Abraham Maslow as a Jewish Prophet

Abstract

Reading Maslow is alive, like experiencing a dialogue with a text. This article explores this writer’s response to Maslow’s narrative style, as well as to his powerful content. Using a personal narrative style that situates the reader in a Jewish context during the most powerful time of the year, the writer responds to Maslow as a Jewish prophet who prophecizes some of the dead-ends of the mechanistic science that he critiques in “Toward a Humanistic Biology.” His prophecies are startlingly lucid and applicable for what we are seeing in the world today.

When I sat down to read Maslow’s article, I was prepared to write my usual endorsement of mind–body interrelatedness and all the other dimensions of humanistic psychology that I appreciate so much in Maslow: creativity, self-actualizing, and so on. However, I was immediately struck by the language in Maslow’s article. It seemed so conversational that I began noting my responses to it . . . and then felt like I was in a live interaction with the text. Reading the text in this way, noting spontaneous responses might even make a more interesting essay for this journal? Mmm . . . why not try?

Context matters. As I read his article, I’m steeped in the Jewish holidays, the first day of Rosh Hashanah. I read Talmud at night, and now it feels like I’m in Talmudic dialogue with Maslow. And this does seem to be the way he writes, deeply rabbinic, with a combination of ethics and Taoist belief of living in the moment. He calls for an embodied psychology, a holistic science, a Mussar (rabbinic) approach to the cultivation of good human virtues through philosophy and forward-thinking science of psychology. Why not approach the text as a partner? (The study of Talmud has a dialogical style in which knowledge is co-created, mostly through deep inquiry of key questions. For example, this month we have been studying laws for marriage. Marriage, in the very action-oriented Judaism, is based on covenant, a clear contract stipulating many details of married and family life. The rabbis debate with each other about many possible situations that come up and need counsel, and they model a mode of inquiry, discourse, debate, and finally options for ethical action). That kind of discourse is very Maslow as well.

If I were really Talmudic, I’d design an essay with Maslow’s text in the center and my discussion around the text. Visually dialogical. But I can’t design that, but maybe we can imagine the text laid out this way.

Then there is a note that helps to explain the particular tone of this article. This piece is from a series of memorandums, not written for an academic text. And I find exhilarating that it was initiated by the Salk Institute of Biological Studies. Humanistic psychology has roots in biology and the earth. And Maslow’s note to them seems to be very respectful. I like that it does not come across as polemical.

Speaking of context, I’ve also been watching the Ken Burns special on America during the Holocaust. Maslow’s personal and direct language is conversational and reminds me of listening to FDR’s speeches during the Ken Burns series. I think I “hear” FDR’s voice when I read Maslow. Makes me wonder if Maslow actually had a Brooklyn accent and how funny that would be combined with the sonorous voice of FDR. Makes me think of the beauty and loss of the written word. The art of the essay. I like that voice and think it is humanistic.

Reading Maslow’s critique of positivist science, I like his term: “mechanormorphic” psychology. Then . . . I bump into the phrase “Third Force” and catapult away! Such a powerful shock! Like an old friend, maybe in a museum, a kind of recognition like it is a family member.

I like that he called this Third Force “the humanistic psychologies” and “a coalescence into a single philosophy of various splinter groups in psychology.” He seems to leave it open to a variety of approaches and is not trying to force-fit them into one structured theory. To my ears, this sounds refreshing, as these days I’m more likely to hear the “alphabet soup” of fragmented and commercialized and branded psychologies. And I like that he seems to include the First and Second Forces, as I personally find that a depth approach and an understanding of the behavioral influences on a person are both important to keep in a larger humanistic framework.

Another jolt. I saw the name Miles Vich and went off into a memory. Of knowing him, of that gentle, supportive, spiritual man who did much to get the early journals off the ground. I miss those folks!

Aha! The Fourth Force! Another blast of memory!

It seemed so far out at the time! Yet alluring! Images of Alan Watts on his houseboat in Sausalito.

Back to the text . . . my musings an essay on this essay, a meandering counterpoint, a dialogue and dancing with Maslow!

Good that Maslow is not anti-intellectual and wants to integrate science and humanism.

He wants science used not just to verify what has been done in the past (and is dead), but to imagine and build forward that which will live. Makes me think of Einstein’s thought experiments. And I like Maslow’s use of images and archetypes to enliven his description of science. For example, his image of the Explorer (I think of Marlboro man) instead of the usual phrase “science as inquiry” speaks to Maslow’s appreciation for art and creativity and image. Isn’t the figure of the Explorer more alluring than “inquiry?”

And as a creative person, he is able to approach the reader with this disclaimer: that he—as a creative person—is asking us to let him present just his hunches—without having to verify!—to propose a scientific study of human potential. Some of his questions are of course interesting: Are healthier people better perceivers of reality? But when Maslow proposes a longitudinal study of this self-actualizing human being, like Terman’s longitudinal studies, I just get a chill thinking how close this was sounding to like eugenics. Speaking of the Holocaust again.

I also like his combination of ethics and science. Maslow brings in the moral, ethical dimension when he wonders if we have underrated the possibilities of human nature and have therefore separated a study of “saints” from psychology. Why not study whole persons instead? His note on statistics makes perfect sense, but at a certain point, it reminds me of the Germans during the Holocaust with their precise numbers, systematically deleting imperfect humans, and I shudder again.

When Maslow asks what soil does this plant of full human potential need for its growth, and he answers with “A fully functioning society,” my NY sarcasm says, “Good luck!” How far are we from that society!

But then Maslow makes it a moral obligation to act. Help create that society. My goodness, how can I not think of Tikkun Olam (“Repair the World,” especially because today is Rosh Hashanah. The birthday of the world! Time to re-create oneself, repair the world . . . this is actually our Jewish covenant—partnership—with God—how Maslow!).

And, actually continuing this dialogue with God over our shoulder is this question: Is the nature of the human being a “choosing, deciding, seeking animal?”—again, how Jewish!

I hear Maslow as a modern Prophet, “We have come to the point in biological history where we now are responsible for our own evolution.” When I read this, I think of the Doomsday of Climate Change, and I feel God’s wrath.

Another jolt of memory. Maslow was at the beginning of researching changes in consciousness, scientifically. Makes me remember those days in San Francisco reading Gary Kamiya. And now we are at even a further frontier with the study of consciousness and expanded human potential.

I wonder if this is part of third stream, or are we already on Fourth? Then I bump into this phrase and wonder what it means, “The mind/body problem, until now considered insoluble, does appear to be a workable problem after all.”

What is the problem? What solution is needed?

Back to his discussion of science. I like the term “a humanistic philosophy of biology.” Here Maslow is searching for a way to ground his powerful critique of science as being concerned with prediction and control in Taoist philosophy. For him, that means to be in the moment, spontaneous. I like that he says fully actualized humans will not like being controlled.

And I really appreciate his valuing of the somatic ways of knowing. Embodied wisdom. He again grounds it in Taoist thought that supports asking rather than telling. This open-ended inquiry is then tied to psychotherapy, where our job is as co-explorers (his term). This kind of inquiry characterizes somatic inquiry, Gendlin’s Focusing, and other humanistic psychologies.

Love knowledge—I love it!!—or “Taoist objectivity” and the way Maslow brings passion back into science with his phrase, “love for the problem.”

Then his call for action brings me to tears—for a Manhattan-Project type that attacks the truly Big problems. Sounds like my friend Kirk Schneider, who is now running for APA President with just this platform!

But then here comes Eugenics again: “The first and overarching Big Problem is to make the Good Person.” Here he uses the term “Self-Actualizing,” among other terms. Where are the boundaries before idealism becomes fanaticism? I guess the best response to the chilling specter of eugenics is Maslow’s other observations, over and over, that the opposite approach—a soulless and dead science—has not created the healthy person yet. So let’s at least try his approach.

I appreciate his way of describing a holistic approach to mind–body medicine, in which even physical problems such as broken legs also had sociological influences. What is the relationship between physical and psychological health? I remember this paragraph, suddenly, when I first read these clear and vivid terms from Maslow before: “deficiency diseases.” Powerful words.

And here is where Maslow sets out his model of human needs: Basic needs: safety and protection, belongingness, love, respect, self-esteem, identity, and self-actualization. He defines metamotives: truth, goodness, beauty, justice, order, law, unity, etc. (p. 734). The lack of the basic needs leads to illnesses and deficiency diseases. Neuroses and psychoses.

Here is another challenging statement for me: “It also leads me to be very confident of the discovery one day of biochemical, neurological, endocrinological substrates or body machinery that will explain at the biological level these needs and these illnesses (Maslow 1965a).” It is all happening today, with cloning, everyday advances in neuroscience, and artificial intelligence (AI). The therapist as an AI machine.

So when I read the section, “Predicting the Future,” I get chills.

Sure enough, the mass machine he sees coming is picking up steam. The shadow side of technology is contributing to terrible isolation, break-down of community, and human friendship, even suicide among teens. Maslow’s call for fully functioning, authentic, and relational human beings and his warnings about mechanism and technology is needed today more than ever!