What is Essentially You

Transcript

For many years I’ve admired Abraham Maslow. Of course many people know if you take a basic psychology course then you are probably aware of the hierarchy of needs.

Normally they pitch it in a triangle or pyramid although that’s not apparently how Maslow saw it.

I wanted to read his books so finally I saw a golden opportunity on Amazon. This book, Toward a Psychology of Being was for sale for about 2 dollars and 15 cents so I decided to snatch it up on Kindle.

So interesting in the introduction here, the presupositions that he’s taking. 9 important assumptions.

The basic assumptions of this point of view are:
We have, each of us, an essential biologically based inner nature, which is to some degree ‘natural’, intrinsic, given, and, in a certain limited sense, unchangeable, or at least, unchanging.
Each person’s inner nature is in part unique to himself and in part species-wide.
It is possible to study this inner nature scientifically and to discover what it is like (not invent – discover).
This is a kind of reply to his critics who claimed he was making things up rather than finding them in nature.

This inner nature, as much as we know of it so far, seems not to be intrinsically evil, but rather either neutral or positively ‘good’. What we call evil behavior appears most often to be a secondary reaction to frustration of this intrinsic nature.

This is important in the history of psychology, this is a kind of counter point just as Carl Rogers presented his counterpoint to the Freudian view where people have these base dark animal natures that want to destroy or attack others and the only way they can maintain themselves in society is by putting an upper level on that to somehow control themselves.

Carl Rogers or Maslow refutes that in a sense they say something even deeper than that base nature, which actually seems to be good.

Since this inner nature is good or neutral rather than bad, it is best to bring it out and to encourage it rather than to suppress it. If it is permitted to guide our life, we grow healthy, fruitful and happy.

So that’s again a kind of response to Freudian ideas about how its necessary to repress inner nature.

If this essential core of the person is denied or suppressed, he gets sick sometimes in obvious ways, sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes immediately, sometimes later.

This inner nature is not strong and overpowering and unmistakable like the instincts of animals. It is weak and delicate and subtle and easily overcome by habit, cultural pressure, and wrong attitudes toward it.

Even though weak, it rarely disappears in the normal person – perhaps not even in the sick person. Even though denied, it persists underground forever pressing for actualization.

Somehow, these conclusions must all be articulated with the necessity of discipline, deprivation, frustration, pain, and tragedy. To the extent that these experiences reveal and foster and fulfill our inner nature, to that extent they are desirable experiences.

And once again just like when I was reading Carl Rogers On Becoming a Person I find immediately that this book entertains certain spiritual ideas, like an escape from duality.

Our pain and suffering aren’t necessarily things to be avoided but things that will develop or expose our inner nature.

Just like if you apply a blow torch to a piece of stone you might find that underneath, all of that dirt and rubbish is actually precious gemstone or a diamond within.

I think so many of us can relate to us in some way. I think we can know on a deep level that we have our inner nature suppressed somehow or we allow society to overlay our values on top of ours when deep in side we know some sort of expression that wants to get out, that still small voice that leads us into folly. That part of ourselves that is just wanting to be, just like as Carl Rogers talked about in On Becoming a Person of embracing the experience of being a human. An ongoing process.

Once again I ask you just as I asked myself, what is inside you? What is that part of us, unchangeable that wants to be free?

What is essentially you?

Thank you for listening and have a wonderful day.