Real Self

In Abraham Maslow’s Framework, the Real Self represents an individual’s most authentic and true nature—an ideal state where one’s thoughts, emotions, and actions align harmoniously with their deepest identity, values, and potential. The Real Self is uncovered through processes of self-actualization, where individuals overcome societal conditioning and their own insecurities to reach their fullest, most genuine expression.

Abraham Maslow Terms

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

Syncretic Terms

Spiritual Ego >

Related LP Terms

Spiritual Ego > Bodily Ego, Differentiated Consciousness, Ego, First Birth, Flame of Monadic Self Awareness, God, God with a big "G", God with a little "g", Identity, Monad, Monadic Intensification, Physical Unit, Prism Metaphor, Resident Monadic Consciousness, The Sun

Non-LP Related Terms

Normalcy > Integration, More-Than-Human

Notes

"Thinking in this way has had for me at least the one special advantage of directing my attention sharply to what I called at first "the impulse voices" but which had better be called more generally something like the "inner signals" (or cues or stimuli). I had not realized sufficiently that in most neuroses, and in many other disturbances as well, the inner signals become weak or even disappear entirely (as in the severely obsessional person) and/or are not "heard" or cannot be heard. At the extreme we have the experientially empty person, the zombie, the one with empty insides. Recovering the self must, as a sine qua non, include the recovery of the ability to have and to recognize these inner signals, to know what and whom one likes and dis­likes. what is enjoyable and what is not, when to eat and when not to, when to sleep, when to urinate, when to rest.

The experientially empty person, lacking these directives from within, these voices of the Real Self], must turn to outer cues for guidance, for instance eating when the clock tells him to. rather than obeying his appetite (he has none). He guides himself by clocks. rules, calendars. schedules. agenda. and by hints and cues from other people."

Footnotes

References