What personal experiences influenced Maslow’s approach to psychology?
Two psychologists who worked in the field of humanistic psychology are Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow. Abraham is also known as the humanistic psychology’s spiritual father. He studied a handful of outstanding people to analyze their base of difference from the other normal people. Maslow was enrolled as a psychology professor, the subject, to which he was not familiar with. The course that had to teach did not fascinate him much.
Hence, he turned away from it and got transferred to Wisconsin university. He started with his own childhood stories; how he used to escape from the awful situation by reading books. Hence, he became the first psychologist to study the human’s positive aspects. He determined his work that would be helpful for humans, for developing their personalities and positive attitude towards life.
The term used to describe this situation is self-actualization. Maslow proposed that every individual possess an inborn inclination towards the self-actualization. According to him, the self-actualization in an adult can be developed only when sufficient love is achieved in the childhood.
Bad parenting results in loss of self-actualization. This concept of Rogers, however, failed because of less subject size. Later other experiments were performed and it was observed that the people who are satisfied in their belongingness, love, health and wealth are less likely to develop neurotic disorders.