Daily Times

Humans are still unrecognisable for our collective consciousness and the ultimate need of a human is still unknown. When you have achieved something, actually you have lost it, that’s why the ultimate goal of human life is still unknown. Religious leaders, philosophers and psychologists try to find the essence of human longing and they have temporary succeeded but not completely. The renowned American psychologist, Mr Abraham Maslow, has done an exceptional work about human needs. Later, his work recognised by the technical term of “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.”

Today, I am elaborating in a critical scenario the special psychoanalysis of Maslow’s gestalt about human behaviour and mind. Actually, Maslow has discovered a human as a psycho-somatic phenomenon, which gradually elevates biological needs to the pure consciousness. According to the Maslow’s psychoanalysis, the survival of fittest of a human is surrounding in five different stages i. e. hierarchy of needs. The first need of a human is physiological. This means a human cannot survive and grow without biological needs like air, water, food, sleep, clothing, shelter and reproduction.

The second basic need of a human is safety, like health, personal security, employment, resources and property. The third need of a human is love and belonging, like the sense of connection, friendship, intimacy and family. The fourth need for a human is self-esteem, like freedom, strength, recognition, status, prestige and self-respect. The fifth and last human need is self-actualisation, i. e. access to the pure consciousness of fulfilment. After self-actualisation, Maslow did not mention any other higher human need or longing.

Now, I am remembering the rhyme of kids which has been faded today, “early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” Similarly, according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a man can gain self-actualisation but he can never get the real happiness and original blissfulness. Early to bed and early to rise no doubt makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise, but what is the guarantee that a healthy, wealthy and a wise man also would be happy?

Self-actualisation, according to Maslow, is the highest level of psychological development where the “actualisation” of full personal potential is achieved

That is a genuine problem with humans. A man can everything achieve in his life, like money, power, recognition and intelligence but he can not achieve the real blissfulness. Self-actualisation, according to Maslow, is the highest level of psychological development where the “actualisation” of full personal potential is achieved, which occurs only after basic and mental needs have been fulfilled. That is the problem, now who would decide how much power and prestige is recognised as a need for a person? 99 per cent of powerful persons want to become more powerful, more strong, so contentment is an idea so far. Maslow defined self-actualisation to be “the desire for self-fulfilment, namely the tendency for him ‘the individual’ to become actualised in what he is potential. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.” He used the term to describe a desire, not a driving force, that could lead to realising one’s capabilities. He did not feel that self-actualisation determined one’s life; rather, he felt that it gave the individual a desire, or motivation to achieve budding ambitions. Maslow’s idea of self-actualisation has been commonly interpreted as “the full realisation of one’s potential” and of one’s “true self.” Actually, my concern is the only distance between needs and fulfilment. Someone says that I want to a new model of Mercedes because it is my basic need of belonging, so at this very point, how to control that need and how to convince that person for contentment?

Without contentment, you cannot define a need. Maslow did not solve that essential problem of a human need. He just interpreted the physical and psychological human needs. An enlightened person can never be content because his intellect cannot eradicate to his utmost desire. Self-actualisation is simply an awakening of human consciousness and that is not a fulfilment of desire. It is awareness about desire and will. So self-actualisation is not transcendental but a recognition of own potentials. Something that happens beyond self-actualisation is the achievement of contentment. Intellect always manipulates the power of fulfilment of a human and that is an essential problem with humans. Physiology, safety, belonging, self-esteem and self-actualisation is utterly futile without the achievement of contentment. A person who does not achieve the contentment he cannot reach the state of blissfulness. There is no doubt the survival of a human is more important than safety, belonging and enlightenment but without the realisation of self-contentment human life quite similar to animal life. Self-actualisation is actually self-contentment.

The writer is a psychologist and a polymath