Toward a Psychology of Being summary

What makes people neurotic? In Maslow’s view, it tends to stem from deprivation. 

Obviously, all human beings have needs. When they’re deprived of things like water, calcium, or vitamin C, for example, people get sick. But their needs don’t stop there; they also include things like safety, a sense of belonging, love, respect, and prestige. When those needs aren’t fulfilled, people become not physically ill, but neurotic.

Think back to the last time you felt strongly motivated to do something. Did that mental state feel annoying or undesirable, like something you wanted to get rid of as quickly as possible? If so, you were motivated by a deficiency need. In other words, you felt threatened by a lack of something, and wanted to get rid of, deny, or avoid that feeling. You sought a return to equilibrium. 

But what if you actually liked how that motivated state felt, to the point where you didn’t want it to end?

Self-actualizing people’s impressive achievements aren’t all that sets them apart. Their motivational and cognitive lives are also very different from other people’s. The psychological states that characterize them are what Maslow calls states of Being. 

We’ve already discussed the difference between B-love –⁠ love for the Being of a person or object –⁠ and D-love. The experience of B-love is characterized by a particular type of cognition, which Maslow calls a Cognition of Being, or B-cognition. Though he first observed B-cognition in the context of love, Maslow came to realize that B-cognition is also present in a wide variety of other experiences, which he generalized under the name peak experiences.

If the history of art makes one thing clear, it’s that creativity, talent, and genius are not synonymous with good health. Some of the world’s greatest artists have been psychologically unhealthy individuals –⁠ just think of Wagner, Van Gogh, or Byron. To Maslow, it seemed that health and genius were separate, and that any correlation between them was likely to be weak. 

So how could he then interpret his observation that self-actualizing people are truly psychologically healthy, and because of that, exhibit much greater creativity than others? He could only conclude that the kind of creativity the self-actualized exhibit is unique. 

For thousands of years, people have attempted to construct a value system derived from human nature. They’ve put forth a lot of theories – and in practical terms, all of these have failed. When Maslow was writing, society seemed to be no less sick than it had been in the past. What’s more, its heroes had all disappeared. In the past, cultures had aspirational figures like saints, heroes, knights, or mystics. In both Maslow’s time and today, the paragon to aim for –⁠ if there is one at all –⁠ is the well-adjusted person who has no problems. Not exactly inspiring, is it?

Here’s where the theory of self-actualization comes in. If self-actualization really is the destiny of humankind, self-actualizing people could become society’s new heroes. Average people could model their choices after the choices of self-actualizers, which would in turn increase the health of society as a whole.