God, I love Maslow. When we got to this portion of my psych class, I was really surprised, because I spent a lot of time with people that I didn’t think understood my reasons for acting or reacting in the ways that I do. And going through the list, I felt like a lot of it was much like me, but I’m not all there yet.

From my PSYC 380 notebook:

Maslow’s concept of self actualization came from two teachers he admired: they had an intellectual devtion to work, liked to exceed expectations and had senses of humor that never belitted anyone.
-he wanted to study these people and why they were that way; modern psych didn’t explain them.

Traits
-clear, efficient perception of reality and comfortable relations with it
-spontaneity, simplicity & naturalness
-problem-centered (having a mission)
-detachment and need for privacy
-resistance to enculturation (independence)
-continued freshness of appreciation
-mystical and peak experiences (moments of profound insight in which everything in the world makes sense)
-feelings of kinship and identification with human race
-strong friendships but limited in number
-democratic character structure
-ethical discrimination among good and evil
-philosophical, unhostile sense of humor
-balance between polarities in personality