THE CONCEPT OF SELF-ACTUALIZATION

The concept of self-actualization, over the years, has gained a lot of popularity. It has made experts as well as lay persons from varying backgrounds to be highly interested in the idea. The popularity of the concept is reflected in its usage in a wide range of areas such as teaching, counseling, healthcare, leadership, and management.

The pioneer of humanistic psychology, Abraham Maslow, in the mid-20th century (1950s to 1960s), popularized the concept of self-actualization in the context of his theory of personality and motivation. According to Maslow, self-actualization is an innate tendency. It is the tendency of individuals to realize and fulfill their true potential and abilities. It is the desire to become more and more what one idiosyncratically is and to become what one is fully capable of becoming.

Abraham Maslow

This suggests that the concept of self-actualization is about individuals being unique in their own way. The state of self-actualization, according to Maslow, is not about being a better person. Instead, it is about being the person that one is supposed to be, which indicates that every individual is unique in their own way. Thus, for every individual, the idea of self-actualization is going to be different from the other.

Self-actualization is about individuals reaching their full existential capacity. It is not about achievement or becoming an extraordinary individual. It is actually about personal growth and fulfilling one’s potential to the highest level possible, whatever the endeavor may be. It is an intrinsic unfolding process, which does not rely on any rewards system.

Further, self-actualization is not about striving for specific goals or reducing a deficiency. It is about striving for stimulating and challenging tasks and events, and by doing so, enriching one’s life. Instead of accepting life as it is, self-actualization involves constantly seeking new challenges, and avoiding secure and routine behaviors and attitudes.

Maslow’s description of the concept of self-actualization was a moving away from the causal tradition in psychology. Maslow opposed the existing deterministic perspectives of psychoanalysis and behaviorism. He suggested that behavior is not driven by a cause, something that has already existed. Behavior, instead is driven by a future state that the individual is striving for. This is called teleology or the teleological perspective.

For Maslow, self-actualization is a future state that individuals strive for and it is not a cause that has already existed. It is not something that is pushing the individual, but it is actually pulling the individual. This makes self-actualization describe behavior from the teleological perspective, which is a shift from the traditional physical sciences approach (determinism) that psychology had been following.

Like Maslow, the humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers also emphasized on self-actualization. Around the same time as that of Maslow, Rogers suggested that self-actualization is innate, and it is the greatest motivating factor of individuals. Rogers believed that people have an innate tendency to enhance themselves. According to Rogers, self-actualization or the actualizing tendency (as he referred to it) is an active, controlling drive towards the fulfillment of potential, which helps in maintaining and enhancing the self.

Carl Rogers

Rogers, further, suggested that human beings have a tendency to always seek new experiences and avoid environments that lack stimulation. From his clinical experiences, Rogers suggested that people have a directional tendency to grow and have new and varied experiences.

Additionally, Rogers suggested that human beings are basically good. Human beings develop this innate goodness when society is helpful. According to Rogers, people are not able to develop their innate goodness due to faulty socialization patterns. In this regard, Rogers suggested unconditional positive regard to be very important. If parents or caregivers show unconditional positive regard then the child grows into a healthy individual. Therefore, according to Rogers society and socialization patterns play a role in self-actualization.

Rogers suggested that self-actualization is the highest level of psychological health. He referred to self-actualized people as psychologically healthy individuals or fully functioning persons. Rogers described the fully functioning person as actualizing and not actualized because he believed that growth never ends - it is always a work in progress. Rogers believed that his concept of self-actualization is similar to that of Maslow.

In describing the concept of self-actualization, Maslow borrowed the psychoanalyst, Carl Jung’s idea of the self archetype and the transcendent function. Archetypes are archaic, generalized, emotionally toned collections of associated images derived from the collective unconscious (aspects of the unconscious that have its roots in the ancient past of the entire species). In the early to mid-20th century, Jung suggested that the self archetype is innate and has the potential of being realized in everyone. It involves a process called the way of individuation and leads towards self-realization.

 

Carl Jung

According to Jung, the way of individuation is a process by which individuals become the definite, unique being that they are. It is about fulfilling the peculiarity of the individual. Jung, therefore, suggests that the self is the final goal of striving. This self-realization does not come easily. The person has to go through a wide range of experiences and make many efforts to resolve conflicts within the psyche.

The self, according to Jung, becomes a unifying force by the transcendent function. The transcendent function works towards the ideal goal of perfect wholeness. It reveals the essential person by producing and unfolding the original, potential wholeness.

Apart from Jung’s self archetype, the concept of self-actualization used by Maslow has also been found to be similar to the psychoanalyst Alfred Adler’s idea of striving for superiority. According to Adler, striving for superiority is the innate, ultimate drive of human beings to realize their full potential. In the early 20th century, Adler suggested that striving for superiority is a fundamental human need - people strive to feel superior to overcome their feelings of inferiority and inferiority complex. This striving for superiority is not in the sense of social status and dominance. It is rather an urge for completion and perfection.

Alfred Adler

Adler suggested that striving for superiority is the final goal of all humankind. It unifies personality and makes all behaviors comprehensible. Adler also suggested that striving for superiority is a way to compensate the feelings of inferiority and weakness. People are always pushed by the need to overcome inferiority and pulled by the desire for completion and wholeness.

Even though the concept of self-actualization was popularized by Maslow, the term was originated by the neuropsychiatrist, Kurt Goldstein. Goldstein had a holistic approach. He was one of the major proponents of the holistic movement at the beginning of the 20th century. He criticized the reductionist approach and atomization in neurology that existed at that time. He opposed experiences to be viewed in terms of smaller components. He rejected the localization theory (each brain area has specific functions), suggesting that the brain functions as a whole, and if damage occurs in one brain area other areas take over the functioning of the missing brain area.

Kurt Goldstein

The holistic approach of Goldstein led him to introduce the concept of self-actualization. Self-actualization, according to Goldstein, is a striving for completeness. It is the organic principle by which individuals become more fully developed and complete. Goldstein, in the 1930s, suggested that self-actualization is the main motive of human nature. It is the creative trend of human nature. Human beings are governed by the strong tendency to actualize their potential. 

According to Goldstein, each individual has certain potentialities, which are expressed through interests, preferences, and aptitudes. The fulfillment of these potentialities is finding a way towards completeness and represents self-actualization.

Goldstein, further, suggested that even though self-actualization is a universal phenomenon, the process differs from person to person. This is because people differ with respect to their innate potentialities. These differences direct them in their own ways towards growth, development, and self-actualization. It also differs because of the different environments and cultures that they may belong to.

The concept of self-actualization is a part of Goldstein’s organismic theory. The organismic theory views the individual in totality and emphasizes the integration of personality. It is about viewing individuals in terms of a holistic and unified experience and viewing any event in the context of the organism.

Goldstein applied the Gestalt approach to his organismic theory. Gestalt psychology suggests that the mind has a tendency to organize experience into configurations and wholes. It emphasizes that the whole of anything is greater than the sum of its parts, indicating that consciousness or experience as a whole cannot be reduced to smaller components. 

The organismic theory formed the basis of Gestalt therapy. Gestalt therapy is a form of therapy that focuses on the individual’s present, in-the-moment experiences rather than examining the past. It also involves taking responsibility and understanding the context of the person’s life.

Self-actualization is a widely known concept in the discipline of psychology. The concept was popularized by the humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow, but it was the neuropsychiatrist Kurt Goldstein who originated the idea. Goldstein applied the Gestalt theory and used the findings of his studies of patients with brain damage in introducing the term. 

Additionally, Maslow’s description of self-actualization has been found similar to Carl Rogers’s idea of actualizing tendency, Carl Jung’s concept of the self archetype, and Alfred Adler’s idea of striving for superiority. The concept of self-actualization, therefore, provides a link between the fields of neuroscience, Gestalt psychology, humanistic psychology, and psychoanalysis.

This article can also be found on the blog Life and Psychology

THE ROOTS OF POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Positive psychology is said to be the scientific study of wellbeing. It is the discipline that focuses on positive experiences, positive traits or character strengths, and institutions that enhance wellbeing. Positive experiences include positive states such as happiness, satisfaction, flow, optimism, hope, etc. Positive traits and character strengths include altruism, interpersonal skills, integrity, wisdom, originality, perseverance, forgiveness, etc. Institutions that enhance wellbeing are the institutions that move individuals towards being a better citizen, which includes a sense of responsibility, civility, nurturance, tolerance, and work ethics.

In 1998, the psychologist Martin Seligman, in his presidential address of the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association (APA) asserted that the discipline of psychology had been focusing too much on the negative aspects of human behavior such as mental illness, and thus, has been ignoring many of the positive aspects like growth and mastery.   

The direct influence of this focus on the negative aspects of human behavior, according to Seligman has been the World War II, which has led to a flurry of research in psychological disorders and human suffering. Seligman suggested that psychology is not just about studying illness, disorders, difficulties, and weaknesses, but it is also about studying strengths and virtues; it is about education, insight, and growth.

Martin Seligman

Seligman called this emphasis of psychology on positive aspects of human behavior as positive psychology. Thus, 1998 can be said to be the formal beginning of the field of positive psychology, with Martin Seligman being its founder. In contemporary times, positive psychology covers a wide range of areas such as subjective wellbeing, happiness, life satisfaction, quality of life, positive relationships, positive self, positive affect, leisure, peak performance, creativity, optimism, hope, interventions to enhance wellbeing, and positive psychology in the context of organizations, among others.

Even though positive psychology was formally established in 1998, it was not the first time that such topics were being studied or were being given emphasis. There were psychologists who were emphasizing on such positive aspects of behavior much before the year of 1998.

Ed Diener

In 1984, the psychologist Edward Diener proposed the tripartite model of subjective wellbeing. According to Diener, the subjective evaluation of life is referred to as subjective wellbeing. He suggested that subjective wellbeing comprises of cognitive judgments associated with overall life satisfaction, and affective experiences that involve positive and negative emotional reactions.

On the basis of this, Diener formulated his tripartite model of subjective wellbeing. He suggested that subjective wellbeing has three components, which are life satisfaction (LS), positive affect (PA), and negative affect (NA). This model was widely adopted, where psychologists conducted a number of empirical researches related to it, and even developed self-report measures of subjective wellbeing.

After Diener, in 1989, the psychologist Carol Ryff proposed a six-factor model of psychological wellbeing. Ryff had concerns regarding the dearth of research in psychology, related to positive functioning. This led her to come up with the multi-faceted concept of psychological wellbeing.

Carol Ryff

Psychological wellbeing is the perception of positive functioning. It comprises of six dimensions or factors – self-acceptance (maintaining the same level of self-esteem in varying circumstances, and trying to be positive in doing so), purpose in life (goals and beliefs that give a sense of direction and meaning in life); autonomy (self-determination and being guided by one’s own internalized standards, rather than conformity), positive relationships (the ability to have satisfying, long-lasting relationships), environmental mastery (being able to manage the environment according to one’s needs), and personal growth (enhancing skills for personal development, seeking opportunities for growth, and having insight into one’s potential for self-development).

The concepts of both Diener and Ryff, in the 1980s, can be seen as significant precursors to the positive psychology movement, leading Seligman to formally establish the discipline in 1998. However, a more direct influence on positive psychology existed much earlier than Diener and Ryff. This direct influence was in the form of humanistic psychology, especially its founder Abraham Maslow.

Maslow suggested that to understand human nature, instead of examining mental illness, it is more appropriate to study people who he referred to as psychologically healthy individuals. According to Maslow, psychologically healthy individuals are those who have an objective sense of reality, self-acceptance, simplicity, autonomy, empathy, non-conformism, commitment to work, and a high level of social interest.

Abraham Maslow

In studying psychologically healthy individuals, and not mental illness, Maslow was emphasizing on aspects of improvement, instead of cure. He was, thus, focusing on the positive aspects of human behavior, which eventually had a strong influence on the positive psychology movement. In fact, in the 1950s, Maslow was the one who had used the term positive psychology, which was much before Seligman had used it.

Further, in emphasizing on the positive aspects of human behavior, Maslow, in 1961, coined the term Eupsychia. Eupsychia, according to Maslow is a society made up of self-actualizing people, in which individuals will grow, be happy, aware, compassionate, and connected. Based on this, Maslow proposed his Eupsychian theory, which was aimed to create the Eupsychian society that he had envisioned.

In many ways, the humanistic psychologist, Carl Rogers, carried forward the ideas of Maslow. Like Maslow, Rogers also emphasized on the positive aspects of human behavior. Rogers developed his approach calling it the person-centered approach. In this approach, Rogers suggested that every individual has the capability to alter their thoughts and behavior to bring about a positive change, leading to personal growth.

Carl Rogers

He emphasized on the significance of unconditional positive regard (love, empathy, warmth, care, respect, and acceptance) from parents or care-takers, for individuals to develop in a healthy manner. According to Rogers, this unconditional positive regard enables individuals to become fully functioning persons, which is mainly characterized by openness to experience, living life to the fullest, a sense of freedom in thought and action, and high level of creativity. On the whole, Rogers was strongly emphasizing on nurturance and personal growth, which are important aspects of positive psychology.

The works of Maslow and Rogers, suggest that, in many ways, positive psychology is an extension of humanistic psychology. However, they were not the only significant influence on positive psychology. Even though humanistic psychology is a direct influence on positive psychology, there have been other psychologists before humanistic psychology, who proposed ideas and concepts that can also be considered as the roots of positive psychology.

One such psychologist is Alfred Adler, psychoanalyst and founder of individual psychology. Adler is often considered to be the pioneer in emphasizing positive aspects of human behavior. In 1939, Adler introduced his concept of social interest. Social interest is the drive that every individual is born with. According to Adler, social interest comprises of cooperation, interpersonal and social relationships, identification with the group, empathy, and feeling of a sense of community and belongingness.

Alfred Adler

More specifically, social interest is about the individual helping the society to strive for a perfect society. Adler suggested that this striving implies respect and consideration for others. Research suggests that people who are high on social interest are altruistic, trustworthy, socially adjusted, and nurturant compared to those who are low in social interest. They also have greater satisfaction and more satisfying relationships. Further, people high in social interest have been found to report lesser levels of depression, anxiety, loneliness, emotional instability, and hostility towards others.

Adler’s concept is considered to be highly influential with respect to emphasizing on positive aspects of behavior. It is often suggested that the idea of social interest was something that had influenced humanistic psychologists. Maslow’s idea of Eupsychia can be found to be similar to a society that Adler had envisioned, which can be attained due to innate tendency of social interest.

Apart from Adler, another psychoanalyst who emphasized on the positive aspects of behavior is Erich Fromm. Like Adler, Fromm is considered to be a social psychoanalyst. His approach is referred to as humanistic psychoanalysis.

Erich Fromm

Fromm suggested that every individual has existential needs, which need to be fulfilled. These existential needs are – relatedness (drive for union with people), transcendence (urge to rise above a passive and accidental existence, towards purposefulness), rootedness (need to establish roots), sense of identity (the capacity to be aware of oneself as a separate entity), and frame of orientation (need for putting events into framework to make sense of it). If these needs are fulfilled then the individual experiences wellbeing.

According to Fromm, these needs remain unfulfilled due to the modern capitalist and consumerist society. Because of this, individuals feel estranged and alienated, leading to anxiety and depression. The only way to get out of such feelings, according to Fromm is love, affiliation, sharing, and bonding.

Fromm gave a lot of emphasis to love. He believed that love is the only way that people can get united with the world, and yet maintain their individuality. He defined love as the union with somebody or something outside oneself, while not losing one’s individuality, separateness, and integrity. Fromm suggested that love involves sharing and communionship. This emphasis on love, connection, bonding is something that has been found in positive psychology as well, making Fromm an important precursor of the movement.

Harry Stack Sullivan

Going along with the idea of nurturance, growth, and development, the psychoanalyst Harry Stack Sullivan has also made significant contributions. Sullivan, is the pioneer of the interpersonal approach to psychology, which gives emphasis on the role that relationships play in the development of personality and mental health. This approach changed the entire picture of psychoanalysis and psychology, in general, by emphasizing the role of positive, satisfying relationships in wellbeing, personal growth, and psychotherapy. These aspects of Sullivan’s contributions make it a highly significant precursor to the positive psychology movement.

In his interpersonal theory of psychiatry, formulated in the early 1950s, Sullivan asserted that interpersonal interactions shape personality. According to him, personality can only be studied in the context of interpersonal interactions, and that enduring patterns of relationships form the essence of personality. Personality, for Sullivan, cannot be isolated from interpersonal behavior and interpersonal situations.

Therefore, Sullivan suggested that positive and empathetic relationships become the key in the healthy development of individuals – positive relationships lead to better mental health, and help to cope with stress and anxiety. Sullivan, further, suggested that if relationships are not positive or if interpersonal needs are not met, then it leads to loneliness and depression.    

Heinz Kohut

Another psychoanalyst who gave emphasis to positive relationships is Heinz Kohut. Kohut suggested that the presence and absence of loving relationships is very significant in the formation of the self. According to Kohut, receiving empathetic reactions from significant others is highly important for the healthy development of the self.

He further suggested that healthy interactions with significant others enables the person to develop what he called an ideal personality type – an independent and self-sufficient person. Unhealthy interactions, on the other hand, lead to emptiness and a sense of insecurity. Kohut’s emphasis on empathy and healthy interactions in the role of the development of self, which emerged in the 1960s, can be viewed as an important precursor to positive psychology.

Along with the humanistic and psychoanalytic perspectives, the roots of positive psychology can also be traced back to philosophical traditions. The main focus in positive psychology has been the study of wellbeing. Wellbeing has been examined from two perspectives that are based on two very different philosophies – hedonism and eudaimonism. Hedonism determined the hedonic perspective of wellbeing and eudaimonism determined the eudaimonic perspective of wellbeing.

Aristippus

Hedonism is the philosophy that suggests that human behavior is determined by increasing pleasure and decreasing pain. According to hedonism, pleasure is the highest good and proper aim of human life. The hedonistic philosophy can be traced back to Aristippus, the 4^th century BCE Greek philosopher. Aristippus believed that the greatest human value is pleasure and pain is the lowest, which should be avoided. He believed that the pursuit of life should be enjoyment and pleasure.

The philosophy of Aristippus was later carried forward by the 18^th and early 19^th century philosopher Jeremy Bentham, in his utilitarian philosophy. Bentham believed that human happiness can be completely explained in terms of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. The British empiricists Thomas Hobbes, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill also propagated Bentham’s hedonism. The philosophy of hedonism determined what came to be known as the hedonistic perspective of wellbeing or hedonistic wellbeing. According to hedonistic wellbeing, wellbeing involves happiness, pleasure, and enjoyment.

Aristotle

The hedonistic philosophy was opposed by eudaimonism or the eudaimonic philosophy or eudaimonia. The founder of eudaimonia is the Greek philosopher, Aristotle. Aristotle heavily criticized hedonism. He suggested that hedonism makes individuals become slaves to their desires. According to him, instead of seeking pleasure, the essential aspect of a good life is the realization of one’s true potential.

Eudaimonia determined the eudaimonic perspective of wellbeing or eudaimonic wellbeing. Eudaimonic wellbeing conceptualizes wellbeing with respect to realizing one’s true potential, optimal functioning, and having purpose and meaning in life.

The field of positive psychology has brought about a major change in the approach of examining human behavior. While humanistic psychology has been a direct influence on positive psychology, specific psychoanalytic perspectives can also be viewed as its roots. Apart from that, the roots of positive psychology can be traced back to two distinct philosophical traditions, in terms of hedonism and eudaimonia.

INITIALLY NOT A PSYCHOLOGIST: ROBERT SESSIONS WOODWORTH

The seventh part of the series - Initially Not A Psychologist ...

Robert Sessions Woodworth

Robert Sessions Woodworth was an influential functional psychologist, who spearheaded the functionalist movement at Columbia, independently, away from Chicago, from where it was originally established. Woodworth had elaborated the work of William James and John Dewey. He also introduced ideas that was extensively used by schools and perspectives of psychology that emerged after functionalism. Woodworth, however, did not begin his career as a psychologist. He was, initially, not a psychologist.

In 1891, Woodworth completed his Bachelor’s in philosophy, from Amherst College. After that he became a science and mathematics instructor for undergraduate students. During that time, he attended a lecture given by Granville StanleyHall. After that he read William James’s Principles of Psychology. These two experiences, especially reading the book by William James, played a huge influential role on him, and he decided to become a psychologist. He completed his Master’s at Harvard, where he studied under William James. At the suggestion of James, he completed his doctorate at Columbia, under James McKeen Cattell. The title of his dissertation being The Accuracy of Voluntary Movement.

Woodworth introduced the idea of dynamic psychology, which was an elaboration of the works of William James and John Dewey. Dynamic psychology is about motivation - the ‘why’ of behavior. Woodworth, however, differed from James and Dewey in the sense that he was giving more emphasis to the underlying physiological aspects of behavior that he felt drive or motivate behavior. His views can be seen to be similar to the instinct theory of motivation by William McDougal.

Apart from dynamic psychology, Woodworth propagated for objectivity in psychology. He believed that psychology should be studying stimulus and response. However, he also suggested that the organism should be considered to be the mediator between external stimulus and the response. He believed that varying energy levels and past and current experiences also play a role in determining behavior. It was due to this that Woodworth opined that both consciousness and behavior should be the subject matter of psychology.

In giving his views about the nature of psychology and its subject matter, Woodworth can be seen to foreshadowing schools and perspectives of psychology that emerged later on. His emphasis on the organism mediating stimulus and response were later examined extensively by neo-behaviorists Clark Hull and Edward Tolman. They suggested a number of intervening variables, within the organism, that they felt to be important in determining a response. It was the suggestion of these intervening variables by Hull and Tolman that made them move beyond the stimulus-response (S-R) connection of Watsonian behaviorism to stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) connection.

Further, Woodworth suggesting both consciousness and behavior to be the subject matter of psychology was later adopted by the social theorists, like Albert Bandura and Julian Rotter. A similar approached can even be found in humanistic psychology, which emphasizes on conscious experiences as well as behavior in the realization of true potential. Woodworth, in this way, can be viewed as someone who links functionalism with behaviorism and humanistic psychology.

Woodworth turned out to be a highly influential psychologist. He wrote about his perspectives of psychology in his books Dynamic Psychology, published in 1918, and Dynamic Behavior, published in 1958. His book Psychology, published in 1921, is considered to be one of the most widely read psychology textbooks of that time. His book Experimental Psychology, first published in 1938, ended up being a classic textbook in psychology. Due to his influential writings, Woodworth has been one the most cited psychologists.

Starting his career as a science and mathematics instructor, Woodworth decided to become a psychologist after attending a lecture of Granville Stanley Hall and reading William James’s Principles of Psychology. His ideas and approach to psychology were later adopted and examined by highly significant perspectives in psychology that emerged later in the history of psychology.

THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS: FROM THEORIES OF MOTIVATION TO NEUROSCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES

The discipline of psychology, from an early phase, right after its inception, has been emphasizing on the significance of social relationships. Psychologists, from the beginning, have been suggesting the role of relationships in individuals’ life. Over the years till contemporary times, theories and research, in psychology, have emphasized how social and interpersonal relationships play an integral role in guiding human thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, in shaping the psyche of the individual, and being an important source for individual and social wellbeing.

One of the earliest psychologists to extensively talk about social relationships is William McDougall. McDougall suggested that human beings are goal-oriented and purposive. He called his approach hormic psychology. Hormic means an urge or an impulse.

William McDougall

Hormic psychology suggests that psychological activity has a purpose, or goal, that prods the individual to action. The propelling force of such activity is termed as instinct. Instincts are inborn patterns of behavior that are not learned. McDougall was one of the pioneers of the instinct theory of motivation. His theory of motivation states that organisms are pre-programmed to behave in the way they do so. This includes seeking social relationships.

In 1908, McDougall wrote his highly influential book, Introduction to Social Psychology. This is one of the first books to emphasize on social behavior, and was a major precursor to the field of social psychology. It was in this book that McDougall introduced his instinct theory of motivation. In the book, he wrote a full chapter on what he called the gregarious instinct.

The gregarious instinct, according to McDougall, enables individuals to seek others and works as a motivation to have social interactions and develop affiliations. McDougall also writes that it is the gregarious instinct that makes people indulge in behaviors like cooperation, and leads people to sharing of feelings and emotions with as many people as possible. McDougal further suggests that the gregarious instinct is responsible for the development of civilizations. It is the gregarious instinct that makes people want to be in groups and socialize at a much larger scale, leading to the formation of cities and societies.

The gregarious instinct, therefore, plays a very important role with respect to social behavior and the development of social relationships. By the year 1932, McDougall had created a list of a number of instincts such as hunger, sex, sleep, curiosity, construction, comfort, among others, including the gregarious instinct.

Drawing inspiration from McDougall, Henry Murray, in the 1930s, developed his theory of needs, called personology. According to Murray, a need is something that is internally aroused or results from external stimulation that produces an activity on part of the individual, which continues till that need is satisfied.

Henry Murray

A need, as per Murray, may be weak or intense, momentary or enduring, but it gives rise to overt behavior leading or directing to reduction or satisfaction of the need. Murray, further, suggests that a need is related to underlying processes in the brain and is accompanied by feelings and emotions.

Murray listed a number of needs, among which is the affiliation need. The affiliation need is a psychological or psychogenic need and is characterized by being drawn towards cooperation, reciprocity, winning affection, and remaining loyal to others.

David McClelland

Murray’s theory led to a great deal of research, especially by the psychologist David McClelland. McClelland in his theory of social motives or social needs talked about three needs that lead to social outcomes. One of those three needs is the need for affiliation.

The need for affiliation is the desire to be with others and have harmonious relationships. It prompts people to have friends as well as maintain their friendships. The need for affiliation may differ from person to person, some being high and some being low on the need. Nevertheless, each and every person has this need to some extent or the other.

Abraham Maslow

Before McClelland’s research, Abraham Maslow, one of the pioneers of the humanistic movement in psychology, extended Murray’s personology, in the 1940s, and gave his theory of hierarchy of needs, in which he described a number of inherent needs that motivate individuals. Among these needs, Maslow talks about the belongingness needs.

The need for belongingness is the need to have friends and family. It is a natural tendency to belong to a larger group and enables people to experience companionship and have affectionate relationships. Empirical evidences suggest that deficits in belongingness and a lack of strong social bonds lead to lowered physical and mental health. Human beings, according to Maslow, are, thus, naturally and inherently driven towards belongingness.

Mark Leary

Roy Baumeister

Extensive research has been done on the need for belongingness in contemporary times. Leading researchers in this area are Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary. In the 1990s, Baumeister and Leary did extensive work on the need for belongingness suggesting that it is a pervasive need to develop long-lasting, positive, and significant interpersonal relationships. It involves a need for frequent, pleasant, and stable interactions. If such interactions are with the same people then it is more satisfying as compared to when they interact with a changing sequence of individuals. A lack of belongingness, according to Baumeister and Leary, leads to a feeling of severe deprivation and other psychological issues.

Emily Esfahani Smith

The need for belongingness is viewed as highly significant in understanding human behavior, and over the years a number of psychologists have emphasized its importance. More recently, in her book The Power of Meaning, published in 2017, Emily Esfahani Smith suggested that the fulfilment of the need for belongingness is one of the major factors to experience meaning in life.

Therefore, the instincts and underlying needs depicted in the early and modern theories of motivation show that individuals are inherently motivated to be with others and have relationships. They urge people to seek out others, spend time with them, and maintain satisfying relationships with them.

The idea of the individual and social relationships is appositely reflected in the concept of the self. The self is a construct that is referred to contain an individual’s organized and stable experiences. It is the cognitive and affective representation of an individual’s identity. In other words, it is the sum of what the person actually is. It is about phenomena that pertain to the individual.

William James

The concept of the self was introduced in psychology by William James, in his book The Principles of Psychology, published in the year 1890. According to James, the self is central to all of an individual’s experiences and that people divide the world into me and not me. This distinction that people derive is based on interactions with others. According to James, social interactions are the key to the self.

James also talked about the social self. The recognition that individuals get from others is referred to as the social self. This further led to the idea of many selves – suggesting that individuals have different sides to them, depending on the person with whom one interacts with. We maybe a completely different individual with one person as compared to the other, indicating how others are important in shaping the self.

George Herbert Mead

The views of William James were taken forward by George Herbert Mead, often considered to be the father of social psychology. Mead, in the early 1900s, argues that the self is a product of social processes. The self, according to Mead, arises in the process of social experiences and is based on an individual’s perception of how he/she looks to others. He further states that the self is a product of social interactions. His ideas were published posthumously in the book Mind, Self, and Society, in 1934.

Influenced by Mead, Harry Stack Sullivan, the founder of the interpersonal approach to psychology, and a post-Freudian, in the 1940s, placed great emphasis on the social, interpersonal basis of the development of the self. Sullivan preferred the term self-system, instead of self, conveying his notion that the self is not a static entity, structure, or being, but rather an active process, or dynamism. For Sullivan, the self, including individuality and uniqueness, is a product of interpersonal experience and social influence. The self-system is constructed out of the individual’s perceptions of others reactions, from reflected appraisals.

Harry Stack Sullivan

Sullivan extended his idea of interpersonal interactions shaping the self to his notion of personality. In his theory of personality called the interpersonal theory of psychiatry, Sullivan states that enduring patterns of human relationships form the essence of personality. He asserts that personality is the relatively enduring pattern of recurrent interpersonal situations, which characterizes an individual’s life. For Sullivan, personality cannot be isolated from interpersonal situations, and interpersonal behavior is all that can be observed as personality. He repeatedly insisted that personality is shaped almost entirely by the individual’s relationships.

The interpersonal approach to self and personality led to other post-Freudian views that gave emphasis to interpersonal relationships in the development of the individual. One of such perspective was the object relations theories. The object relations theories suggest that the essence of an individual cannot be understood without the understanding of the significant relationships of the individual. Objects are internalized representations of real people.

Heinz Kohut

The most influential object relations theorist is Heinz Kohut. Kohut is the founder of self psychology - a school of thought of psychoanalytic theory and therapy that explains psychopathology as the result of disrupted or unmet developmental needs. According to self psychology, the key issue in the formation of the self is the presence and absence of loving relationships. Kohut, in the 1960s, suggests that the receipt of empathic reactions from significant others is highly important for the healthy development of the self.

Kohut further suggested that healthy interactions with people who are important to an individual leads him/her to develop into an ideal personality type, where the individual is an independent and self-sufficient person. On the other hand, if this interaction is not healthy then it will lead the individual towards emptiness and insecurity. By suggesting the role of healthy interactions with significant others, Kohut was clearly emphasizing the significance of relationships in the development of the self.

Apart from the post-Freudians, the humanistic psychologists, especially Carl Rogers, have also emphasized the role of interpersonal relationships in the formation of the self. Self is the central concept of Rogers’s theory, which is why it is referred to as the self theory.

The self, according to Rogers, is patterned conscious perceptions experienced by the individual. The self is an outgrowth of what a person experiences, and an awareness of self helps a person differentiate himself/herself from others.

Carl Rogers

Rogers, in the 1940s, suggested that the self is a social product that is developed out of interpersonal relationships. For a healthy self to emerge, a person needs unconditional positive regard – love, warmth, care, respect, and acceptance – from parents/caretakers. This unconditional positive regard helps in having less discrepancy between the real self (what the person actually is) and the ideal self (what the person wants to become), a state referred to as congruence by Rogers. This state of congruence leads to the condition of becoming oneself, eventually making the individual what Rogers calls a fully functioning person – a person who is well adjusted and is close to his/her true potential.

Susan Anderson

These perspectives of the self, right when it was introduced by William James to the post-Freudians and Rogers, vividly indicate that individual is shaped by his/her interpersonal interactions. This is further reflected in the emergence of the concept of the relational self, first proposed by Susan Anderson and Serena Chen, in early 2000s. They suggest

Serena Chen

that the self is relational, in the sense, that it is entangled with significant others that has implications for self-definition, self-evaluation, self-regulation, and daily functioning, which is all in relation to others. By significant others, Anderson and Chen mean someone who has been highly influential in the individual’s life and someone in whom the individual is or was emotionally invested.

The concept of relational self indicates that each of the significant others are linked to the self, capturing unique aspects of that relationship. Therefore, the self is shaped by the significant others, if they are present both physically as well as symbolically.

Influenced by this, a number of interpersonal theorists state that the concept of the relational self reflects that relationships are incorporated in the self and that the self is defined in terms of interpersonal relationships. By being tied to the self, these relationships influence behavior, cognition, and affect of the individual, as well as perceptions of the self.

Therefore, theories of self indicate that individuals are shaped by their relationships. Some theorists suggest general interpersonal interactions to shape the self, and some give emphasis on healthy interactions with significant others in the formation of the self.

Along with theories of motivation and self, more recently, advances in neurosciences suggest that human beings are in fact built to have appropriate social relationships. The biological system of human beings is structured in such a way that it helps them develop proper interpersonal interactions. This is explicitly depicted in the field of social neuroscience.

John Cacioppo

Social neuroscience is the biological approach to social behavior. It was proposed by the neuroscientists John Cacioppo and Gary Berntson in 1992. Social neuroscience is an integrative field that examines the involvement of the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems in socio-cultural process. It examines how the brain drives social behavior and in turn how the social world influences brain and biology. It is a comprehensive attempt to understand mechanisms that underlie social behavior by combining biological and social approaches.

Gary Berntson

Social neuroscience has led to the discovery that the brain of human beings are built in such a way that it guides people to have social interactions. The neural circuitry of human beings is designed in such a way that it enables people to socialize with each other. There are a number of areas spread in the brain that act together and are responsible for people to interact with each other. These brain regions are collectively termed as the social brain.

Michael Gazzaniga

The term social brain was introduced into neuropsychology by the psychologist, and founder of cognitive neuroscience, Michael Gazzaniga in 1985 in his studies of disturbances in social and emotional communication after damages in the right hemisphere. The term was then more prominently used by Leslie Brothers in 1990. Brothers in her studies with monkeys proposed that there are a set of brain regions that are dedicated to social cognition. With the advent of brain imagining techniques, the social brain has also been discovered in human beings, and neuropsychologists like Ralph Adolphs have found similar results in humans as that of monkeys.

Ralph Adolphs

The social brain is a set of distinct but fluid and wide-ranging neural networks that synchronize around relating to others. Neuroscientists suggest that these social centers are mainly in structures of the prefrontal area of the brain in connection with areas in the sub-cortex, especially the limbic system (set of brain structures responsible for emotions, motivation, memory, and olfaction). However, other brain areas apart from these have also been discovered to constitute the social brain.

Giacomo Rizzolatti

During any kind of social interaction, regions in the social brain work together to fine tune the activity and orchestrate the bodily movements and emotions to make the person attuned to that social action. The specific brain cells called the mirror neurons play a very important role in this. The mirror neurons were first discovered in the early 1990s by the neurophysiologist Giacomo Rizzolatti.

The mirror neurons, found in the social brain, connect the brain of one person with that of the other. The mirror neurons immediately get active and start function during a social interaction. These neurons sense both the move that the other person is about to make and their feelings, and instantly prepares the individual to respond appropriately. For instance, if a person smiles the mirror neurons detect that and make the other individual to smile back. Or, if a person waves his/her hand, the mirror neurons detect that and make the other individual to wave back. Emotions have been found to be contagious because of the mirror neurons. In these ways, mirror neurons function during any social activity in the brain region that is responsible for that action.

The social circuits together keep things operating smoothly during interactions. Damage to any of these social centers impairs the ability to attune. It leads to making poor interpersonal decisions, misjudge the feelings of other people, and are incapable in coping with the social demands of life.

Howard Gardner

Interpersonal intelligence, one of the multiple intelligences proposed by the Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner, the the mid-1980s, is an important factor in social interactions. Interpersonal intelligence is the ability to perceive and make distinctions in the moods, intentions, motivations, and feelings of other people. It includes sensitivity to facial expressions, voice, and gestures; the capacity for discriminating among many different kinds of interpersonal cues; and the ability to respond effectively to those cues in some pragmatic way. These aspects have been to be associated with the frontal lobe, right temporal lobe, and the limbic system.

Reuvan Bar-On

Emotional intelligence - a set of abilities related to self and social awareness – is another important aspect that helps in having appropriate social interactions. Reuvan Bar-On, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, on the basis of lesion studies (studies on patients who have brain injuries in clearly defined areas) identified several brain areas crucial for the abilities of emotional intelligence. Other findings using different methods support the same conclusion. These brain researches suggest that there are unique brain centers associated with specific aspects of emotional intelligence, including aspects that help in social interactions.

For instance, abilities to solve interpersonal problems, managing impulses, expression of feelings effectively, and relating with others, have been found to be associated with the prefrontal cortex. Empathy, the ability to understand the emotions of others, has been found to be associated with the right somatosensory cortex and the insula. A large number of studies have also found the amygdala (center of emotions in the brain) to be associated with empathy.

Cameron Carter

Research has identified many specific chemicals that are synthesized in the brain to be associated with social behaviors that play a role in social interactions. Cameron Carter and Eric Keverne, in early 2000s, found that the neurotransmitters (chemicals in the brain that the brain cells use to communicate) such as dopamine and endogenous opioids play a role in social bonding. Additionally, hormones such as oxytocin, vasopressin, corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF), and adrenal hormones, including corticosterone are also responsible for social bonding.

The human brain, thus, not only guides people in socializing with others, but it also works in order to help people in having appropriate social interactions, which in turn help in having better relationships. The human brain, is therefore, built to make human beings form proper social relationships.

In the discipline of psychology, the notion of humans being social in nature, like to be in groups, and have social interactions, can be said to have begun with the early theories of motivation. This notion was strengthened by the perspectives of the social self and the beginning of the interpersonal approach to psychology. Finally, the advances in neuroscientific techniques gave proper evidence that the brain plays a very important role in fine-tuning social interactions to help in having appropriate social relationships.