Maslow's Pyramid

I had been working for a number of years with teenagers under the supervision of the juvenile justice system when I had the opportunity to give presentations at a high school. One of the classrooms to which I talked was an advanced placement class. These students were so much more mature and attentive than the teens I generally dealt with that I suddenly realized how little I knew about healthy adolescents.

I have a strong feeling that mental health professionals in general have a rather jaded view of humanity which is product of their overexposure to dysfunctional individuals and groups. The increasing integration of addiction professionals into the mental health community has corresponded with an increase in the diagnosis of mental health disorders in substance disordered individuals. Coincidence? Perhaps. Still even the most objective professionals tend to identify the disorders they have been trained to find.

One of my heroes is the late American psychologist, Abraham Maslow. Maslow was the first psychologist to study healthy people. I believe that understanding Maslow's ideas is important. In my view understanding Maslow is a prerequisite to understanding the addiction process. Like many prerequisites it's full importance to what comes later is not self evident so please bear with me and have faith that what follows will help later with your comprehension of addiction.

Maslow's called his model of human psychology "The Hierarchy of Needs." Most people call his model "Maslow's Pyramid" (for obvious reasons). Maslow put forward the idea that people do the things they do in order to get their needs met. He said these needs are hierarchical in nature. Meeting the most basic needs takes precedence over meeting less basic needs. Meeting the needs approaching the summit of the hierarchy is rewarding in ways vastly different than the rewards of meeting the needs at the base of the hierarchy. The model graphically depicts the necessity of meeting the more basic needs (those near the base) before the higher level needs can be met. After all you cannot build on nothing. Only after all the lower level needs have been met can the uppermost level of needs be addressed. This is why hardly anybody ever gets these needs met!

At the base of Maslow's Pyramid are the Physical Needs. These most basic needs are concerned with immediate survival. They include, food, water, and respiration. Most of the time we take these for granted. We just assume these needs will be met. Therefore most of us are not motivated on a day to day basis by these most basic needs. Natural disasters can alter our motivations. Following natural disasters people who had taken these most basic needs for granted may suddenly be motivated by hunger or thirst. In the case of fire they may be motivated by the need to respire.

The next level on the Hierarchy is the level of Safety and Shelter Needs. People sometimes have difficulty understanding why food and shelter are on different levels of the Pyramid. The reason is, starving people (or animals) will risk their safety and shelter in order to eat. For instance during the initial U.S. assault on Afghanistan our forces dropped both bombs and rations. Cluster bombs were dispersed widely as were packages of food. Sometimes the cluster bombs did not explode immediately on impact. Both the bombs and the food aid were contained in yellow packages. Starving Afghans would risk being blown to smithereens in order to get something to eat. This dire example clearly illustrates why these two needs are on different levels of Maslow's Pyramid.  http://articles.cnn.com/2001-11-01/us/ret.afghan.fooddrops_1_cluster-bombs-unexploded-cluster-bomblets?_s=PM:US

The two levels of needs described above are collectively known as the Survival Needs. This is because we will not survive if these two levels of needs go unmet. Meeting the Physical Needs is an immanent requirement for survival whereas meeting Safety and Shelter Needs is a long-term survival requirement.

The next level on the Hierarchy of Needs is the Belonging Needs. Meeting these needs is not required for survival. Survival without a sense of belonging would however be a fairly bleak prospect. Most of us have known the misery of loneliness at some time or another. We have a strong desire for love and companionship. Life does not seem worthwhile without these needs being met. Ideally our need to belong will be met through having a happy and healthy family, wholesome love relationships and high quality friendships. The Belonging Needs are so strong that people frequently settle for less than ideal friendships, less than ideal relationships and less than ideal families. Some people even settle for downright unhealthy situations just in order to fit in, belong or experience a twisted sort of affection.

Once we experience belonging another set of needs arise. These are the Esteem Needs. Esteem Needs are the desire for both self-respect and the respect or admiration of others. If you are a parent you probably want your children's respect. If you have parents you probably would like them to be proud of you. If you are in a relationship you most likely want your other half to appreciate you and are displeased if they take you for granted. Likewise as an employee you want your employer to appreciate your hard work. If you supervise others you also want their respect. Maslow said most of us spend our time trying to get these needs met. Personally I think he may have been a little optimistic, it seems to me that lots of people are just trying to survive (Maslow was an American living at a time when our economy was booming).

This is an appropriate point to reinforce the point that meeting higher level needs depends upon having all the lower level needs met. If a person is starving to death they will be desperate for food, any food. They would even be willing to eat from a dumpster if that was the only place they could find something to eat. If another person came across them eating from a dumpster and dared to question how they could behave in such a demeaning manner, their understandable response might be, "What are you talking about? I'm starving to death!" If you are starving your life is based on meeting your Physical Needs and someone suggesting your choice of cuisine is demeaning (Esteem Needs) would make no sense at all! If you are living at the level of Physical Needs you do not experience Esteem Needs. On the other hand offering shelter to a starving person might pique their curiosity and they will probably be interested once they have eaten their fill. This will be important later when looking at addiction.

Just as in the Belonging Needs it would be nice if people always achieved their Esteem Needs in healthy ways. This is unfortunately not always the case. If a child cannot impress his parents through high achievement he may start impressing them through low achievement. If a person cannot earn respect in healthy ways they may earn it in unhealthy ways such as bullying others. Healthy means of meeting the Esteem Needs are likely more sustainable than unhealthy means. Still advertisers have learned to sell us all kinds of unnecessarily expensive products based on our desire to impress ourselves and others. Achievement is the true route to meeting our Esteem Needs, and the only sustainable method in the long-run.

The highest level on Maslow's Pyramid is the Self-Actualization Needs. Abraham Maslow estimated that less than 1% of people ever meet their Self-Actualization Needs. Most will never even be aware of these needs. The lucky Self-Actualized few have a wonderful feeling of connection. They know they are fulfilling their special purpose. They believe they are living the life they were born to live. They are becoming the people whom their creator (if they believe in one) had in mind on the day they were born!

This is a cursory examination of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow was unique in studying healthy people and what motivates healthy individuals. His views are at once commonsense, idealistic and optimistic. Next we will use Maslow's concepts to help us understand the process of addiction.




Russell P. Mai, LCDC, AAC