Even when adults do feel their safety to be threatened, we may not be able to see this on the surface. Infants will react in a fashion as if they were endangered, if they are disturbed or dropped suddenly, startled by loud noises, flashing light
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that threats to safety may not always be visible, particularly in adults, while infants show clear signs of distress when feeling unsafe.
Abraham Maslow's quote suggests that while adults might experience feelings of insecurity or danger, their responses may not be outwardly evident. In contrast, infants display immediate reactions to perceived threats, such as disturbances or loud noises, highlighting the instinctual nature of safety responses. This reflects on the complexity of emotional and psychological health across different stages of life.
In practice
A psychologist may use this quote in a lecture about emotional responses in different age groups.
It looks as if there were a single ultimate goal for mankind, a far goal toward which all persons strive. This is called variously by different authors self-actualization, self-realization, integration, psychological health, individuation, autonomy, creativity, productivity, but they all agree that this amounts to realizing the potentialities of the person, that is to say, becoming fully human, everything that person can be.
Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.
The study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy
Marriage is a school itself. Also, having children. Becoming a father changed my whole life. It taught me as if by revelation.
It seems that the necessary thing to do is not to fear mistakes, to plunge in, to do the best that one can, hoping to learn enough from blunders to correct them eventually.
I was awfully curious to find out why I didn't go insane.
Psychoanalysis is a terribly efficient instrument, and because it is more and more a prestigious instrument, we run the risk of using it with a purpose for which it was not made for, and in this way we may degrade it.
The dirty little secret of both clinical psychology and biological psychiatry is that they have completely given up on the notion of cure.
In psychology and behavioral economics, people have shown that if you just describe options in a certain way, or make some features of a situation salient, you can get people to do and even see what you want. You don't have to be a Jedi to manipulate people's attention.
We teach people that they upset themselves. We can't change the past, so we change how people are thinking, feeling and behaving today.
People repeat in adult life emotions they experience in childhood. Many of the people whom I spent the last 30 or 40 years treating at so much per minute wouldn't have needed any treatment at all if they had had the right care as children.
Psychopaths are social predators, and like all predators, they are looking for feeding grounds. Wherever you get power, prestige and money, you will find them.
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