What Do We Actually Need?

Iphones? Love? What do we actually need?

American psychologist, Abraham Maslow, wrote the paper on the needs of people. Maslow proposed a hierarchy of needs. This hierarchy forms a pyramid with ‘base’ needs needed before reaching ‘higher’ needs.

Beginning at the base, we have physiological needs. These needs include the basic conditions for life such as air, water, food, sleep and shelter. These needs are largely biologically based and necessary for our survival.

Moving up a level, we find the safety needs. A sense of safety is needed across multiple domains such as personal safety (being protected or shielded from physical harm), financial security, health and access to healthcare.

Moving up another level, we have the need for love and belonging. These social needs include friendships, relationships, group and/or community membership. Another way to describe this should be familiar to many South Africans as ubuntu.

The next level is our needs for esteem. Esteem from our own selves and from others. We desire esteem, respect, regard, and feeling competent in our own eyes and from others.

The final level of needs in Maslow’s hierarchy is the need to self-actualise. The need to self-actualise refers to the desire to achieve our full or maximum potential. As we can see, this is a far more complicated need than the prior needs. This will also look different for different people. In addition to self-actualisation, Maslow also spoke about a transcendence need. This transcendence need can be described as a spiritual or philosophical need.

Maslow’s hierarchy gives us a great way to understand our needs as well as the needs of others We all have needs, and figuring out ways to have our needs fulfilled can lead to a more fulfilling life. Therapy sometimes involves finding ways to have our needs met in healthy ways.

If you would like to talk more about this, I am at Thrive Psychology.

• Steve