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Eupsychian Education

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Eupsychian Education

Eupsychian Education is an educational framework grounded in Abraham Maslow’s Eupsychian Theory and aimed at the full development of human potential through Needs Satisfaction, Connection, Healing, and the facilitation of Self-Actualization. Eupsychian Education focuses on fostering conditions that enable psychological health, creativity, and both inner and outer Connection.[1] It an be understood as a developmental and therapeutic approach to education that supports both individual and collective Human Flourishing.

Concept Map

Abraham Maslow Terms

B-Cognition, B-Realm, B-Values, Big Problem, D-Cognition, D-Realm, Deficiency Diseases, Eupsychia, Eupsychian Education, Eupsychian Theory, Good Person, Good Science, Good Society, Good Specimen, Hierarchy of Basic Needs, Hierarchy of Cognitive Needs, Human Diminution, Humanistic Psychology, Inner Signals, Intrinsic Consciousness, Normalcy, Normative Biology, Peak Experience, Plateau Experience, Real Self, Self-Actualization, Transcending Self-Actualizers, Transhumanistic

Key Terms

Eupsychia >

Notes

Eupsychian Education builds on Eupsychian Theory's premise that education should prioritize the development of psychologically healthy, self-actualizing individuals capable of connection to both their inner self and potential and the larger world. As Hoffman and Bey note, Maslow believed that such an education system would be “radically different” from current approaches focused on conformity and obedience.[2].

Eupsychian Education directly aligns with the goals of the Lightning Path, particularly its focus on Connection, Healing, Needs Satisfaction, and the rejection of Ideological forms of education designed to repress and control rather than liberate. It supports the emergence of a planetary society composed of whole, healthy, and connected individuals.

Core Educational Components

Based on Hoffman and Bey's analysis, Maslow identified three essential elements of Eupsychian Education from Huxley's work, with a fourth element emerging in his final writings:

Temperamental Differences: Education must value children's constitutional and temperamental uniqueness rather than forcing conformity. Maslow was influenced by William Sheldon's somatotype theory (ectomorph, mesomorph, endomorph) and Alfred Adler's emphasis on organic factors in development. Huxley's Island depicts a system where adolescents learn about their "constitutional uniqueness" and educators assess whether each child's "gut, muscles, or nervous system" takes precedence in their organic hierarchy.

Somatic and Movement Education: Embracing bodily awareness, expressive movement, and dance as paths to peak experiences and identity discovery. Influenced by Huxley's advocacy of the Alexander Technique and the Esalen Institute's bodywork approaches, Maslow concluded that "dancing or rhythm… are a path to peak experiences" and essential for "discovering one's body" and "the wisdom of the body." Huxley argued that humans are "multiple amphibians" occupying both verbal and nonverbal worlds, requiring education that develops flexibility between them.

Sense of Wonder: Fostering joyful amazement and peak experiences across all subjects to overcome habituation and the "Jonah complex." Maslow saw wonder as the cure for evading one's potential and believed that "everything is miraculous" once habituation is overcome. Education should maximize opportunities for "awe, mystery, and wonder" in all subjects, helping students "break through the familiarization and recover the triggering power of a snowflake or a leaf or a sunset."

Eudaimonic Education: A fourth component Maslow was developing at his death emphasizes social responsibility, volunteerism, mentoring, and civic engagement. Drawing from Adler's "social interest," this dimension insists that self-actualization requires community involvement and that "basic human needs can be fulfilled only by and through other human beings."

Theoretical Foundations

Aldous Huxley: The single most important influence on Maslow's educational vision.[3] Huxley's article "Education on the Nonverbal Level" (1962) argued schools focus too narrowly on verbal transmission while neglecting children's inner creative realms and sensory sensitivities (i.e., inner and outer Connection. His novel Island provided a concrete utopian model.

Alfred Adler: Emphasized schools as key institutions for creating cooperative rather than competitive societies. His focus on organic deficits and strengths in learning influenced Maslow's temperamental approach.[4]

William Sheldon: His somatotype theory provided a framework for understanding constitutional differences, though his system later fell into relative obscurity.[5]

Alignment with Lightning Path

Eupsychian Education directly supports Lightning Path goals by:

Eupsychian Education represents Abraham Maslow's unfinished agenda for creating psychologically healthy, self-actualizing societies through radical educational reform. The framework is heavily influenced by Aldous Huxley's utopian vision, particularly his novel Island (1962) and his writings on nonverbal education.[6]

Quotes

On the Failure of Conventional Education:

On Huxley's Influence: "It's as if his praise & use of my work really validate it… the lesser ones don't matter. I think it's because he's of (the) Eupsychian club." [7]

"Just before he died, Aldous Huxley was on the brink of an enormous breakthrough, on the verge of creating a great synthesis between science, religion, and art. Many of his ideas are illustrated in his last novel, Island… The most revolutionary ideas in it are those pertaining to education." [8]

On Nonverbal Education: "This world of symbols is only one of the worlds in which human beings do their living and their learning. They also inhabit the non-symbolic world of unconceptualized or only slightly conceptualized experience. However effective it may be on the conceptual level, an education that fails to help (the young) to make the best of the inner and outer universes on the hither side of symbols is an inadequate education." [9]

"The proper way of handling yourself while you're buttoning your clothes?… We answer the question by actually putting (the children's) heads and bodies into the physiologically best position. And we encourage them to notice how it feels… in terms of touches and pressures and muscular sensations."[10]

On Temperamental Differences: "Our first business is elementary education… (which) has to deal with individuals in all their diversity of shape, size, temperament, gifts and deficiencies…. Adolescents learn in their… physiology classes, that each one of us has his own constitutional uniqueness, everybody's different from everybody else… (As educators), we begin by assessing… (each child) in the organic hierarchy, which takes precedence—his gut, his muscles, or his nervous system?" [11]

"a very important part of (personality growth) is to become aware of one what is, biologically, temperamentally, constitutionally… a kind of phenomenology of one's own inner biology" [12]

On Somatic Education: "Dancing or rhythm… melt into each other (and) are a path to peak experiences… (such as) the kinds of things that kids can do with drums… music and rhythm and dancing are excellent ways of moving toward the discovering of identity." [13]

"this is part of finding the real self, the biological core… discovering one's body" [14]

"Many psychologists are beginning to think that some kind of overcoming of difficulties… involving danger and hardship is desirable and perhaps even necessary." [15]

On Wonder and Miracles: "My attitude toward life changed. The word I use for it now is the postmortem life… one very important aspect… is that everything gets doubly precious… Everything seems to look more beautiful rather than less, and gets the much-intensified sense of miracles." [16]

"to be looking elsewhere for miracles is a sure sign of ignorance that everything is miraculous." [17]

"We must learn to treasure the 'jags' of the child in school, his fascination, absorptions, his persistent wide-eyed wonderings… (because) peak experience, the experience of awe, mystery (and) wonder… should we not try to maximize these studies as sources of peak experience for the child as well?" [18]

On Social Responsibility: "I can say much more firmly than I ever did, for many empirical reasons, that basic human needs can be fulfilled only by and through other human beings, i.e., society. The need for community… is itself a basic need." [19]

"One necessary aspect of becoming a better person is via helping other people." [20]

"The only means we can use to effect societal change is the school." [21]



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Footnotes

  1. ↑ Hoffman, Edward, and George Bey. “Educating for Eupsychia: Maslow’s Unfinished Agenda and Aldous Huxley’s Role in Its Advancement.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 61, no. 2 (2021): 176–93. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022167820926224
  2. ↑ Maslow quoted in Hoffman & Bey, p. 465
  3. ↑ Hoffman, Edward, and Tass Bey. “Educating for Eupsychia: Maslow’s Unfinished Agenda and Aldous Huxley’s Role in Its Advancement.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 63, no. 4 (2023): 459–76. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678211038104
  4. ↑ Hoffman, Edward, and Tass Bey. “Educating for Eupsychia: Maslow’s Unfinished Agenda and Aldous Huxley’s Role in Its Advancement.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 63, no. 4 (2023): 459–76. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678211038104
  5. ↑ Hoffman, Edward, and Tass Bey. “Educating for Eupsychia: Maslow’s Unfinished Agenda and Aldous Huxley’s Role in Its Advancement.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 63, no. 4 (2023): 459–76. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678211038104
  6. ↑ Hoffman, Edward, and Tass Bey. “Educating for Eupsychia: Maslow’s Unfinished Agenda and Aldous Huxley’s Role in Its Advancement.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 63, no. 4 (2023): 459–76. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678211038104
  7. ↑ Maslow quoted in Hoffman, Edward, and Tass Bey. “Educating for Eupsychia: Maslow’s Unfinished Agenda and Aldous Huxley’s Role in Its Advancement.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 63, no. 4 (2023): 459–76. p. 460. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678211038104
  8. ↑ Maslow quoted in Hoffman, Edward, and Tass Bey. “Educating for Eupsychia: Maslow’s Unfinished Agenda and Aldous Huxley’s Role in Its Advancement.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 63, no. 4 (2023): 459–476, p. 465. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678211038104
  9. ↑ Maslow quoted in Hoffman, Edward, and Tass Bey. “Educating for Eupsychia: Maslow’s Unfinished Agenda and Aldous Huxley’s Role in Its Advancement.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 63, no. 4 (2023): 459–476, p. 463. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678211038104
  10. ↑ Maslow quoted in Hoffman, Edward, and Tass Bey. “Educating for Eupsychia: Maslow’s Unfinished Agenda and Aldous Huxley’s Role in Its Advancement.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 63, no. 4 (2023): 459–76. p. 468. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678211038104
  11. ↑ Maslow quoted in Hoffman, Edward, and Tass Bey. “Educating for Eupsychia: Maslow’s Unfinished Agenda and Aldous Huxley’s Role in Its Advancement.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 63, no. 4 (2023): 459–476, p. 466. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678211038104
  12. ↑ Hoffman, Edward, and Tass Bey. “Educating for Eupsychia: Maslow’s Unfinished Agenda and Aldous Huxley’s Role in Its Advancement.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 63, no. 4 (2023): 459–476, p. 466. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678211038104
  13. ↑ Hoffman, Edward, and Tass Bey. “Educating for Eupsychia: Maslow’s Unfinished Agenda and Aldous Huxley’s Role in Its Advancement.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 63, no. 4 (2023): 459–476, p. 467. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678211038104
  14. ↑ Maslow quoted in Hoffman, Edward, and Tass Bey. “Educating for Eupsychia: Maslow’s Unfinished Agenda and Aldous Huxley’s Role in Its Advancement.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 63, no. 4 (2023): 459–476, p. 46. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678211038104
  15. ↑ Hoffman, Edward, and Tass Bey. “Educating for Eupsychia: Maslow’s Unfinished Agenda and Aldous Huxley’s Role in Its Advancement.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 63, no. 4 (2023): 459–476, p. 469. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678211038104
  16. ↑ Maslow in Hoffman, Edward, and Tass Bey. “Educating for Eupsychia: Maslow’s Unfinished Agenda and Aldous Huxley’s Role in Its Advancement.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 63, no. 4 (2023): 459–476, p. 469. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678211038104
  17. ↑ Maslow in Hoffman, Edward, and Tass Bey. “Educating for Eupsychia: Maslow’s Unfinished Agenda and Aldous Huxley’s Role in Its Advancement.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 63, no. 4 (2023): 459–476, p. 469. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678211038104
  18. ↑ Maslow cited in Hoffman, Edward, and Tass Bey. “Educating for Eupsychia: Maslow’s Unfinished Agenda and Aldous Huxley’s Role in Its Advancement.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 63, no. 4 (2023): 459–476, p. 470. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678211038104
  19. ↑ Hoffman, Edward, and Tass Bey. “Maslow cited in Educating for Eupsychia: Maslow’s Unfinished Agenda and Aldous Huxley’s R ole in Its Advancement.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 63, no. 4 (2023): 459–476, p. 471. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678211038104
  20. ↑ Maslow cited in Hoffman, Edward, and Tass Bey. “Educating for Eupsychia: Maslow’s Unfinished Agenda and Aldous Huxley’s Role in Its Advancement.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 63, no. 4 (2023): 459–476, p. 471. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678211038104
  21. ↑ Hoffman, Edward, and Tass Bey. “Maslow cited in Educating for Eupsychia: Maslow’s Unfinished Agenda and Aldous Huxley’s Role in Its Advancement.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 63, no. 4 (2023): 459–476, p. 460. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678211038104


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