ABRAHAM MASLOW Biography - Famous Medicine & health care related men and women

 
 

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ABRAHAM MASLOW

Abraham Maslow was born April 1, 1908 in Brooklyn, New York. He was the first of       
seven children born to his parents, who themselves were uneducated Jewish               
immigrants from Russia. His parents, hoping for the best for their children in         
the new world, pushed him hard for academic success. Not surprisingly, he became       
very lonely as a boy, and found his refuge in books.                                   
                                                                                       
To satisfy his parents, he first studied law at the City College of New York (CCNY).   
He married Bertha Goodman, his first cousin, against his parents wishes. Abe and       
Bertha went on to have two daughters.                                                   
                                                                                       
Abraham Maslow and Bertha moved to Wisconsin so that he could attend the               
University of Wisconsin. Here, he became interested in psychology, and his             
school work began to improve dramatically. He spent time there working with             
Harry Harlow, who is famous for his experiments with baby rhesus monkeys and           
attachment behavior.                                                                   
                                                                                       
Abraham Maslow received his BA in 1930, his MA in 1931, and his PhD in 1934, all       
in psychology, all from the University of Wisconsin. A year after graduation, he       
returned to New York to work with E. L. Thorndike at Columbia, where Maslow             
became interested in research on human sexuality.                                       
                                                                                       
He began teaching full time at Brooklyn College. During this period of his life,       
he came into contact with the many European intellectuals that were immigrating         
to the US, and Brooklyn in particular, at that time -- people like Adler, Fromm,       
Horney, as well as several Gestalt and Freudian psychologists.                         
                                                                                       
In 1951, Abraham Maslow served as the chair of the psychology department at             
Brandeis for 10 years, where he met Kurt Goldstein (who introduced him to the           
idea of self-actualization) and began his own theoretical work. It was also here       
that he began his crusade for a humanistic psychology -- something ultimately           
much more important to him than his own theorizing. He spend his final years in         
semi-retirement in California, until, on June 8 1970, he died of a heart attack         
after years of ill health.