Tuesday Jun 10, 2003

“I was awfully curious to find out why I didn’t go insane.” 

—Abraham Maslow (1908 - 1970), one of the founders of humanistic psychology

Instead of focusing on pathology, or why things didn’t work, he felt it was more important to study healthy individuals in both mind and body—and what made them tick.

Maslow saw that the needs of human beings are arranged like a ladder, or a pyramid. The most basic needs, at the bottom, were physical—air, water, food, sex. Then came safety needs—security, stability—followed by psychological, or social needs—for belonging, love, and acceptance. At the top rung of the ladder, or the apex of the pyramid, there were the self-actualizing needs—the need to fulfill oneself, to become all that one is capable of becoming.

The great painter, Wassily Kandinsky, also used a pyramid in his book, Concerning the Spiritual in Art. At the base of the pyramid were the artists of taste and the art most understood by the public; at the apex, was the visionary, the true artist, and the art least understood.»