Ebook: A Theory of Human Motivation

I. Introduction; II. The Basic Needs; The 'physiological' needs.; The safety needs.; The love needs.; The esteem needs.; The need for self-actualization.; The preconditions for the basic need satisfactions.; The desires to know and to understand.; III. Further Characteristics of the Basic Needs; The degree of fixity of the hierarchy of basic needs.; Degree of relative satisfaction.; Unconscious character of needs.; Cultural specificity and generality of needs.; Multiple motivations of behavior.; Multiple determinants of behavior.; Goals as centering principle in motivation theory.;The present paper is an attempt to formulate a positive theory of motivation which will satisfy these theoretical demands and at the same time conform to the known facts, clinical and observational as well as experimental. It derives most directly, however, from clinical experience. This theory is, I think, in the functionalist tradition of James and Dewey, and is fused with the holism of Wertheimer, Goldstein, and Gestalt Psychology, and with the dynamicism of Freud and Adler. This fusion or synthesis may arbitrarily be called a 'general-dynamic' theory. It is far easier to perceive and to cr.