The Journals of A.H. Maslow by Abraham H. Maslow

His work influenced psychology, education, countercultural philosophies and practices, the Esalen Institute and other personal growth centers, business management, and the holistic health movement. His holism was thus about the community as well as the individual. He hoped for the establishment of just, democratic, peaceful societies. 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.

His holism bestowed personal meaning, gave him a means for discussing social change, and countered reductionistic, mechanistic approaches inherent in behavioral and Freudian psychology. 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. Maslow's industrial motivation theory has been criticized for tending to emphasize only identification of second-level outcomes.This chapter concentrates on the life and work of psychologist Abraham Maslow. Maslow noted the commitment to work in self-actualizing people's lives: 'These highly evolved individuals assimilate their work into the identity, into the self, ie, work actually becomes part of the self, part of the individual's definition of himself.' These most highly evolved persons would actually assimilate work as part of their personal identity. He said it could also be used to mean 'moving toward psychological health'. Not wanting to use the word 'utopian', Maslow coined the term 'eupsychian' to describe human-oriented institutions generated by self-actualized people.

The study resulted in Maslow conceiving a theoretical framework on which research in the area of self-actualization may be applied to industrial organizations. The idea for Eupsychian Management originated with a journal of Maslow's impressions of his 1962 observations of a California electronics plant.

The Journals of A.H. Maslow by Abraham H. Maslow