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Abraham Maslow 's Influence On Psychology

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Abraham H. Maslow, is one of the founders of humanistic movement in psychology in late 1950 's. Maslow held a great deal of importance for personal freedom and individuality which would help define psychological health. Maslow felt that psychology before his time was primarily focused on people’s ailments and faults in their personalities. In an interview, Being Abraham Maslow with Warren Bennis, he stated that their was a “huge, big gaping hole in psychology.” When researching psychology was looking for important and precious things like, “Goodness, Nobility, Reason, Science, Loyalty, & Courage.” Maslow preceded the behaviorists, he was quoted saying, “the behaviorists had nothing to do with it, because you don’t find these kind of things in their white rats. Sigmund Freud, “was a disappointed and an unhappy old man.” "The study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy.” (Third Force) He intended to change the way that people talked about psychology and wanted to focus on the positive matters pertaining to people’s everyday lives. Maslow coined the term ‘third force’ for the field of behavioral psychology, being that in theoretical constructs it proceeded Freudian psychoanalysis and Skinnerian behaviorism. Maslow believed that it was unsatisfied needs that motivate human beings, and that the more fundamental levels of needs must be met before one can reach the higher level of satisfaction of

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