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The Psychological Realm: Abraham Maslow's Self-Actualized Individuals and Eupsychian Community

Linda Sargent Wood

in A More Perfect Union: Holistic Worldviews and the Transformation of American Culture after World War II

This chapter concentrates on the life and work of psychologist Abraham Maslow. In his influential book Motivation and Personality, he embraced holistic ideas explicitly: “Holism is obviously ... More

This chapter concentrates on the life and work of psychologist Abraham Maslow. In his influential book Motivation and Personality, he embraced holistic ideas explicitly: “Holism is obviously true—after all, the cosmos is one and interrelated; any society is one and interrelated; any person is one and interrelated.” Inspired by Gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer and anthropologist Ruth Benedict, Maslow crafted a humanistic psychology that focused on the healthy, whole, and “self‐actualized” person. His holism bestowed personal meaning, gave him a means for discussing social change, and countered reductionistic, mechanistic approaches inherent in behavioral and Freudian psychology. As he concentrated on the development of the healthy individual, he also imagined a future world of self‐actualized individuals knit together in a “eupsychian” (psychologically whole) paradise. He hoped for the establishment of just, democratic, peaceful societies. His holism was thus about the community as well as the individual. His work influenced psychology, education, countercultural philosophies and practices, the Esalen Institute and other personal growth centers, business management, and the holistic health movement.Less

Heaven in a Postmodern, Anxiety-Ridden, Entertainment-Oriented, Therapeutic, Happiness-Based Culture

Gary Scott Smith

in Heaven in the American Imagination

During the new millennium, several major interrelated cultural trends helped shape American views of heaven and salvation. Especially significant were increased anxiety, the impact of the therapeutic ... More

During the new millennium, several major interrelated cultural trends helped shape American views of heaven and salvation. Especially significant were increased anxiety, the impact of the therapeutic worldview (which exalted self-fulfillment and personal happiness), the emergence of an entertainment culture (which stressed pleasure and amusement), concerns about the breakdown of the family and the impoverishment of personal relationships, and the growing acceptance of a postmodern, relativistic perspective of life. Influenced by these trends, many Americans in the years after 2000 portrayed paradise as a place of comfort, self-actualization, bliss, enriching entertainment, and robust fellowship. Most Americans publicly stated or implied that almost everyone, except the extremely wicked, would go to heaven. Privately, Americans were much more divided. Almost identical numbers of Americans maintained that belief is the key to being admitted to heaven as said that conduct is the principal determinant.Less

Social and Economic Rights

ALAN BRUDNER

in Constitutional Goods

This chapter distinguishes those egalitarian transformations of equality rights that are organic developments of liberal justice from those incompatible therewith. Section 1 discusses the libertarian ... More

This chapter distinguishes those egalitarian transformations of equality rights that are organic developments of liberal justice from those incompatible therewith. Section 1 discusses the libertarian contribution to liberal distributive justice by depicting the partial justice of market outcomes. Section 2 identifies constitutionally relevant interpersonal inequalites and argues for an egalitarian complement to market justice that libertarians ought, given their conception of individual worth, to accept. Section 3 suggests a principle for distinguishing between claims to social and economic equality whose satisfaction is required by law's rule and those inconsistent therewith. Section 4 discusses the enforceability of social and economic entitlements by courts and suggests a principle for distinguishing between permissible and impermissible judicial activism. Section 5 exhibits in both legal doctrine and legal theory the despotic implications of a fundamentalist egalitarianism and depicts the logical transition from the constitution of equality to the constitution of community.Less

Mami Wata and Santa Marta: Imag(in)ing Selves and Others in Africa and the Americas

Henry John Drewal

in Images and Empires: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa

This chapter explores the circumatlantic visual history of African water deity Mami Wata and traces its evolution, contexts, and significances in shaping personal and community identities. It ... More

This chapter explores the circumatlantic visual history of African water deity Mami Wata and traces its evolution, contexts, and significances in shaping personal and community identities. It considers three episodes in the visual history of Mami Wata: a European representation of an exotic other that became implicated in Mami Wata's art history in Africa, case histories of the assemblages of this European image and other alien objects on Mami Wata shrines in Africa, and the representation and transformation of Mami Wata into an African Catholic saint in the Americas. It argues that images are expressions of agency and self-actualization.Less

Shouts

Rachel Chrastil

in How to Be Childless: A History and Philosophy of Life Without Children

In the 1970s, after the baby boom hiatus, childlessness returned to prominence. By the 1970s, in contrast with previous centuries, the complex reasons that women ended up without children were openly ... More

In the 1970s, after the baby boom hiatus, childlessness returned to prominence. By the 1970s, in contrast with previous centuries, the complex reasons that women ended up without children were openly reframed as the willful exercise of choice. The Pill, the rising importance of self-actualization, and economic opportunity costs all became explanations for the return of childlessness, although none of these are completely satisfactory. American child-free advocates began to argue that childlessness was not only an acceptable path but also a better choice than parenthood. Moral outrage characterized debates over childlessness in the 1970s.Less

Self-Determination Theory and Its Supporting Research Base

Kennon M. Sheldon, Geoffrey Williams, and Thomas Joiner

in Self-Determination Theory in the Clinic: Motivating Physical and Mental Health

This chapter follows the rise of the theory of motivation in scientific psychology—a feat that took three decades. This theory is also known as the self-determination theory, or SDT. The sections in ... More

This chapter follows the rise of the theory of motivation in scientific psychology—a feat that took three decades. This theory is also known as the self-determination theory, or SDT. The sections in this chapter look at ideas of self actualization, advanced thinking of modern evolutionary biologists, philosophers, and dynamic systems theorists. This chapter also discusses the terms “true self,” “free will,” and “healthy values,” and even presents social contexts and the limiting or restraining effect authority communication styles can have on the growth of self-regulated and optimal functioning.Less

Scrap Yard Challenge—Junkyard Wars

in The Philosophy of Improvisation

This chapter presents a discussion on free-improvisation. All improvisors must face the demand for a work from within the confines of a limited material universe. It then describes Georg Wilhelm ... More

This chapter presents a discussion on free-improvisation. All improvisors must face the demand for a work from within the confines of a limited material universe. It then describes Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's aesthetics where art is conceived as one subsidiary but necessary stage of Spirit's self-actualization. Within Hegel's world-historical phenomenology aesthetic self-recognition is obtained, thus constituting one moment of Spirit's self-actualization: self-conscious externality. The scrap yard challenge for the improvisor is to create something new within the decaying site of the old. The scrap yard challenge offers one final insight into improvisation that is easy to overlook: it concerns the nature of scrap itself. Success for the scrap yard improvisors depend on the ability to find new and novel ways of inhabiting the old and revivifying dead forms through a productive process of reappropriation that promotes improvisation more as a means of salvation and redemption than of creation: re-novation.Less

Esalen’s Wellspring: Foundational Doctrines

Marion Goldman

in The American Soul Rush: Esalen and the Rise of Spiritual Privilege

This chapter considers the Institute's central spiritual doctrines. Michael Murphy's sojourn at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in India inspired him to found the Institute with Dick Price and to popularize ... More

This chapter considers the Institute's central spiritual doctrines. Michael Murphy's sojourn at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in India inspired him to found the Institute with Dick Price and to popularize concepts of everyone's essential divinity/godliness and individuals' ability to maximize their full potential in spirit, psyche, body, and mind. Every aspect of Esalen's doctrine reflects the assumption that people are capable of transforming themselves, their societies, and the Earth. Esalen's founders and their comrades built the Institute to reflect their own yearning for meaningful spirituality and personal authenticity. They assumed all people were basically like them and shared similar abilities and desires to select, combine, and revise highly personal paths to self-actualization and social transformation.Less

After Ever After: Bethenny Frankel, Self-Branding, and the “New Intimacy of Work”

Suzanne Leonard and Diane Negra

in Cupcakes, Pinterest, and Ladyporn: Feminized Popular Culture in the Early Twenty-First Century

This chapter explores how Bethenny Frankel's stabilization as an icon coincided with a sharp increase in reality television's encouragement for stars to monetize their so-called “personal lives” and ... More

This chapter explores how Bethenny Frankel's stabilization as an icon coincided with a sharp increase in reality television's encouragement for stars to monetize their so-called “personal lives” and with a distinctive phase of capitalistic production where entrepreneurship of the self reaped a compelling combination of economic and affective reward. In this respect, what may appear as the rising stardom of a singular, idiosyncratic personality should instead be read as having particular ramifications for feminized media culture. Dovetailing with an early-twenty-first-century cultural moment dominated by a worldwide economic recession, Frankel's success illustrates that economies of self can be leveraged as platforms on which to model female self-actualization, a pathway that inevitably involves the accrual of monetary gain.Less

Between the Counterculture and the Corporation: Abraham Maslow and Humanistic Psychology in the 1960s

Nadine Weidman

in Groovy Science: Knowledge, Innovation, and American Counterculture

In the 1960s, the psychologist Abraham Maslow became the public face of humanistic psychology, an interpretation of human nature that he spent decades developing and that stressed the fulfillment of ... More

In the 1960s, the psychologist Abraham Maslow became the public face of humanistic psychology, an interpretation of human nature that he spent decades developing and that stressed the fulfillment of each individual’s inborn potential. This chapter analyzes the counterculture’s uptake of Maslow’s ideas. To judge by Esalen’s ready adoption of his psychological approach, the chapter argues, first, that a certain kind of explicitly unconventional science held enormous appeal for members of the counterculture. Second, the chapter explores the apparent ease with which Maslow traveled between hippie retreat and corporate boardroom, a movement indicative of a broad exchange of people, practices, and ideas between the counterculture and the establishment, as the precepts of humanistic psychology pervaded both. Third, the chapter analyzes the reciprocal influence between this major psychological theorist and his countercultural followers. Though he was often dismayed by the hippies’ attitudes and antics, Maslow shaped his notions of psychological growth and of the ideal society in response to his experiences in countercultural contexts. The leaders of Esalen, meanwhile, appropriated his ideas without slavishly following them, adapting his theories of self-actualization and peak experience in new ways to meet their own needs.Less

Kings, Warriors, Magicians, and Lovers: Prison Theater and Alternative Performances of Masculinity

Jonathan Shailor

in Working for Justice: A Handbook of Prison Education and Activism

This chapter illustrates how theater helps imprisoned men explore new modes of self-actualization. Recognizing that “bad masculinity” drives much of the violence in the American prison culture, it ... More

This chapter illustrates how theater helps imprisoned men explore new modes of self-actualization. Recognizing that “bad masculinity” drives much of the violence in the American prison culture, it argues that imprisoned performers can draw upon Jungian archetypes, Buddhist meditation techniques, and collaborative theater to help craft new selves free from the habitual violence that lingers within typical male roles. The chapter also examines the Theater of Empowerment, a performance-based course emphasizing personal and social development. The perspective offered in the course incorporates both the feminist critique of a sexist, patriarchal model of manhood, and the Jungian vision of a male identity that evolves toward wholeness, embracing both masculine and feminine characteristics.Less

Making Art, Being an Artist: The Seductions of Creative Expression in Migrant Life

Olga Kanzaki Sooudi

in Japanese New York: Migrant Artists and Self-reinvention on the World Stage

This chapter examines the appeal of being an artist for Japanese migrants in New York City, along with the relationship between urban life and creative production. It shows that artistic production ... More

This chapter examines the appeal of being an artist for Japanese migrants in New York City, along with the relationship between urban life and creative production. It shows that artistic production is a key means of self-actualization by drawing on the ethnographies of art and fashion. It also considers migrant artists' vision of NYC as a site for the birth and development of organic, authentic life experiences and reveals that their understandings of the authentic have three dimensions: encounters with radical difference in urban space, Japan's relationship to the world and the role of connection, and, finally, feeling and sensation. The chapter concludes with a discussion of authenticity and creativity in the context of modernity.Less

Vocation, Psychologically Speaking

Donna K. McMillan

in Claiming Our Callings: Toward a New Understanding of Vocation in the Liberal Arts

Discernment of vocation requires self-knowledge and commitment to act on that knowledge. From a psychological perspective, vocation is conceptualized as a meaningful endeavor to which a person feels ... More

Discernment of vocation requires self-knowledge and commitment to act on that knowledge. From a psychological perspective, vocation is conceptualized as a meaningful endeavor to which a person feels drawn. Vocation has a sacred or transcendent quality to it, and it contributes to something larger than self. This chapter uses psychological perspectives to illuminate the process of realizing one’s vocation, exploring psychological challenges involved and the obstacles, both internal and external, that may be encountered. Self-knowledge is a complex undertaking, including elements that are conscious as well as aspects that are unconscious. Other factors that affect the process include motivation, external pressures, fears, and the strengths and weaknesses inherent in introspection. Perspectives from psychological research and from personal experiences of students and a professor are used to highlight issues in self-actualization and fulfillment of vocation.Less

“This Space Ship is Going to Paris”

in We'll Always Have Paris: American Tourists in France since 1930

The New Left collapsed into a heap of self-destructive sects and the counterculture disappeared into drugs. American culture had absorbed two aspects of their messages. The first, from the New Left, ... More

The New Left collapsed into a heap of self-destructive sects and the counterculture disappeared into drugs. American culture had absorbed two aspects of their messages. The first, from the New Left, was an antipathy toward large bureaucracies. The second, from the counterculture, was a modern form of romanticism that valued the emotions over the intellect and the individual over the group. The counterculture's rampant individualism also contributed to the rise of the New Right, which echoed the extreme individualism of the nineteenth-century heyday of unbridled capitalism. Many of the middle-aged tourists were also inspired by the kind of drive for “self-actualization,” originating among the young, which Christopher Lasch called the “Culture of Narcissism.” Modernization also continued to transform transatlantic transportation, especially in the sense that the word implies mass-produced sameness.Less

Heavy Heart: The Story of Emotional/Spiritual Dysfunction

Helene A. Shugart

in Heavy: The Obesity Crisis in Cultural Context

In this chapter, the narrative that characterizes obesity as merely a symptom of underlying spiritual or emotional dysfunction or malaise is described. Obesity is characterized here as a consequence ... More

In this chapter, the narrative that characterizes obesity as merely a symptom of underlying spiritual or emotional dysfunction or malaise is described. Obesity is characterized here as a consequence of self-medication, specifically with food, to “stuff feelings” or “fill an emotional hole,” typically attendant to abuse or neglect at the hands of others. Consequently, the antidote to weight loss is to identify and resolve the underlying issues by discovering and giving expression to the authentic self. This is achieved by prioritizing the self and by distancing oneself from others, who are posited as destructive and antithetical to the project of self-actualization—women and communities of color are depicted as especially suspect. In this story of obesity, individualism is identified as the path to authenticity.Less

The Nature of the Human Species: Conceptual and Applied Implications

Ofra Mayseless

in The Caring Motivation: An Integrated Theory

This chapter discusses conceptual and applied implications of the conceptual model regarding the caring motivational system suggested in this book to the nature of the human species. The implications ... More

This chapter discusses conceptual and applied implications of the conceptual model regarding the caring motivational system suggested in this book to the nature of the human species. The implications of the argument for the existence of a general, encompassing, fundamental and innate caring motivational system are discussed. In particular its implications for one’s view of the world, human nature and human condition are considered. Caring is viewed as a significant endeavor that imparts meaning to one’s life and is a primary way for self-actualization. It is mostly related to an individual’s eudaemonic rather than his or her hedonic well-being. Caring is fundamental in our nature because it reflects our ‘daimon’—our true self and is a reflection of one’s inner spiritual core. The nature of this spiritual core and the manner in which it is associated with caring are considered. New research questions as well as applied implications are illuminated.Less

For Better or . . . Not: Marriage and the Emerging Adult

Varda Konstam

in The Romantic Lives of Emerging Adults: Getting from I to We

This chapter examines the role marriage plays in the life planning and behavior of emerging adults. Most emerging adults hold marriage in positive regard and plan to get married at some point. As ... More

This chapter examines the role marriage plays in the life planning and behavior of emerging adults. Most emerging adults hold marriage in positive regard and plan to get married at some point. As emerging adults age, however, finances, career development, education, and job availability lead them to flexibly shift their “marital horizons” and become more open to marital alternatives, such as remaining single or cohabitating. Emerging adults are getting married later and are also remaining single in increasing numbers. Although the dominant cultural model of marriage is one that promotes individual growth and self-actualization, there is an emerging class divide. Partners are expecting more from marriage while investing less time in their partners. New models for marital behavior and expectations may be needed to address why some marriages are more satisfying than ever before, while a great number are falling short, encumbered by individual, cultural, and structural considerations.Less

The Search for Connection Online

Sarah C. Bishop

in Undocumented Storytellers: Narrating the Immigrant Rights Movement

This chapter takes a close look at immigrant activism online. Because many undocumented immigrants are prohibited from higher education and professional employment, much of their narrative activism ... More

This chapter takes a close look at immigrant activism online. Because many undocumented immigrants are prohibited from higher education and professional employment, much of their narrative activism has found its home on the internet, where production costs are low, amateur professionalism is the norm, and the option for anonymity is still vaguely present. Digital reclaimant narratives serve more than a single purpose, and the narrators demonstrate how the act of story sharing online may serve as a path to self-actualization, help to mitigate one’s fear and uncertainty, offer a means for communal coping, or satisfy a sense of responsibility. A close look at these varied and profound outcomes reveals digital reclaimant narratives as powerful tools in the hands of individuals who in other contexts face constant limitations. But it is clear that creating reclaimant narratives in digital contexts incites particular hazards, including the difficulty of gaining an audience for heterogeneous perspectives, the normalization of free labor, the facilitation of hateful and xenophobic responses, and the perpetuation of the confirmation bias.Less