Eupsychia
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Eupsychia
Eupsychia is a term coined by Abraham Maslow to describe an ideal, psychologically healthy society in which human beings are free to actualize their full potential. It represents a self-actualizing, needs-satisfying social structure that fosters human flourishing, creativity, and collective well-being rather than oppression, hierarchy, and control.[1] A Eupsychia would be a society in which all our Seven Essential Needs would be met and we would all grow up healthy, happy, whole, compassionate, aware, connected, with fully realized Human Potential.[2]
Human Development Terms
Eupsychia Terms
Abraham Maslow Terms
- B-Cognition
- B-Realm
- B-Values
- 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
Stage Seven > Al-Insan al-Kamil, Eupsychia, Frashokereti, Good Person, Graduation, Home, Kingdom of God, Kingdom of Heaven, The Garden
Related LP Terms
Non-LP Related Terms
Core Principles of Eupsychia
- Alignment and Connection as a Social Goal
- Society is designed to support personal growth and the actuation of full human potential, rather than suppress it.
- Education, work, and governance prioritize human potential rather than compliance.
- Needs-Satisfying Social Structures
- Eupsychian societies ensure that all individuals have access to their Seven Essential Needs.
- Rejects the Scarcity Paradigm imposed by capitalist systems.
- Collaboration Over Competition
- Moves beyond the competitive, hierarchical structures of capitalism.
- Encourages cooperative learning, shared decision-making, and mutual empowerment.
- Decentralized & Healing-Centered Education
- Education is learner-driven, healing-focused, and empowering rather than indoctrinating and controlling.
- Example: The Pathfinder Educational Model applies these principles through Learning Pods, Learning Hubs, and Post-Capitalist Curriculum.
- Alignment with Nature & Planetary Well-Being
- Eupsychia is not anthropocentric—it integrates sustainability and ecological consciousness into all aspects of life.
- Societies function in harmony with the planet, ensuring long-term survival and ethical stewardship.
Why Eupsychia Matters
The Regime of Accumulation and the Accumulating Class have long maintained systems of oppression that block human potential and collective progress. Eupsychia offers a radical, yet scientifically grounded alternative that:
- Rejects the exploitative systems of capitalism and hierarchy.
- Centers education, governance, and economics on human well-being.
- Creates conditions where individuals can truly flourish.
Pathfinder and the Lightning Path integrate Eupsychian principles to actively build a new paradigm of education and human development.
Notes
Maslow's vision was restriction to the development of a new psychology. The new psychology would include a eupsychian theory aimed at creating a eupsychian society, i.e. a good society that would create happy, fully developed humans.
The Eupsychian theory would provide new systems of meaning where religion has so thoroughly failed [3] and would contribute to a reconceptualizaton of “every area of human knowledge: e.g., economics, sociology, biology, and every profession: e.g., the family, education, religion, etc.” [4] He was explicit about his goals[5] and active in developing curriculum.[6] He was also clear that even though the work that had been done as of 1970 was only the “bare beginning,” [7] nevertheless progress had been made. In 1969 he writes that “There is now available a new conception, of a higher possibility, of the healthy society. There are tools now available to judge and compare societies. One society can be judged to be better than another society, or healthier or possessing more ‘growth-fostering-potential.’ We can talk about the value of the society, or the function of the society-that is, the greatest coming to fulfillment of the people in the society” [8].
The Journal of Humanistic Psychology and the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, both of which Maslow helped to found, were originally intended as steps towards a Eupsychian psychology and society.
Footnotes
- ↑ Maslow, Abraham. “Eupsychia—The Good Society.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 1, no. 2 (1961): p. 2.
- ↑ Sosteric, Mike, and Gina Ratkovic. “Eupsychian Theory: Reclaiming Maslow and Rejecting The Pyramid The Seven Essential Needs.” PsyArXiv Preprints, 2020. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/fswk9.
- ↑ A. H. Maslow, Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1964), https://amzn.to/2U2Rhgq
- ↑ A. H. Maslow, Motivation and Personality (2nd Ed.) (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), x, https://amzn.to/2OSRmlX.
- ↑ A. H. Maslow, Towards a Psychology of Being (2nd Edition) (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1968).
- ↑ A. H. Maslow, “Some Fundamental Questions That Face the Normative Social Psychologist.,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 8, no. 2 (April 1968): 143.
- ↑ Maslow, Motivation and Personality (2nd Ed.), xxi.
- ↑ Maslow, A. H., “The Farthest Reaches of Human Nature,” The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 1, no. 1 (1969): 7.