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Abraham Harold Maslow was born April 1, 1908 in Brooklyn, New York.  He was the first of seven children born to his parents, who themselves were uneducated Jewish immigrants from Russia.  His parents, hoping for the best for their children in the new world, pushed him hard for academic success.  Not surprisingly, he became very lonely as a boy, and found his refuge in books.

To satisfy his parents, he first studied law at the City College of New York (CCNY).  After three semesters, he transferred to Cornell, and then back to CCNY.  He married Bertha Goodman, his first cousin, against his parents wishes.  Abe and Bertha went on to have two daughters.

He and Bertha moved to Wisconsin so that he could attend the University of Wisconsin.  Here, he became interested in psychology, and his school work began to improve dramatically. He spent time there working with Harry Harlow, who is famous for his experiments with baby rhesus monkeys and attachment behavior.

He received his BA in 1930, his MA in 1931, and his PhD in 1934, all in psychology, all from the University of Wisconsin.  A year after graduation, he returned to New York to work with E. L. Thorndike at Columbia, where Maslow became interested in research on human sexuality.

He began teaching full time at Brooklyn College.  During this period of his life, he came into contact with the many European intellectuals that were immigrating to the US, and Brooklyn in particular, at that time -- people like Adler, Fromm, Horney, as well as several Gestalt and Freudian psychologists.

In 1951, Maslow served as the chair of the psychology department at Brandeis for 10 years, where he met Kurt Goldstein (who introduced him to the idea of self-actualization) and began his own theoretical work.  It was also here that he began his crusade for a humanistic psychology -- something ultimately much more important to him than his own theorizing.

He spend his final years in semi-retirement in California, until, on June 8 1970, he died of a heart attack after years of ill health.

Maslow's Theory