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An approach to human understanding in relation to William Golding ’ s Lord of the Flies. Part One Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy of needs. Maslow ’ s Ideas. Abraham Maslow 1908-1970
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An approach to human understandingin relation to William Golding’s Lord of the Flies
Maslow’s Ideas • Abraham Maslow 1908-1970 • Most early psychologists studied people who had psychological problems, but Abraham Maslow studied successful people. • Maslow decided that people want to be happy and loving, but they have particular needs that they must meet before they can act unselfishly.
Maslow stated… • “To oversimplify the matter somewhat, it is as if Freud supplied to us the sick half of psychology, and we must now fill it out with the healthy half.”
Maslow’s Ideas Cont. • Maslow said that most people want more than they have. • Once a person met their most basic needs, they would develop higher needs. • Maslow said,“As one desire is satisfied, another pops up in its place.”
Physiological needs • Biological necessities such as food, water, and oxygen. These needs are the strongest because a person would die if they were not met.
Safety needs • People feel unsafe during emergencies, or times of disorder like rioting. Children more commonly do not have this need met when they feel afraid.
Love and Belonging Needs • The need to escape loneliness and alienation, to give and receive love, and a sense of belonging.
Esteem Needs • The need to feel valuable, to have self-respect and the respect of others. If a person does not fulfill their esteem needs, they feel inferior, weak, helpless, and worthless.
Self-Actualization Needs • Maslow taught that a very small group of people reach a level called self-actualization, where all of their needs are met. Maslow described self-actualization as a person finding his/her “calling.” He said, “a musician must make music, an artist must paint, and a poet must write.”
Worth Mentioning: • Many people confuse self-actualization with fame or fortune, but often this is not the case. While wealthy or celebrated people might reach self-actualization, many psychologists believe that most people who have reached the highest level of happiness are unknown beyond their circle of family and friends. • Societies develop when people reach a particular level in Maslow’s hierarchy. Once people meet their physiological needs and they feel safe, they begin to develop a culture and an advanced civilization.
Characteristics of Self-Actualized Individuals • More efficient perception of reality • Acceptance (of self, others and world) • Spontaneity and naturalness • Problem-centered rather than ego-centered • Need for privacy and being detached from situations • Independence from both cultural and environmental influences • Freshness of appreciation of all experiences • Having mystical or peak experiences • Feelings of kinship to others • Deep relationships with others • Democratic attitudes
Characteristics of Self-Actualized Individuals Continued… • Distinguishing between means and ends, good and evil • Philosophical, not hostile, sense of humor • Self-actualizing forms of creativity • Forming attitudes and values independently of culture
With 23 volumes of collected works on psychology over a 40 year period, Freud has been among the most prolific and influential of our theorists. His work can often fall into four broad categories:
theories and observations on psychopathology, neurotic etiology, and treatment: clinical psychiatry • theories and examples relating to the psycho-dynamics of interpretation: hermeneutics (interpretations of texts) • theories and reconstruction concerning early childhood and its relation to adult character: personality development • theories and imaginative discussions of cultural systems, religion, art, and literature: cultural psychology
Conscious Preconscious Unconscious Id Ego Superego Not all of Freud's jargon is worth memorizing.You should be familiar with major Freudian concepts:
Conscious • The actual contents of awareness; i.e., what one is conscious of at a given moment. • Freud's way of talking about "the conscious" is similar to what a cognitive psychologist means by attention.
Preconscious • The entire set of contents of the mind accessible to consciousness but not in awareness at the moment; i.e., what is descriptively unconscious but not blocked from access by repression or other psychological defenses. • Freud sometimes compared conscious attention to a sensory process, and the Pcs. as the vast majority of material on which the "sense organ" of consciousness was not directed.
Unconscious • Mental processes not acccessible to consciousness by direct means, i.e., by turning attention to them. Their existence must thus be inferred through examination of gaps in consciousness, symptoms, dreams, etc. • The Ucs. is said to be dynamically, not merely descriptively, un-conscious, since its contents are blocked from consciousness by repression.
Structure of the Mind Freud came to see personality as having three aspects, which work together to produce all of our complex behaviors: • ID • EGO • SUPEREGO
Id (or It) • Irrational and emotional part of the mind. • The primitive mind: all the basic needs and feelings. • Pleasure Principle: • “I want it and I want it all now”
Ego (or I) • Rational part of the mind. • “You can’t always get what you want” • Reality Principle • Realizes the need for compromise and negotiates. • Id's pleasures but reasonable; bear the long-term consequences in mind. • Denies: • Instant gratification • Pious delaying of gratification.
Superego (or the Over I) • The Superego is the last part of the mind to develop. • Moral part of the mind • Embodiment of parental and societal values. • Stores and enforces rules. • Striving for perfection: may be quite far from reality or possibility. • Power to enforce rules comes from its ability to create anxiety.
Freud brings up the notion of Overdevelopment: • ID: bound up in self-gratification and uncaring to others • EGO: extremely rational and efficient, but cold, boring and distant • SUPEREGO: feels guilty all the time, may even have an insufferably saintly personality
Freud’s concept of personality • According to Freud, the ego dwells in the conscious mind and the id and superego are in the area of our unconscious. Freud argued that our personality should be in a state of dynamic equilibrium (balance) and if there is too much id, superego or a weak ego then an individual will become unbalanced and possibly suffer from psychological difficulties. This is the basis of the psychoanalytic explanation of mental illness.
Open questionUse the descriptions of id, ego and superego, at right & previously explained, to identify the parts of personality involved in the following scenario. You see a pair of shoes in a shop window that you want to buy, but don’t have enough money. Do you ? |a) buy them anyway, and go into debt. |b) resolve never to buy them |c) organize your finances, save enough money to buy the shoes and make the purchase?
Works Referenced • http://faculty.knox.edu/fmcandre/freudoh.gif • www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk/.../02.IL.17.gif • http://www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk/learning_modules/psychology/02.TU.04/?section=11 • http://sensorymetrics.com/2007/02/25/sigmund-freud-ego-less-design-for-better-products • Dowling, Mike, "Maslow at mrdowling.com," available from http://www.mrdowling.com/602-maslow.html ; Internet; updated Saturday, October 23, 2004 .
