productive love; and David Riesman described the autonomous person and theorized about inner- and other-directed personalities. Arthur Combs and Donald Snygg, influenced by the phenomenological approach, emphasized the maintenance and enhancement of the self as the inclusive human need motivating all behavior. Their description of the adequate self is quite similar to the contemporary description of self-actualization.

Existentialist views (existential psychology), emphasizing the present, free will, values and ultimate concerns, and subjective experience as a sufficient criterion of truth, influenced conceptualizing about self-actualization. Rollo May’s description of existential being is important in this respect.

From all these sources came the backdrop for the modern description of self-actualization: the emphasis on the uniqueness of the individual; a holistic, organismic, and phenomenological approach to human experience and conduct; and the need to discover a real self and to express, develop, and actualize that self.

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