Temi akinyemi biography of abraham maslow

Abraham Maslow emerged from obscurity to become one of the most important and influential psychologists of the 20th century.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs can help

Abraham Maslow was the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia. His parents were barely educated and established a life on the lower rungs of the social-economic ladder of Brooklyn, New York. As a Jew, he was frequently persecuted and bullied by local gangs in a racist environment. He was the first of seven children. He was also emotionally troubled.

Although his parents were basically uneducated, they strongly believed that higher education was the key for their children to escape the ghetto and grind of life. Maslow enrolled in City College of New York where his parents urged him to study law, which Maslow hated. In less than a year, he dropped out of law school and transferred to Cornell, but did not fare well there either.

In the meantime, Maslow married his first cousin, Bertha Goodman, over the severe objections of his parents. Maslow continued on, however, and returned to City College to earn his degree. He moved with his wife and first child to Wisconsin where he enrolled as a graduate student in psychology. But Maslow proved to be a thinker of extreme innovation.

He proved to be a maverick in his field. He was a respected academic who was not afraid to challenge the basic assumptions held by the majority of the psychological community of the day. For example, Maslow thought it wrong that Sigmund Freud had developed his theory of the human personality primarily through the study of the mentally ill or socially maladjusted people.