Self-actualizing individuals (more

Self-actualizing individuals (more matured, more fully-human), by
de finition, already suitaby gratified in their basic needs, are now motivated
in other higher ways, to be called &dquo;&dquo;me ta’m otiva t ions.&dquo;
. BY definition, self-actualizing people are gratified in all their basic
needs (of belongingness, affection, respect, and self-esteem). This is to
say that they have a feeling of belongingness and rootedness, they are
satisfied in their love needs, have friends and feel loved and loveworthy,
they have status and place in life and respect from other
people, and they have a reasonable feeling of worth and self-respect.
If we phrase this negatively - in terms of the frustration of these
basic needs and in terms of pathology - then this is to say that selfactualizing
people do not (for any length of time) feel anxiety-ridden,
insecure, unsafe, do not feel alone, ostracized, rootless, or isolated, do
not feel unlovable, rejected, or unwanted, do not feel despised and
looked down upon, and do not feel deeply unworthy, nor do they
have crippling feelings of inferiority or worthlessness (Maslow,, 1954,
Chap. 12).
Of course this can be phrased in other ways and this I have done.
For instance, since the basic needs had been assumed to be the only
motivations for human beings, it was possible, and in certain contexts
also useful, to say of self-actualizing people that they were &dquo;unmotivated&
dquo; (Maslow, 1954, Chap. 15). This was to align these people with
the Eastern philosophical view of health as the transcendence of striving
or desiring or wanting. (And something of the sort was also true of
the Roman stoic view.)
It was also possible to describe self-actualizing people as expressing
rather than coping, and to stress that they were spontaneous, and
. natural, that they were more easily themselves than other people. This
phrasing had the additional usefulness of being compatible with the
view of neurosis as an understandable coping mechanism and as a
reasonable (though stupid and fearful) effort to satisfy the needs of a
deeper-lying, more intrinsic, more biological self (lB1aslow, 1965, pp.
33-47; 1967).
Each of these