I love theory and pyramids, so it makes sense that I’d love Maslow’s hierarchy, as it is usually depicted as a pyramid. Your needs from bottom to top are physiological needs (air, water, food), safety needs (gotta get away from that crocodile), love and belonging needs (friends and hugs), esteem needs (respect), and self-actualization (be all you can be).
The theory is, you can’t get motivated to work on the top needs until you satisfy the bottom needs. You can’t work on self-actualization if you can’t breathe or haven’t eaten in a week.
The other reason I want to talk about this business, besides it forming a pyramid, is that the news this week has totally bored me, and I have spent almost the entire week doing nothing but finishing scanning my mother’s family album to have it in electronic form.
Since my mother died in 1980, I have been homeless a total of three years, throughout which, I have clung to this 76-page album containing about 250 photos.
They’re mostly black-and-white photos taken between 1917 and 1967. About a third were shot by my father after he met my mother and include pictures from my own childhood.
I was such an idiot. I had read Maslow’s book! But, still, even when I was starving and/or homeless, and all my other property was getting jettisoned for the sake of survival, or getting rain-soaked, or lost for failure to pay storage fees, I hung onto that album. I didn’t even try to eat it.
Why was I hanging onto something that couldn’t satisfy my more pressing lower needs?
In addition to scanning the album, I also spent time this week scanning some old pictures of the StreetLife Art Gallery.
StreetLife was a place where homeless and formerly homeless artists could create and sell their art.
I used to spend a lot of time there in the ’90s. It relied on donations, including donation of the space, which was provided by the Archdiocesan Housing Authority.
StreetLife had a lot of problems, and it doesn’t exist anymore. One of its recurring problems was justifying its existence to begin with. Prospective donors wanted to know why space was being provided to enable people to do art,
when what homeless people needed were things further down the Maslowian pyramid.
I’m not kidding.
Maslow was specifically invoked. It’s amazing how many people have read “Motivation and Personality” for a Psych 101 class and still remember it.
“Instead of an easel, canvas and paints, why aren’t we giving them food and blankets? That’s what they need, according to Maslow.”
So why were they there?
Why did they make the effort to work in the space when they could be out scrounging for food and blankets? Plenty of other programs passed out blankets.
OK, they made some money selling their art, but if that was all there was to it, panhandling would have taken care of that need and more.
You could see they enjoyed the companionship the gallery afforded. But companionship is part of love and belonging needs, so it’s in the middle of the pyramid.
Or they could have been gaining confidence and self-esteem by developing as artists and selling some work. Oh, but that’s an esteem need, and it’s even higher than the love and belonging needs.
The only answer is the answer I keep coming back to, which I alluded to a couple of weeks ago here. Namely, homeless people don’t know what they need and have to have experts, who have taken Psych 101 and read Maslow, explain what they need to them.
When I tried to explain that a couple of weeks ago, I gave the impression that I thought all social workers were such experts.
I meant only that some social workers (those that took the right course) know better than homeless people what homeless people need. I regret the confusion.