Hierarchical Integration of Human Psychological Needs

Abstract

The notion of needs has been maintained in the Occidental psychology through the humanistic perspective of Abraham H. Maslow (1908–1970). This perspective was an outgrowth of various social tensions in North American psychological scene in the 1950s–1960s which is a domineering example of indigenous psychologies of the world. The topic of needs is of course universal—but psychological perspectives that create theories of needs are inevitably built on the social representations that dominate in the given society at the given time. In the case of the United States of mid-twentieth century, it was the tension between the mechanistic behavioral science and the focus on individualistic moralizing within the society. One of the results was the individual-centered humanistic psychology movement that benefitted from Maslow’s contributions. Maslow’s theory of needs was a deeply individualistic perspective without any explicit social or cultural extensions.

In this chapter, I have reformulated Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs in terms of the cultural psychology of dynamic semiosis. While accepting Maslow’s hierarchy of levels of needs—from basic to the highest (self-actualization)—the particular needs (as sign constructs) can be moved upwards (from hungry eating anything by hands to being picky about a wedding cake) or downwards in the hierarchy. Furthermore, at different levels of the hierarchy, the societal norm systems are set up to constrain the upward or downward move. Sensuality enters into the hierarchy in it upper part—replacing the lower bodily needs by affectively felt-through relating with the environment. Covering the body with clothes for granting sufficient warmth in cold climates to stay alive becomes turned into conscious following of changing clothing fashions at the intermediate level of the hierarchy, up to the complete oblivion about one’s clothing by self-actualizing hermit “desert fathers” of early Christianity or bohemian artists in nineteenth- or twentieth-century European artist colonies. Needs are signs that organize human lives in a dynamically changing fashion.