Who is Abraham Maslow?

Abraham Harold Maslow (April 1, 1908 - June 8, 1970) is an American academic and psychologist. Maslow, who contributed to the emergence of human psychology, has a theory that bears his name.

Youth

He was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, to a limited Jewish family immigrated from Russia to the US. The biggest reason his family immigrated to the United States was because their son Abraham had a better future. This was one of the main reasons for his hard work and success in his classes. Maslow was the eldest of seven siblings, and was of an orderly and dignified nature. His childhood, as he remembers, was lonely and quite unhappy because, he said, “I was the only Jewish kid in a place where there were no Jewish neighbors, it was like being the only black kid in a school where white kids attended. That's why I always felt excluded and unhappy. But that's how I grew up in labs and among books. "

Abraham Maslow studied law first to please his family; but later he focused on the field of psychology. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin in psychology. She then married her first cousin, Bertha, in December 1928, despite her family's opposition, and met her teacher Harry Harlow, who would impress her most at university. He conducted research with him on the battle for dominance and human sexuality. After this research, he wanted to improve himself a little further. For this reason, he came to Columbia University. While doing small studies there, he met his second mentor, Alfred Adler.

Academic career

Maslow served at Brooklyn College from 1937 to 1951. Here he found two more mentors whose professionalism and individuality he admired; Anthropologist Ruth Benedict and Gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer. He wanted to deal with these two issues together. In this way, he would be able to understand "the magnificent human nature". Maslow began taking notes on these two behaviors. He wrote extensive articles on these. At the end of these efforts, studies such as the hierarchy of needs theory, Meta motivation, Self-update and Peak life have emerged. Maslow became the symbol of the humanistic school in psychology in the 1950s and 1960s with his writings. As a result, he was awarded the Humanist of the Year award by the American Humanist Association.

Death

Maslow spent the last years of his life (1951-1969) as a professor at Brandeis University. In 1969, he retired to rest and moved with his friends at the Laughlin Institute in California. He died of a heart attack on June 8, 1970.