feminine. People engage in sexual activity to satisfy one or any combination
of these needs.
The Study of Psychologically Healthy People
Psychologists traditionally turn their attention to people suffering from psy-chological problems. But Maslow ’s research looked in the opposite direction.
He asked, What are self-actualized people like, and what can we learn fromthem? To answer these questions, Maslow interviewed people he knew who
appeared to have satisfied their need for self-actualization. He also turned to
records and documents to learn about historic figures who seemed to have
lived a self-actualized life. That list included Thomas Jefferson, AlbertEinstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Albert Schweitzer. By his own admission,
Maslow ’s methods were far from scientifically rigorous. Rather than using
statistical analyses, he relied on what he called “holistic analysis. ”He consid-
ered all of the information he collected about an individual and arrived at hisown general impressions of that person. From these impressions, he created a
list of characteristics common to psychologically healthy people.
What are self-actualized people like? You may notice as we go through
some of the list that these individuals sound a lot like the fully functioning
people described by Rogers. To begin, self-actualized people tend to accept
themselves for what they are. They admit to personal weaknesses, and they
work to improve themselves where they can. But because of this self-
acceptance, they don ’t spend a lot of time worrying or feeling guilty about
the bad things they have done. They aren ’t perfect, but they respect and feel
good about themselves for what they are.
Psychologically healthy people are also less restricted by cultural norms and
customs than the average person. They express their thoughts and desires in a
way that suits them, regardless of whether society approves. This freedom
from social expectations is especially evident when it comes to self-expression.
Self-actualized people often dress differently, live differently and spend their
free time differently than the typical citizen. It ’s not that they are insensitive
to or unaware of social rules and societal expectations. On the contrary,
Maslow described them as very perceptive. They understand how they are
“supposed ”to act. They simply feel little need to structure their lives like
everyone else ’s.
Maslow was surprised to find that every psychologically healthy person
he studied was in some way quite creative. But not all expressed their creativ-
ity through traditional outlets like poetry and art. Rather, they often exhib-ited what he called self-actualizing creativity . Self-actualizing creativity shows
up in the way people approach routine tasks. A self-actualized teacher devel-ops innovative ways to communicate ideas to students. A self-actualizedbusinessperson thinks of clever ways to improve sales. Maslow compared
self-actualizing creativity with the spontaneous way a child interacts with the
world. Just as a child uses fresh and naïve eyes to discover the little thingsthat make the world such an interesting place, self-actualizing people look at
their world in an open-eyed way that helps them find new solutions to old
problems.“Self-actualizing in-
dividuals have more
free will than average
people. ”
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