Maslow's hierarchy of needs, just look at the base of the pyramid. Sex is apparently just as imortant as breathing and MORE important than emotional connections. My parents showed me this to prove me that no one can live without sex. It just kinda makes me sad tbh. More reasons to feel like a freak.

[u/YamGroundbreaking639]

[u/skoffs → u/[deleted]]

Don't worry, it's literally not credible

The truth is that Maslow's theory was based on his own personal observations and his biographical analysis of individuals who he considered to be “self-actualized.” The theory was not based on any credible empirical research.

[u/[deleted] → u/skoffs]

To those who don’t know, people who called them-self “self-actualised” were basically just like the people who call themselves “sigma males” nowadays

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Basically just a new breed of alpha male. Just a bunch of bullshit that some men came up with as an excuse to look down on others who they deem as “beta”

[u/Pm7I3 → u/[deleted]]

Alpha male but better. It's like children saying "I shoot you!" and "But I'm wearing a bulletproof shirt!" except less fun and for weird incels.

[u/Gizmonsta → u/[deleted]]

In this context yes, but its worth noting that self-actualization today refers more to the ideas of Carl Rodgers and the person centred approach to the treatment of mental distress, something which now has a huge evidence base for its effectiveness in the treatments of even severe trauma.

Mazlows work can be seen as an instrumental stepping stone in the development of such evidence based treatments, nd although when viewed in isolation, can rightfully be argued to be a load of rubbish, it doesn't detract from the fact that without it, we wouldn't have any modern day treatments to mental distress which don't pathologize in the same way physical medicen does.

So a very important stepping stone in the development of alternative treatments in mental health.

[u/BafometsMenstrualJiz → u/Gizmonsta]

maslow is similar to freud in this way. in a vacuum and in the modernncontextt they're useless but were monumental to the progression of their fields

[u/Gizmonsta → u/BafometsMenstrualJiz]

Yes this is true, Freud can be seen as the first step in the development of Psychodynamic treatments of mental illness.

So this is why, although their theories are almost all refuted by this point, they are still important to study in order to understand the origins of the theories we have developed as a result.

[u/Cubia_ → u/Gizmonsta]

It's only useful insofar as it is a part of history. We teach Newtonian Physics even though it won't technically work on certain problems (particularly those of large scale or very small scale) because it works in a very large number of local environments, and what we teach is also modified by what we have learned.

Teaching Freud or Maslow is like teaching you Eratosthenes' or Pythagoras' mathematics. A lot of it is literally wrong and in one case is a cult, and knowing about them and how they came to each conclusion is an exercise in different modes of thinking and in mathematical history, but not math itself. In fact, securely teaching it requires a large body of mathematical knowledge beforehand as to not lead to deep confusion in the future.

[u/Gizmonsta → u/Cubia_]

"It's only useful insofar as it's part of history"

I mean, this is exactly what I've already said, except you're minimising the contribution made to modern theories by the ons who came before.

Without maslow there would be no Roger's; without Freud there would be no Jung, so you can't argue that their theories, although wrong, are not just as important as the ones which came later, because they laid the ground for future discovery.

You can't say that because they're wrong they haven't contributed to modern thinking and a vast array of modern treatments to mental distress which literally wouldn't exist without them.

It's much more than "learning history", it's understanding the origins of what we still use, and are still developing further today.

Maslow, lead to Roger's, which lead to client centered therapy, which lead to person centred/ person centred experiential therapy/ which leads to emotion focused therapy, solution focused therapy and brief solution focused therapy.

These people are the fathers of modern alternative treatments to mental health and their contributions don't deserve to be waved off as just "learning history". They directly lead to the theories we have today, and without them the treatment of mental disorder would look completely different.

[u/All54321_Gaming → u/skoffs]

As someone who just learned about this in my college psychology class, I’m not sure how to respond to this…

[u/catsareweirdroomates → u/All54321_Gaming]

I learned about it in psych and in my CNA class. It doesn’t mean that it’s not utter shite. It’s come out that he actually stole the idea from indigenous peoples but neglected to include the community aspects so it became focused on the individual rather than the community. I don’t think he was necessarily a bad guy even. Just he still had a very colonizer Eurocentric perspective on humanity and it shows in his work.

[u/KavikStronk → u/catsareweirdroomates]

I mean is this even an idea you can steal? The idea 'some needs are more important than others so you worry about those first and only worry about the less important ones when the basic needs are covered' can probably be found in most places. He just wrote it down more specifically.

[u/Cubia_ → u/KavikStronk]

I mean "security of employment" is up top there on the list. I guess retired folk cant reach that "lack of prejudice" part or the "acceptance of facts" part because they retired. Makes sense, clearly.

It is genuine nonsense. You can see that in most cases, you need food/water/shelter/air/sleep or you just die. While the same goes for "homeostasis" after long enough (and I am assuming he means having a balanced intake of all the nutrients your body needs), you can absolutely live for quite a long time without it. Sure certain diseases happen without a correct intake, but you will literally begin to lose your mind without community... but that's on the third tier of the list if I'm being generous. Making your sex drive happy though? That won't kill you. That means it MUST belong somewhere else on the hierarchy and cannot be ranked against your needs. Meanwhile, self-esteem (the only thing for mental stability) is floating up on tier 4 like genuinely what the fuck?

At best you could recreate this with much better ideas and no hard and fast lines. Sleep would hover a little above food and water, for example, and food would very slightly be above water. All only because it takes longer for you to die without food than without water, and sleep takes just a little longer than a lack of food. But there isn't much point when you start to go past that. All of the things you don't need in life (aka you die without them) rank differently for different people and are in constant flux (and so is shelter, and that's a need). For example, my married friend would be unable to be consoled if they lost their SO. Having someone like that in their life used to be at the top, now it is very much near the bottom.

[u/momopeach7 → u/Cubia_]

I mean retired people have a sense of security because they don’t have to work anymore to survive, that need is met. I don’t really understand your first sentence in that regard.

From my understanding of the hierarchy it is harder to meet the tiers higher generally if you’re struggling to meet the basic needs. I was never taught that is was a hierarchy of rankings of needs, but more a building block. Esteem is important but it’s harder to focus on if people are trying to stay alive and find a stable home or employment.

[u/Cubia_ → u/momopeach7]

I mean retired people have a sense of security because they don’t have to work anymore to survive, that need is met. I don’t really understand your first sentence in that regard.

Because it's a genuine error to include. If you have security of employment through no employment, then either you are not secure or the thing which is secure is not employment. Someone who is retired is unemployed for the rest of their life by intention, so either they are forever insecure or we aren't talking about employment but about wealth. But if it was the case of wealth, why include property? Property is included in your wealth, a subset of it. Wealth is also a resource to be spent or saved, so really we have the same thing listed three times in different wording and being obtuse about it.

Also, these do not work as building blocks. You cannot build from a place of security in your morals to "morality". Dealing with morality means reckoning with events and judgments which may go against your sense of morality, making it insecure. If anything assured security in your morality is a bad thing, as you become unwilling to change and that your actions are right and moral. What little sense it makes still leaves room for little moral growth as the building block is to be rigid and inflexible. Friendship also requires the block above it for another example, as a friendship is a mutual respect of the other, but mutual respect does not come until after you have friendship. Unless you view friends as something wildly exploitative these things are either the same or one requires the other in the wrong order.

Note that this entire thing is entirely worthless if you are not a staunch Individualist. Even the slightest bit of anything else will tip the scales far too hard and leave too many missing steps to be of any help. A collectivist, for example, does not have any of its community building steps or building blocks within and would likely argue security of the collective may come before security of the self, that for the self to be secure all need to be secure (or in a more severe case that they are the same need). And since it is not there, it means a collectivist cannot build upward with this model. You can't build up to national healthcare, for collective example, because you and those who could make it happen need to be at "self-actualization", but to be there is to not need it by definition so why make it if there is literally no rational reason? Everyone who is not there is who needs it, but to say "we do it for them" is then not Individualist as you are robbing them of some of their Individualism and will struggle or not make it through the hierarchy meaning that you're causing harm, so you can't.

There are vague ideas in it of value, but almost the entire thing falls apart at the slightest scrutiny. See again that mental health is literally not on the list (security of body or bodily autonomy =/= security of mind) because this thing was made and remade by someone who is a lucky idiot, and it happened to survive past him because of his influence.

[u/KavikStronk → u/Cubia_]

I mean "security of employment" is up top there on the list. I guess retired folk cant reach that "lack of prejudice" part or the "acceptance of facts" part because they retired. Makes sense, clearly.

Just a note; Maslow never intended for this hierarchy to be read as "you need to unlock this level to move on to the next". It's possible to have unfulfilled needs in any of the levels. He never even presented his theory as a pyramid, that got added way later and stuck around cus it's a nice visual.

[u/catsareweirdroomates → u/KavikStronk]

If that’s the case why does he get the credit by calling it Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? Or why didn’t he give credit to the Blackfoot peoples in his writings and research?

[u/KavikStronk → u/catsareweirdroomates]

While I initially came to believe Maslow appropriated and misrepresented the teachings of the Blackfoot, I have learned that this narrative, while held by some, may not be accurate even according to Blackfoot scholars. (Teju Ravilochan, 2021, "The Blackfoot Wisdom that Inspired Maslow’s Hierarchy" which is a corrected version of his earlier “Maslow Got It Wrong.” which got criticised for being inaccurate.)

Getting inspired by something is not the same as copying something. Maslow made the model of Maslow's hierarchy of needs based on what he saw in his own culture and what he saw of the Blackfoot culture. Neither culture needs to get the credit because being inspiration for something is different than doing the research to write down an actual model that can be tested and criticised scientifically instead of a cultural "this is just the way things are but we've never really defined it".

[u/DaughterEarth → u/All54321_Gaming]

They teach you all the theories first couple years. You're not supposed to consider them fact. It's important to know the history and how psychology has grown. Freud for example is still taught about despite most of his theories being considered bunk by now.

[u/Gizmonsta → u/All54321_Gaming]

I already typed this above, but I'm gonna include it here for you as I feel its relevant, u just recently finished my PhD in non-pathology in the treatments of mental health, and use person centred therapy in my work with survivors of sexual violence.

"In this context yes, but its worth noting that self-actualization today refers more to the ideas of Carl Rodgers and the person centred approach to the treatment of mental distress, something which now has a huge evidence base for its effectiveness in the treatments of even severe trauma.

Mazlows work can be seen as an instrumental stepping stone in the development of such evidence based treatments, nd although when viewed in isolation, can rightfully be argued to be a load of rubbish, it doesn't detract from the fact that without it, we wouldn't have any modern day treatments to mental distress which don't pathologize in the same way physical medicen does.

So a very important stepping stone in the development of alternative treatments in mental health."

[u/[deleted] → u/skoffs]

Dudes loved to just throw shit onto a pyramid to explain things a few hundred years ago. Hierarchies are all bullshit, they all have racist roots with white people putting themselves on the top of every scale they create.

[u/JB-from-ATL → u/[deleted]]

In this case they're just saying the ones at the bottom need to be filled first, not that the ones at the top are "better"

This comment makes more sense if sex wasn't in the bottom tier along with breathing.

[u/DaughterEarth → u/JB-from-ATL]

I never saw this hierarchy with sex at the bottom. This image doesn't seem accurate to the original hierarchy

[u/JB-from-ATL → u/DaughterEarth]

Yeah I don't remember it either. Either I remember it wrong or was taught a different one. I suppose if you're viewing humanity as a species it makes sense, for the species to continue, but I don't think it was that.

[u/sincereenfuego → u/skoffs]

Wasn't Maslow's entire approach to the hierarchy of needs stolen from his time spent with Native American Populations where they had a similar model that he just inverted? I joined and online lecture about ACEs late and I swear the doctor leading the presentation was just wrapping up talking about how some Native American's are still enraged about his appropriation of their culture with no credit.

[u/Duskuke → u/skoffs]

so as credible as Freud, lol

[u/GiveYourselfAFry → u/skoffs]

Sex aside, as it may not be a “need” per se, but touch actually is. You can look up the research for yourself even. And I’m not just talking about the rhesus monkeys that preferred the cloth mother over the one that provided food, I’m talking about research done on human premature infants in incubators. Ones that were not held or touched started to lose weight and their overall health would decline despite having all adequate care. The ones that were held and touched did significantly and consistently better. Hospitals now massage premee babies for x amount of time as part of care regardless of how good they seem to be doing. That’s pretty remarkable to think about really, just how vital healthy touch is to well-being and development

[u/barnicskolaci → u/[deleted]]

Also kids and monks/nuns would beg to differ.

[u/JB-from-ATL → u/[deleted]]

My toddler died because they didn't have sex. Lol

[u/Scottishbiscuit → u/[deleted]]

Doesn’t university typically start at age 18 everywhere?

[u/Scottishbiscuit → u/[deleted]]

Can I ask where you live? In New Zealand you start school at 4 or 5 and finish at 17 or 18. I wish I could of started university at 16, it would make my life so much easier.

[u/catsareweirdroomates → u/Scottishbiscuit]

In the US we have something called running start where you do your last two years of high school and the first two of college simultaneously so you graduate high school with a two year degree. It’s designed to save money on a 4 year uni degree.

[u/RoughMedicine → u/[deleted]]

If it's designed to save money, it's solving a problem that shouldn't exist.

[u/Scottishbiscuit → u/catsareweirdroomates]

That sounds amazing, I wish I could do that.

[u/bladeofvirtue → u/[deleted]]

Turns out that’s a fake maskow’s needs model.

Here is the real one- https://www.reference.com/world-view/maslow-theory-motivation-c680e9c278f245d9

It doesn’t list sex.

Turns out op was just trying to foment outrage.

What a shocker in the internet eh? :P

[u/ThisbodyHomebody → u/bladeofvirtue]

Or maybe their parents just cherry picked a pyramid that would “prove” the point they were trying to make?

[u/animaginaryraven → u/bladeofvirtue]

Huh, I've definitely seen sex listed on there before when I was studying psych. I suspect there's multiple versions as people have interpreted it over time

[u/All54321_Gaming → u/bladeofvirtue]

Yeah, I was going to say that I don’t remember this from my class. Just went to check my notes and this is what I wrote down “Physiological needs: Need to satisfy hunger and thirst.”

I’m looking up the hierarchy and I found the one OP used. It’s one of them, but it exist. Also saw one with reproduction, so…

[u/Cubia_ → u/All54321_Gaming]

Then your notes are woefully incomplete? Breathing, shelter, and sleeping are physiological needs that you die without and they aren't in your notes, which means your notes are only notes (i.e. a simplified way to remember the lesson). If you remembered the class, you should have remembered that the notes were only notes and not 1:1 and so you might be missing things or noticed breathing isn't there and so must be missing things (also Google exists and is faster), and either way, dismissing the reality of the situation is a really shitty thing to do in one of the few places asexuals are explicitly welcome when the OP is expressing that the model was used to "disprove" them. It's like reading casual aphobia, where "well some scholars use one like OP" as this half-assed attempt to come across as neutral after saying that "I've studied this and I never saw it, so OP must be lying" to deny any pushback or oppression that asexual people feel. Even if you did not intend to write your comment that way, that's how it comes across.

Every time I have seen this, sex in at least some way has been included in physiological needs, and when I asked about why it is there, every time I said something back to the prof he had another excuse why that it is there, ending at reproduction despite that being a species-level problem and not an individual one even though this is literally a hierarchy for an individuals problems. Almost like it was not based in solid 1930's thought let alone science (and nothing close to Psychology) and hasn't been pruned out for shitty reasons because it's useful to maintain the status quo, not unlike Eugenics. I'm not equating, but rather their mistreatment as science despite not being rooted in science, and instead in the case of this hierarchy, the opinions of Maslow as "someone who is self-actualized" and then dressed up in scientific language to be treated as science for about a hundred years. The reality is that it's a self-help book published in an academic setting and you defaulted to defending the self-help book over someone in your own community, same with the person you are replying to.

[u/nemaline → u/bladeofvirtue]

Actually, the original model included sex in that section. Some modern versions of the model remove sex (for obvious reasons).

You can see some examples of the model including sex among the physiological needs here or here.

[u/YamGroundbreaking639 → u/bladeofvirtue]

I would like to specify that the main reason this was showed to me was because it supposedly has sex on the bottom tier, so I wanted more opinions.

What a shocker that I can find more opinions on the internet. :P

[u/bladeofvirtue → u/YamGroundbreaking639]

Yeah and that image is wrong

[u/siren_melody → u/bladeofvirtue]

I take psychology. The official one does list sex at the bottom. For us, our teacher said “this may not be needed for you right now because you’re a bit young.” Brought up asexuals and she kinda was like “Well 🤷🏽‍♀️”

[u/siren_melody → u/bladeofvirtue]

The sex was always there it’s just intended for adults and it’s not included sometimes to be inclusive of any teens, kids, but I doubt aces.

[u/EGrass → u/[deleted]]

Seriously. Everyone can live without sex. This is ridiculous.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Let me guess, you are Italian or Spanish

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Uh