L. Michael Hall
November 19, 2007
MASLOW’S
REVOLUTIONARY APPROACH
When I read the first biography of Abraham Maslow I discovered that way back in the late 1930s, after he earned his doctorate and started teaching psychology as a young professor, he wrote a book on abnormal psychology. Having spent years reading in abnormal psychology and having had my fill of such books, I was not interested in reading another book on how people become neurotic, sick, and suffer various pathologies. Not even Maslow’s book.
In the meantime I began conducting the Self-Actualization Workshop and using Day 4 to prepare Neuro-Semantic Trainers to step up to teaching, presenting, and training self-actualization as we create a new human potential movement. And as part of that I’ve been encouraging them to read Toward a Psychology of Being by Maslow as well as other books.
Well, some of the trainers have really gotten into it! Recently while in Australia, Steve Hodgson told me about the hundreds of dollars that he has spent acquiring all of the Maslow books. And every week, others are writing to say that they have finished their second, or third, or fourth book. More recently, while in Mexico, Omar Salom showed me the stack of Maslow books he purchased, one of which is that first and original book by Maslow, Principles of Abnormal Psychology: The Dynamics of Psychic Illness (1941) by Abraham Maslow and Bela Mittelmann. I took that book with me as well as several others to read, for example, Dominance, Self-Esteem, Self-Actualization: Germinal Papes of A.H. Maslow.
This past week I began reading Abnormal Psychology and I got a big shock. Yes, it is about pathology; yet it is so much more. From page one Maslow’s approach integrate cultural anthropology of Ruth Benedict, gestalt psychology of Max Wertheimer, social psychology of Alfred Adler! And surprise of surprise—in his Foreword he thanks Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead for the conversations he had with them! Then he quotes Milton Erickson as he began chapter four on unconscious psychological processes of conflict!
Ah, more NLP roots! More of the unrevealed history of NLP that no one to date has revealed. Yet there’s more. To understand abnormality, Maslow did something revolutionary in 1940, he first set out "manifestations of psychological health (‘normality’)" (p. 14). That was absolutely revolutionary in that time. It was revolutionary first of all because there was almost nothing known, studied, or established about psychological health. Secondly, it was revolutionary because he used psychological health as his reference point.
Now if you don’t know it, Maslow got his doctorate as a Behaviorist and was the very first research student in the laboratory of Harry Harlow who did the studies of chimanzees and their bonding. It was this background that eventually led him to start thinking about "good specimens" among humans. After all, Behaviorists typically study animal behavior by finding the best specimens and build their model from there. Later Maslow would model the best specimens of psychologically heathy humans—self-actualizers.
In Abnormal Psychology Maslow quoted numerous animal studies is he defined the heart of pathology. And this also was revolutionary. Instead of starting from the assumptions of Freud and Watson, Maslow defined pathology as distorted and inadequate attempts to solve the problems of life. That’s great! It means that pathology has a positive intention! Its design is to cope with life, to try to adapt to the challenges before us, and to master life’s problems.
In other words, pathology is not "bad" or "evil." If you have wondered about the source of the NLP presupposition, "Behind every behavior is a positive intention," wonder no longer! What Maslow discovered was that in a context of stress when there is an "inability to master the problem presented, an impossibility of escape from the problem," an inner sense of helplessness arises. It is the conflict between needing to solve the problem and the inability to solve it that creates the various forms of pathology.
Do you see the brilliance in that? Let me quote from Maslow directly:
"... healthy behavior and pathological behavior are best conceived of in terms of force, desire, goal, or drive. The individual wants something, or feels driven. Even if obstacles arise, he persists in pursing the goal. He has to cope with the problems that confront him. He wants to solve them, or rather he feels forced to solve them." (p. 25)
"In the healthy reaction the individual usually feels that he is able ultimately to master the task confronting him. In the pathological reaction the individual feels that he has not adequate strength to dare even to want his goal. In other words, a healthy personality pursuing a goal does so actively, dynamically, with his whole personality. In the case of a pathological reaction, the feeling of helplessness assumes great dynamic importance; it becomes an urgent, threatening force, and the individual feels forced to take all sorts of measures to meet the situation." (p. 25, italics added)
This "the concept of capability and of helplessness" predominates in the first hundred pages of the book. And yet it would take psychology another thirty years to begin looking for a person’s strengths, resources, and capabilities and invent the "solution focused" and "strength-based" therapies. Yet Maslow was there first. He said that when things go wrong in human personality, the heart of the problem goes back to the feeling of helplessness, worthlessness, and catastrophic expectations (p. 72). These things block and frustrate (chapter 5) a person from successfully solving the problem of effectively gratifying one’s basic needs.
Reading all of this reinforces my appreciation of why APG begins with meta-stating a person’s sense of power to create a solid "power zone" and then meta-stating a person’s sense of personal value with unconditional positive regard. These two processes enable a person to feel in control of his or her life, mind, choices, and development of capabilities and a solid sense of self as valuable, loved, worthwhile, and with innate dignity. When you begin there, you eliminate the great majority of neurotic pathology that diminishes people. When you begin there, you set the foundation for effective coping that leads to mastery and to self-actualizing as a way of living.
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The Ultimate Self-Actualization Workshop: Unleashing Potentials for Peak Performance is the newest Neuro-Semantic Training . We launched it at the beginning of 2007 and have now presented it in the USA, Australia, South Africa, Mexico, Switzerland and other places. In May 2008 — many other Neuro-Semantic Trainers besides myself will be launching the new human potential movement. Look for workshops, seminars, and presentations in your area.
L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.
Neuro-Semantics Ltd., Executive Director
ISNS — International Society of Neuro-Semantics
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