Abraham Maslow

Abraham Harold Maslow was born on 1 April 1908 in Brooklyn, New York, the eldest of seven children of Jewish immigrants from Russia. He described his childhood as unhappy and later recalled feeling isolated in his early years. He initially studied law before shifting to psychology, completing his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees at the University of Wisconsin, where he studied under Edward Thorndike, Harry Harlow, and others, and graduated in 1934.

After teaching at Brooklyn College, Maslow moved to Brandeis University in 1951, where he became chair of the psychology department and spent much of his career. He was also a fellow at the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute and the Laughlin Foundation.

Maslow is most widely associated with the hierarchy of needs, which he introduced in a 1943 paper titled "A Theory of Human Motivation." The theory proposed that human motivations are arranged in a hierarchy from basic physiological needs at the base, through safety, social belonging, and esteem, to self-actualization at the apex. Maslow argued that lower-level needs must generally be met before higher-level needs become motivating. The concept of self-actualization, describing the realization of an individual's full potential, became central to his framework.

In his later work, including Motivation and Personality (1954) and Toward a Psychology of Being (1962), Maslow explored peak experiences, which he described as moments of heightened awareness and fulfilment, and the characteristics of self-actualizing individuals. He drew on the study of people he judged to be psychologically healthy rather than focusing primarily on clinical populations.

Maslow was one of the founders of humanistic psychology, sometimes described as a third force in psychology alongside psychoanalysis and behaviorism, which emphasized human potential, subjective experience, and the pursuit of meaning.

He served as president of the American Psychological Association in 1967. His ideas were applied across fields including education, management, and organizational behavior.

Maslow died of a heart attack on 8 June 1970 in Menlo Park, California.