A Theory of Human Motivation

A Theory of Human Motivation is Abraham H. Maslow's landmark essay on the needs that drive human behavior, introducing the framework that became famous as Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Maslow argues that human motivation is organized around basic needs that press for satisfaction in a rough order: physiological needs, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. His central insight is simple but powerful: people are not motivated by one need alone, and higher aspirations emerge most fully when more basic needs have been sufficiently met.

First published in 1943 in Psychological Review, the essay became one of the foundational texts of humanistic psychology and one of the most widely recognized ideas in modern psychology, education, management, counseling, and personal development. Maslow's model gave later readers a way to think about survival, security, relationship, confidence, achievement, creativity, meaning, and the desire to become what one is capable of becoming.

Readers interested in motivation, psychology, human potential, self-actualization, education, leadership, self-help, and the intellectual roots of personal-development literature will find A Theory of Human Motivation essential. It is a compact work with an unusually long reach: an academic psychology paper that escaped the journal shelf and became part of the everyday language of ambition, growth, and human need.