Explain Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

  Each individual has their own potential, strengths, talents and inner desires. The success and happiness of the individual are influenced by an understanding of these and taking steps to realize this inner self with its full potential. Maslow (1954) has used the term self-actualization as a higher order psychological need that people strive towards once the lower order needs are satisfied for them. He has proposed a need hierarchy model to explain the hierarchical structure of human needs. The model in the form of a pyramid structure presents the lower order needs at the bottom proceeding to higher order needs towards the top.

The physiological needs at the bottom are the most basic needs that are required to be satisfied first before one thinks of other needs. Similarly, one can think of self-esteem needs only when all the other lower level needs are satisfied. Selfactualization is the highest need that depends on the satisfaction of all other needs below it and going beyond it. It represents fulfilling all one’s desires, capacities, potentials etc. For this, one needs first to gain a complete understanding of oneself, assessing oneself accurately, controlling one’s emotions, putting confidence on oneself, having respect and regard for oneself, and an intense desire or drive to work towards achieving one’s goals and realizing one’s potentials.

However, it may be pointed out here that Maslow’s theory has also been criticized on the ground that we do have evidence for the fact that people may strive towards higher needs even in the absence of satisfaction of lower level needs. Thus, we can see examples of famous painters/artists or writers who excelled despite their poverty and deficiency in basic resources. So, it may not always be a hierarchical order of satisfaction of needs

As Maslow (1954) puts it, “what a man can be, he must be. He must be true to his own nature. This need we may call self-actualization…..it is the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.” Thus, self-actualization can be described as self-fulfillment, to fulfill the potentials what the individual is capable of achieving.

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