Maslow's hierarchy of needs revisited

Abstract

The paper reviews Maslow's hierarchy of prepotent needs and his characterization of the self-actualizing personality. It suggests that since so few among the general population meet Maslow's own criteria for self-actualization, an educational system designed to produce such personalities must fail of its object in an overwhelming percentage of cases. The goal being unreachable, teachers tend to lower their sights and attend only to the lower stages of the hierarchy (security, self-esteem), and thus dilute the cognitive content of learning. Moreover, Maslow's hierarchy is not dialectical, in the sense that the completion of each stage does not necessarily lead to the next level. The self-actualizing personality appears as a mysterious leap from one stage to another, and cannot be engineered from without. As an alternative, the paper suggests a more logical sequence of needs based on the development of rationality.