What influences personality?
How a person behaves depends on how that person's needs are being met. Some needs are more fundamental than others. I've actually outlined a person's needs in a hierarchy -- ranking them from the most fundamental needs to those that are less fundamental.
Here's an example of how a human's needs relate to each other: Someone who is starving isn't concerned with issues such as the need to feel accepted by his peers. That same hungry person, when suddenly deprived of oxygen, is no longer concerned with the need for food, but with getting air into his lungs.
How does the mind work?The major breakthrough in my own view of human behavior came when I realized the connection between a neurotic person and someone who is well adjusted. Until then, psychologists had concentrated on mental illness rather than psychological health. The connection was that the neurotic and the well adjusted were just different kinds of persons, both with minds that function in the same way.
Tell us about your education.I was an avid reader by age five and spent a great deal of time at the public library, even though I often found trouble walking through several tough Brooklyn neighborhoods to get there.
I attended Boys High School, also in Brooklyn, where my grades were mediocre at best. From there I moved on to City College of New York. Later I studied psychology at the University of Wisconsin and at the New School for Social Research in New York.
What is the purpose of psychology?I have become impatient with psychology that focuses on human misery, shame, conflict, hostility. Instead of placing the emphasis on disease, let's place it on health. Let's focus on human needs and the human potential instead.
The goal of psychology, in my view, is to find a richer way in which we think about ourselves. Self-actualization -- the need to achieve one's full potential -- is a fundamental fact of human nature. I believe we, as psychologists, should help individuals attain self-actualization.