As the Human Potential Movement grew in the 1960s, and then exploded in the 1970s with a great variety of new therapies, educational practices, and experimental explorations into consciousness, the ideas and beliefs about human nature began to change.

 

From the dark side of human personality, Maslow, Rogers, May, Frankl, and many others began exploring the bright side of human nature—people at their optimal best. Maslow was the first to systematically model such people - “self-actualizers” people who were the brightest and best, who were the most productive, healthiest, who made the biggest difference on the planet, who contributed the most, and who experienced life as a series of peak experiences.

 

Self-Actualization refers to the innate developmental process that drives us to become fully human/ fully alive, to become all we can become, to move beyond the lower instrumental needs to the higher being needs where we discover and express our unique gifts and talents. It is experiencing “peak experiences” from time to time, those moments when we feel “in the zone” and at our best. It is living for the higher “needs” of beauty, order, truth, love, expression, contribution, excellence, etc. (the being needs).

 

Now isn’t that quite a vision?

 

Out of it emerged hundreds of creative new approaches—Rogerian Client-centered therapy (Carl Rogers), Gestalt therapy (Fritz Perls), Family systems (Virginia Satir), Logotherapy (Viktor Frankl), Reality therapy (William Glasser), Humanistic Psychology, and many, many more. Among them was NLP. That’s why the NLP presuppositions are a description of the very premises and assumptions that were developed by the pioneers of the Human Potential Movement. Bandler and Grinder did not invent the NLP presuppositions -  they came from the Bright-Side Psychology of Abraham Maslow!

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. (2012).

 

Unleashing Potentials for Self-Actualization 

 

self-actualizing.org