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Meeting Needs for Self-Actualization

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Meeting Needs for Self-Actualization
Meeting Needs for Self-Actualization
Everyone has certain needs that must be met in order to live a happy and fulfilling life. These needs are divided into three specific types which are physical, psychological, and social needs. Abraham Maslow, an expert in human behavior, along with Carl Rogers used these three general types to develop a larger hierarchy of human needs for self-actualization. Even though there is discontentment or unending needs of a person, one 's needs must be satisfied in order for him or her to be happy. People whose needs were met are particularly in good mental health but if a need fails to be met then pathological effects may ensue. Self-actualization is a state that a person reaches in which he or she is experiencing life in a way that allows for optimal growth towards a better state of being. The general concept used in the present study is most akin to the two most popular concepts of self actualization presented by the humanistic psychologists Abraham Maslow (1968) and Carl Rogers (1961, 1980). Maslow viewed the self actualized person in two ways. This person will have realized latent potentials, talents and abilities as well as achieved a state of self-fulfillment. "Such people seem to be fulfilling themselves and to be doing the best that they are capable of doing. They are people who have developed or are developing to the full stature of which they are capable" (Maslow, 1970, p. 150).
Rogers had a similar view to Maslow 's of positive psychological functioning. The Rogerian view is based on his interactions with people in psychotherapy and their positive functioning. Carl Rogers shied away from the term "self actualization", which implies that a person has reached a fulfilled end state, and substituted for it the concept of the fully functioning person. Roger 's "fully functioning person" is not one who has reached a perfect end-state, rather one who had the freedom to fully experience and access those conditions that

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