Facts and Arguments about the Introduction of Initiative and ...

People need food, but also the longer-term assurance of a
food supply (safety needs). People also have a need for direct
and immediate affection (belongingness and love) and for a
wider social belongingness that assures them of being able
to maintain relationships with others into the future as well.
The need to know and to understand
Maslow states, “The desire to know and to understand (...) are
as much personality needs as the ‘basic needs’ we have already
discussed.” (Maslow, 1943a, p. 385) One often sees that the
attempts to satisfy this need are pursued despite enormous
costs and risks. However, Maslow remains unclear about the
exact place this need occupies relative to the other needs. He
frequently omits the need for knowledge and understanding
when summarising the hierarchy of needs. In his 1943 article,
he discusses the need for knowledge and understanding
extensively and stresses that it is a basic need. However, he
remains uncertain about the position this need occupies in the
hierarchy of needs. In my opinion, the ‘need to understand’
must be seen logically as a fifth basic need. The need to know
and to understand will only emerge with full force when the
needs for affection and social connectedness are at least partially
satisfied. Any knowledge will be perceived as hollow
and irrelevant if it is not acquired against the background of
a worthwhile emotional and social life. But the need to know
and understand must still be considered as a basic need, in the
sense that people must turn to the outside world to satisfy this
need (whereas the need for self-fulfilment is satisfied by inner
activity – see below). One could also say that a certain degree
of knowledge and understanding must be acquired before selfactualization
can take place. To that extent, therefore, the need
for knowledge and understanding stands at a more fundamental
level in the hierarchy than the need for self-actualization.
The meta-need: the need for self-actualization
One of Maslow’s central propositions states: every talent is
also a need, and it is actually a need for fulfilment of that talent.
A person who develops normally does not stop at the higher
basic needs, such as the need for social recognition and the
acquisition of knowledge. When these needs have been adequately
satisfied, a new need immediately appears: the desire
to validate ones own aptitudes and talents. This new need is
fundamentally different from the previous five, in the sense
that it cannot be satisfied from the outside world, but only by
the person’s own inner initiative. That is why Maslow talks of
a ‘meta-need’ in this context.
The dividing line between this meta-need and the basic needs,
which have to be satisfied by elements from the outside world,
coincides with the dividing line between intrinsic and external
motivation [see 3-1 and 3-2]. At the moment that the meta-need
becomes the main motivating force, people manifest themselves
as involved beings. The relationship to the outside world
is, as it were, turned inside out. As long as the basic needs operate
as motivators, the outside world exists as a means of satisfying
those needs. When the meta-need becomes the main motivating
force, people themselves become a means of meeting
the needs of the outside world. Whereas the basic needs arise
from what the ‘I’ has (a body and emotions), the meta-need
arises from the connectedness that manifests itself in the ‘I’.
The need for self-actualization, therefore, must not be seen
as hedonistic. It is not about ego-tripping, but rather about
a need for meaning, which can only be found in the service
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of ‘the other’. The meta-need is a need for meaningfulness.
The question of whether existence has meaning cannot be
answered with either a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ at a purely rational-intellectual
level. Meaningfulness arises in the existential service
of ‘the other’, where that service is perceived as a supremely
personal affair. A politician, an artist, a carpenter or a shop
assistant who is driven by the need for self-actualization will
always rediscover this idea of service to another at the heart
of what drives him or her. This drive to serve is part of human
nature, and a person creates meaning for his or her existence
in the measure in which this urge is turned into deeds.
Gratification
In people who have been able to develop in a healthy and
harmonious way, there develops a kind of state of gratification
in relation to the basic needs. “What this means is that,
e.g., a basically satisfied person no longer has the needs for
esteem, love, safety , etc. (...) If we are interested in what actually
motivates us, and not in what has, will, or might motivate
us, then a satisfied need is not a motivator. It must be
considered for all practical purposes simply not to exist, to
have disappeared. This point should be emphasized because
it has been either overlooked or contradicted in every theory
of motivation I know. The perfectly healthy, normal, fortunate
man has no sex needs or hunger needs, or needs for
safety, or for love, or for prestige, or self-esteem, except in
stray moments of quickly passing threat (...) a healthy man is
primarily motivated by his needs to develop and actualize his
fullest potentialities and capacities. If a man has any other
basic needs in any active, chronic sense, then he is simply an
unhealthy man.” (Maslow, 1943a, p. 393-394)
The gratification of a basic need must therefore be distinguished
from the response to a need that occasionally arises.
Everyone will normally eat every day, for instance, but as
long as food supplies are not a problem, hunger will not be
a final motive. In a situation where the need for food and
drink is constantly satisfied, then one can say that these basic
needs are gratified. The needs do not arise as motivators,
even though they must be satisfied from time to time. One
can also say that the basic needs only continue to play a role
as derived motivations. Of course, there will still be striving
for security or acquisition of knowledge, but in essence this
occurs against the background of, or relative to, the need to
fulfil ones potential as an involved being – a need which is
perceived as deeper and of greater importance.
According to Maslow, several needs are already gratified in
the very early years of life. Maslow was impressed by the fact
that, as adults, certain people appeared to be mainly motivated
by the desire for self-actualization, even if this was accompanied
by serious deficits in the area of the basic needs.
This seems to be an exception to the hierarchical order in
which the needs act as motivators: “Perhaps more important
than all these exceptions are the ones that involve ideals, high
social standards, high values and the like. With such values
people become martyrs; they will give up everything for the
sake of a particular ideal, or value. These people may be understood,
at least in part, by reference to one basic concept (or
hypothesis), which may be called ‘increased frustration-tolerance
through early gratification’. People who have been satisfied
in their earlier years seem to develop exceptional power
to withstand present or future thwarting of these needs simply
because they have a strong, healthy character structure
as a result of basic satisfaction. They are the ‘strong’ people
who can easily weather disagreement or opposition, who can