by Dr. Humair Hashmi
Only about one percent of the people, it is believed self-actualise. This small minority, however, has the capacity, as a result of going through the experience, to radically change their own lives as well as leave a profound impact on the lives of others around them. The motive in self-actualisation, it appears, is the beginning of the human journey from mortality towards immortality.
Pick up any recently published book on the subject of industrial or organisational psychology and you are bound to find a major part of it devoted to human motivation and its impact on organisational productivity. Long aware of this linkage, psychologists have been experimenting with the variables that impact it. Based on these studies, many views and theories have been advanced. One of the most prominent theories of motivation is that of Maslow.
Abraham Maslow’s Jewish parents had migrated to the USA. He was born in 1908 in New York, and studied at the University of Wisconsin, completing his undergraduate and graduate studies eventually obtaining a PhD in psychology. After receiving his doctorate he started teaching psychology in New York; where he had the opportunity of meeting eminent psychologists like Alfred Adler, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm and Max Wertheimer. Later he served as president of the American Psychological Association, an indication of the respect his work commanded in the academic-scientific circles in the USA. He died in 1970. His theory of human motivation incited a lively debate and renewed interest in what propels human behaviour.
Based upon his observations and experimental results, Maslow talks about special kinds of experiences connected to human motives. One such is a “plateau experience” — something that radically and profoundly changes a person’s perceptions of the world. Once this happens one experiences one’s surroundings in an intense way, and comes to have a heightened appreciation for life. It is different from the mundane routine of life, which is usually a dull, drab repetition of chores.
A client revealed, a couple of months ago, that he had recently got a call from a childhood friend who complained of not feeling too well and asked him to drop by and take him to a physician. Arriving at his friend’s residence, he found him in some discomfort. As they sat down after the exchange of greetings for a friendly banter, the host complained of heaviness and pain in the chest. His breathing became shallow and laboured and before the physician could be called he lost his breath. His visitor tried unsuccessfully to revive him, then drove him to a nearby hospital, where upon arrival he was pronounced dead. The client revealed that for days afterwards he had trouble reconciling with the fact that an apparently hale and hearty man, whom he had known since his childhood, had departed so suddenly. Within a few days of the experience, he said, he decided to visit India and see the Taj Mahal. The sudden bereavement, he said, had brought home the fact of his own death and he realised that did not want to die without seeing the Taj! An example of how a plateau experience motivates one through a sudden and intense awareness of the world and heightened appreciation of life.
Then there is the “peak experiences” — a short-lived experience of intense joy and excitement, coming, it would appear, from the deep crevices of the soul, when one feels fully alive. However the feeling is transient. Such experiences come suddenly and are gone in a flash. Some Muslim sufis have described such soul-stirring experiences but here is a more recent description:
“A whole month and a half after entering his class, I finally told Lee that I was ready to do my first exercise. The following week he called on me. Sitting on a chair centre stage, I was as nervous as I’d ever been in my life. It seemed to me there were many more people than usual in the class that day, and I figured they were there to see me fail. But I launched in, placing my fingers around an imaginary glass of chilled orange juice. I closed my eyes and before long felt myself alone in a world of sensation; the nerves in my fingertips felt the cold. I opened my eyes and lifted the glass slowly, testing its weight until I could feel it in my hand, and as I brought the glass to my mouth, the taste buds on my tongue worked up in anticipation of the sweet, acidy wetness. For the first time I was experiencing something unique to actors: I knew I was on a stage before an audience, pretending — yet at the same time I was all alone and totally in the moment.
“What happened next was the most important moment in my life up until then.
“Lee was quiet, looking at me. Then in a low voice he said, ‘I see a lot of people go through here, Jane, but you have real talent.’
“The top of my head came off, birds flew out, and the room was bathed in light. Lee Strasburg told me I was talented. He isn’t my father or an employee of my father’s. He sees actors all day long every day. He didn’t have to say this. I know he’s not one to ‘make nice’.
“In that moment my life did a flip-flop, though I didn’t understand at the time why it had such a powerful effect on me. When I walked outside after the class, the city felt different, as If I now owned a piece of it. I went to bed that night with my heart racing, and when I woke up the next morning I knew why I was alive, what I wanted to do. There is nothing more exquisite in life than being able to earn your living doing what you love (that, and being capable of love). All I’d needed was for someone who was a professional and who didn’t have to — to tell me I was good”.
This is Jane Fonda, two-time Oscar-winner, in her book My life so far — an example of a peak experience motivating her to choose a life-long career in acting.
Then there is self-actualisation — a more complex process but unlike a plateau or a peak experience a rather permanent one. It does not happen in a flash. It is more like a drive, a propelling force within the personality. It is as if a part of the self seeks expression: not the ordinary, daily-life kind of expression, but a more solid, relatively-permanent expression. It is the urge to do that painting, the desire to finish that novel, the drive to complete that musical score: when a person is propelled by the need to express his creative urge, when all other needs are fulfilled or may be ignored. The person is possessed by “capacities that clamour for expression”.
The philosopher Wittgenstein, who left his teaching job at Cambridge, withdrew to a small village in Austria to teach at a school thus gaining valuable time for reflection and contemplation, is one example of a person propelled by this motive. Francoise Gilot describes in her My life with Picasso how involved he would in a painting. He would paint for long hours standing in his atelier, day in and day out, sometimes for weeks, never leaving the house, until he had finished that painting. Nothing would distract him form his work — not even the visit by a borderline-insane ex-wife who physically wrestled with Gilot in the same studio. And of course all of us know about Michelangelo’s involvement while painting the Sistine Chapel when he ignored the most trying physical circumstances for weeks and months on end. Of course we are talking about super humans; but then that is what self-actualisation is all about. Only about one percent of the people, it is believed self-actualise. This small minority, however, has the capacity, as a result of going through the experience, to radically change their own lives as well as leave a profound impact on the lives of others around them. The motive in self-actualisation, it appears, is the beginning of the human journey from mortality towards immortality. Mere mortals shy away from it.
This article was originally published on The Daily Times, Pakistan. It is published here with the author’s permission.
