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Abraham Maslow

"I have found whenever I ran across authoritarian students that the best thing for me to do was to break their backs immediately." (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)

"This voice which really isn't you but tells you the way the world works is a direct attack on creativity. We have to work to remove it." "When we learn to silence the inner voice that judges yourself and others, there is no limit to what we can accomplish, individually and as part of a team. Absence of judgment makes you more receptive to innovative ideas." (Michael Ray in Maslow on Management, Abraham Maslow)

"Maslow stated that creativity comes from ambiguity, uncertainty, living in the moment, lack of predictability―these qualities caused creativity to flow." (Jackie McGrath in Maslow on Management, Abraham Maslow)

"The correct thing to do with authoritarians is to take them realistically for the bastards they are and then behave toward them as if they were bastards." (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)

"We don't know the answers to the question: What proportion of the population is irreversibly authoritarian?"  (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)

"We will know that our knowledge of the authoritarian character structure is truly scientific when an average authoritarian character will be able to read the information on the subject and the regard his own authoritarian character as undesirable or sick or pathological and will go about trying to get rid of it."   (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)

  "In fact, after a lecture at Sacred Heart in 1962, Abraham Maslow noted in a diary entry that the talk had been 'successful,' and that 'They shouldn't applaud me. They should attack me. If they were fully aware of what I was doing, they would attack.'" The Journals of Abraham Maslow, ed. Richard J. Lowry, p. 132. June 1982, p. 157; (Nuns and Midshipmen by Dr. Gerald L. Atkinson 4 July 2001)

"We have to study the conditions which maximize ought-perceptiveness." "Oughtiness is itself a fact to be perceived." "If we wish to permit the facts to tell us their oughtiness, we must learn to listen to them in a very specific way which can be called Taoistic." (Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature)

"... the age old problem of the relationship between is and ought."  (Abraham Maslow, The Further Reaches of Human Nature)

"Discovering one's real nature is simultaneously an ought quest and an is quest.  An 'Ought-Is-Quest' is a religious quest in the naturalistic sense.  Is becomes the same as ought. Fact becomes the same as value. The world which is becomes the world which ought to be."  (Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature)

"Here the fusion comes not so much from an improvement of actuality, the is, but from a scaling down of the ought, from a redefining of expectations so that they come closer and closer to actuality and therefore to attainability." (Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature)

"'fusion-words' . . . to solve the 'is' and 'ought' problem."  [A] "'heuristic' . . . part of the new humanistic Weltanschauung."  [Examples:] "mature, evolved, developed, stunted, crippled, fully functioning, graceful, awkward, clumsy." "The process of acceptance.... Move toward resignation [giving up hope on set standards which seem to be interfering with the process] .... Move toward thinking [freedom in thinking, to ponder those things previously unthought-of, due to ridged standards preventing inquiry, influenced by approval of actions by others we now relate with or seek to relate with, actions which were formerly unapproved of].... "After all that's not so bad. It's really quite human . . ."  (Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature)

"The more 'is' something becomes [the more the parent demands obedience], the more 'ought' it becomes [the more the child wants his way], the louder it 'calls for' particular action [the more the child looks for ways to escape obedience, i.e. justify disobedience]."  (Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature)

"Education must be eupsychian [Theory Y management] or else it is not democratic."  (Abraham Maslow, The Journals of Abraham Maslow)

Abraham Maslow, once he had children of his own, wrote in his journal about his children getting him into conflict over his own theory about how parent's are to raise their children:

"Who should teach whom?" (children adults or adults children) he wrote, describing his own education theory, "I've been in continuous conflict over this Esalen-type, orgiastic, Dionysian-type education." (Abraham Maslow, The Journals of Abraham Maslow)

"The goals of democratic education can be nothing else but development toward psychological health."  (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)

"So it looks as if nudism is the first step toward ultimate fee-animality-humanness. It's the easiest to take. Must encourage it. Yet nakedness is absolutely right. So is the attack on antieroticism, the Christian & Jewish foundations. Must move in the direction of the Reichian orgasm. I certainly enjoy nudism as at Esalen & have no trouble with it.  And I certainly think sex is wonderful, even sacred.  And I approve in principle of the advancement of knowledge & experimentation with anything."  (Abraham Maslow, The Journals of Abraham Maslow)

 "This movement can be dignified and Apollonian & can avoid pornography & neurosis & ugliness. I must put as much of this as is possible & usable in my education book, & more & more in succeeding writings." (Abraham Maslow, The Journals of Abraham Maslow)

"Only trouble is, I feel uneasy allying myself with nuts, fringe people, borderline characters, e.g. as in this number of ANKH; the tipoff―there are only young, shapely, & beautiful bodies." (Abraham Maslow, The Journals of Abraham Maslow)

"Marxian theory needs Freudian-type instinct theory to round it out. And of course, vice versa."  (Abraham Maslow, The Journals of Abraham Maslow)

". . . I've decided to get into the World Federalists, become pro-UN, & the like."  "Only a world government with world-shared values could be trusted or permitted to take such powers. If only for such a reason a world government is necessary. It too would have to evolve. I suppose it would be weak or lousy or even corrupt at first―it certainly doesn't amount to much now & won't until sovereignty is given up little by little by 'nations.'"  "The whole discussion becomes species-wide, One World, at least so far as the guiding goal is concerned. To get to that goal is politics & is in time and space & will take a long time & cost much blood." ". . . A caretaker government could immediately start training for democracy & self-government & give it little by little, as deserved." "This is a realistic combination of the Marxian version & the Humanistic. (Better add to definition of "humanistic" that it also means one species, One World.) (Abraham Maslow, The Journals of Abraham Maslow)

"To identify with more and more of the world, moving toward the ultimate of mysticism, a fusion with the world, or peak experience, cosmic consciousness, etc."  (Abraham Maslow, The Journals of Abraham Maslow)

"The person at the peak experience is godlike . . . complete, loving, uncondemning, compassionate and accept[ing] of the world and of the person." (Abraham Maslow Toward a Psychology of Being)

"Self-actualizing people have to a large extent transcended the values of their culture. They are not so much merely Americans as they are world citizens, members of the human species first and foremost." (Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature)

"In self-actualizing people, the work they do might be better be called 'mission,' 'calling,' 'duty,' 'vocation,' in the priest's sense." (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)

"Meaningful work comes very close to the religious quest in the humanistic sense." (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)

"Seeking for personal salvation is anyway the wrong road to salvation.  The only path was the Ikiru path―salvation via hard work & total commitment to doing well the job fate or personal task destiny called you to―an important job that 'called for' doing." (Abraham Maslow, The Journals of Abraham Maslow)

"Salvation is a byproduct of Self-Actualization Duty." (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)

[The] "goal is simply to build group companies where people can self-actualize." (George McCown in Maslow on Management, Abraham Maslow)

"[Business] and the not-for-profits have a much greater role to play in shaping the good society than any institution I can think of." (George McCown in Maslow on Management, Abraham Maslow)

"In a democratic society a patriarchal culture should make us depressed instead of glad; it [A patriarchal culture] is an argument against the higher possibilities of human nature, of self actualization."  (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)

"In our democratic society, any enterpriseany individual―has its obligations to the whole." "Tax credits would be given to the company that helps to improve the whole society, and helps to improve the democracy by helping to create democratic individuals." (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)

"Any company that restricts its goals purely to its own profits, its own production, and its own sales is getting a kind of a free ride from me and other taxpayers." (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)

"Abe gave to all of us the democratization of the soul." (Warren Bennis in Maslow on Management, Abraham Maslow)

"Third-Force psychology is also epi-Marxian in these senses, i.e., including the most basic scheme as true-good social conditions are necessary for personal growth, bad social conditions stunt human nature,... This is to say, one could reinterpret Marx into a self-actualization-fostering Third- and Fourth-Force psychology-philosophy.  And my impression is anyway that this is the direction in which they are going now."  (Abraham Maslow, The Journals of Abraham Maslow)

"The best way to destroy democratic society would be by way of industrial authoritarianism, which is anti-democratic in the deepest sense." (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)

Maslow commented to Jane Howard "We have to teach everyone to be a therapist."  He recognized the difficulty in getting the public schools to participate, "Reforming a school system is like melting a glacier."

"History, almost universally, has dichotomized this higher & lower, but it is now clear that they are on the same continum, in a hierarchical-integration of prepotency & pospotency."  (Abraham Maslow, The Journals of Abraham Maslow)

"Where you try to move over from a strictly authoritarian managerial style to a more participative style [lifting rigid restrictions of authority] chaos, hostility, destructiveness [may result]."  (Abraham Maslow, The Journals of Abraham Maslow)

"Theory X and Theory Y were based upon Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory [and] are not management styles but are assumptions which play a large role in the development of management styles.   The evidence upon which Theory X management is based is practically nil." (Abraham Maslow, The Journals of Abraham Maslow)

"We must ultimately assume at the highest theoretical levels of enlightenment management theory, a preference or a tendency." ". . . to identify with more and more of the world, moving toward the ultimate of mysticism, a fusion with the world, or peak experience, cosmic consciousness, etc." (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)

"Enlightened economics must assume as a prerequisite synergic institutions set up in such a way that what benefits one benefits all." "Enlightenment management and humanistic supervision can be a brotherhood situation." "The more enlightened the religious institutions get, that is to say, the more liberal they get, the greater will be the advantage for an enterprise run in an enlightened way." "Partnership is the same as synergy." "The problem for the accountants is to work out some way of putting on the balance sheet the amount of synergy in the organization, the amount of time and money and effort that has been invested in getting groups to work together."  ". . . to identify with more and more of the world, moving toward the ultimate of mysticism, a fusion with the world, or peak experience, cosmic consciousness, etc."  "The United States is changing into a managerial society." (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)

"Insofar as my own effort is concerned, it has always been an attempt to wed science with humanistic goals―to improve individual people and the society as a whole."  (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)

"It has been the tendency of our military, with their authoritarian view of life [patriarchal], to be on the side of dictators [including  constitutional republics—limited government] rather than people's revolutionary movements throughout the world. I would stress to the military the huge number of man-hours [which] could be used for education, for social service, for psychotherapeutic and growth-fostering activities of all sorts in order to make better citizens." (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)

"Science can be the religion of the nonreligious."  (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)

"One is always in the process of becoming." (Ann Robinson quoting Maslow, Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)

"Eros is fundamentally a desire for union with objects in the world.  Eros is the foundation of morality."
Brown, Norman O. LIFE AGAINST DEATH. Middletown Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1959 p. 41

"For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world."
1 John 2:16

"This carry-over from the study of neurosis to the study of labor in factories is legitimate."   (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)

"Work is not about paying the rent anymore―it is about self-fulfillment."  (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)

"Enlightenment management and humanistic supervision can be a brotherhood situation."   (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)

"Partnership is the same as synergy."   (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)

"The United States is changing into a managerial society."   (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)

"Marx defines the essence of man as labor and traces the dialectic of labor in history till labor abolishes itself." "Freud suggests that beyond labor at the end of history is love." "Love has always been there from the beginning . . . the hidden force supplying the energy devoted to labor and to making history." "Repressed Eros is the energy of history and labor must be seen as sublimated Eros." (Norman O. Brown, LIFE AGAINST DEATH. Middletown Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1959)

"Synergy can be defined as the resolution [synthesis] of the dichotomy between selfishness and unselfishness (altruism)." (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management) 

ENLIGHTENED PROCESS PERSON

He has stress-tolerance.
He knows creative insecurity.
He can endure anxiety.
Meaningful work comes very close to the religious quest in the humanistic sense. Maslow on Management, Abraham Maslow, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1998. p. 39

Enlightened management depends on all sorts of preconditions in order to make itself possible. Maslow on Management, Abraham Maslow, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1998. p. 53

It is necessary to accentuate the negative, perhaps even before accentuating the positive. Maslow on Management, Abraham Maslow, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1998. p53

REGRESSION FORCES
SCARCITY OF FOOD
CESSATION (or threat) OF PREPOTENT BASIC NEED GOODS
ANTISYNERGIC ORGANIZATION OR LAWS
ANYTHING THAT INCREASES FEAR OR ANXIETY
REGRESSION FORCES
LOSS OR SEPARATION OF ANY KIND FOR THE PERSON
CHANGE OF ANY KIND FOR PEOPLE PRONE TO ANXIETY OR TO FEAR
BAD COMMUNICATION OF ANY KIND
REGRESSION FORCES
SUSPICION
DENIAL IN THE SENSE OF DENIAL OF TRUTH
DISHONESTY, UNTRUTH, LYING, VULGARIZATION OF THE TRUTH, CONFUSION OF THE LINES BETWEEN TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD
REGRESSION FORCES
LOSS OF ANY OF THE BASIC NEED GRATIFICATION IN THE WORLD, e.g. freedom, self-esteem, status, respect, love objects, being loved, belonging, safety, physiological needs, values systems, truth, beauty, etc.
What forces could change the dynamic balance toward regression instead of toward growth? Maslow on Management, Abraham Maslow, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1998. p 45

Enlightened conditions may produce in some people, a regressive effect, that is to say, a bad effect. Maslow on Management, Abraham Maslow, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1998. p 54

A certain proportion of the population cannot take responsibility well [and] are frightened by freedom, which tends to throw them into anxiety. Maslow on Management, Abraham Maslow, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1998. p 54

People will sometimes show their lack of resources in an unstructured situation. [resulting in apathy, laxity, inertia, mistrust, anxiety, depression, etc.] Maslow on Management, Abraham Maslow, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1998. p 54

What this means for organization theorists is in moving over to the newer style of management, they should assume that a certain proportion will not respond well to good conditions. Maslow on Management, Abraham Maslow, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1998. p 54

''And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God." Luke 16: 15

One of the necessary foundations for self esteem is (esteem) respect and applause from other people. Maslow on Management, Abraham Maslow, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1998. p 56

A feeling of dignity―controlling one's own life, and being one's own boss. Maslow on Management, Abraham Maslow, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1998. p 57

Neurosis can be seen either as a sign of sin and evil or can be seen as growth and self-actualization. Hostility shows that [one] wants to grow. Maslow on Management, Abraham Maslow, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1998. p 66

Theory Y is a kind of pilot experiment . . . The data which justify this experiment are definitely not final data, not clearly convincing beyond a shadow of a doubt. Maslow on Management, Abraham Maslow, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1998. p 67

Authoritarianism is alive and well in the 1990's Maslow on Management, Abraham Maslow, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1998. p 69

These are articles of faith rather than articles of final knowledge. Maslow on Management, Abraham Maslow, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1998. p 71

A good deal of the evidence upon which Douglas McGregor [Theory X] bases his conclusions comes from my researches and my papers on motivations. Maslow on Management, Abraham Maslow, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1998. p 71

My work on motivations come from the clinic, from a study of neurotic people. Maslow on Management, Abraham Maslow, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1998. p 71

The main support of this theory has come mostly from psychotherapists like Rogers and Fromm. Maslow on Management, Abraham Maslow, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1998. p 71

Progressive education had better be revived and resuscitated because progressive education was much like the participative management policy. Maslow on Management, Abraham Maslow, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1998. p 85

"A patriarchal culture is an argument against the higher possibilities of human nature, of social actualization"  Abraham H. Maslow, Maslow on Management

"Human evil is an acquired or reactive kind of response to bad treatment of the individual [having to obey God or parent against one's carnal desires]. At least this is what the Third Force psychologists generally agree upon." (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)

 "Freud takes with absolute seriousness the proposition of Jesus: 'Except ye become as little children, ye can in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven.'"  (Brown)

According to Brown heaven can be found on earth: "In the words of Thoreau: 'We need pray for no higher heaven than the pure senses can furnish, a purely sensuous life. Our present senses are but rudiments of what they are destined to become.'"  The famous socio-psychologist Abraham Maslow wrote: "Heaven is available to us now, and is all around us."  (Abraham Maslow  Maslow on Management"The foundation on which the man of the future will be built is already there, in the repressed unconscious; the foundation has to be recovered." (Brown)  Brown writes: since "[s]exual instinct seeks union with objects in the world...." and "[e]ros is fundamentally a desire for union (being one) with objects in the world ... [e]ros is the foundation of morality." Therefore "... self-perfection (narcissism) of the human individual is fulfilled in union with the world in pleasure." "Human perfection consists in an expansion of the self until it enjoys the world as it enjoys itself."  Any such praxis of Eros is "tabooed" in a patriarchal society.  Yet in a civilization of Eros (built upon sensitivity training) a patriarchal society is seen as enslaving "the pleasure ego by the reality ego"  i.e.  "enslaving" the children and the mother by the father. Take note: this is the foundation on which "hate" crimes are being defined and will be judged.  "Children ... have not acquired that sense of shame which, according to the Biblical story, expelled mankind from Paradise [seen as an act of hate], and which, presumably, would be discarded if Paradise were regained."  (Brown)   The issue with all these men was how to restore the Garden in Eden (Eden means "pleasure"; "And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil." Genesis 2:9), a lifestyle of (p)leasure and guaranteed sustenance ("the good life," the sensuous life).  But this time the world wants a garden of pleasure without God.

"Kant was certainly correct in claiming that we can never fully know nonhuman reality." Abraham Maslow  Motivation and Personality 1954, p. 7-8.

"Of course, Humanistic Psychology did not begin with Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Rollo May, Frederick Pearls or Esalen Institute. It's roots are in humanism, which go back thousands of years, with many variants, as seen in the ideas of Socrates, St. Thomas Aquinas and other defenders of human dignity. There have always been rebels against humanly degrading establishments. The most significant Western rebirthing of humanism was the artistic and intellectual flowering during the Renaissance and Enlightenment." Geoffrey Hill  The Failure of the Human Potential Movement: From Self-actualization to Experientialism

  Abraham Maslow The Further Reaches of Human Nature.

© Institution for Authority Research, Dean Gotcher 2012-2015