Maslow and the Utopian Vision

Utopianism has long been demeaned by mainstream academics and journalists. For more than a century, perhaps beginning with H.G. Wells' blockbuster, The Time Machine in 1895, pessimism, rather, has been intellectually fashionable. When Theodore Roosevelt met privately with Wells at the White House in 1906, the president was almost apologetic in suggesting that human civilization might have a brighter future than the acclaimed novelist depicted. Decades later, dystopian works like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's 1984 perpetuated dark future-gazing—and became a staple for required high-school reading in the post-World War II era. Since then, post-apocalyptic novels and films have been hugely popular--and comprise a dominant genre today.

Nevertheless, as Abraham Maslow's biographer, it's my duty to report that his final years were marked by an intense utopian interest, spurred by his research on self-actualization and peak experiences. Greatly excited by his friend Huxley's final novel, Island, which depicted an ideal society on a fictitious contemporary island in the Pacific, Maslow saw utopian theorizing as a vital task for psychology and the broader social sciences.

To this end, Maslow launched a radically innovative course titled "Utopian Social Psychology" in the spring of 1967. The course catalog description stated: "The seminar will concern itself with the empirical and realistic questions: How good a society does human nature permit? How good a human nature does society permit? What is possible and what is not?"

Against the backdrop of the rapidly escalating Vietnam War (more than 250,000 American soldiers were already in combat and their number would soon exceed half a million), Maslow presented a wide-ranging reading list. The assigned books included Huxley's Island, Erich Fromm's The Sane Society, and B.F. Skinner's Walden Two.

Fromm, of course, was a bestselling social critic who pioneered neo-psychoanalysis and drew on Marxist notions to critique American capitalist society. As for the novels by Huxley and Skinner, these differed starkly in their overall prescriptions for human happiness: Whereas Huxley regarded Eastern spirituality, especially meditation, as the bulwark of an ideal, peaceful society, Skinner's vision was wholly secular and materialist.

Maslow's recommended books were even more eclectic. These included Wilhelm Reich's The Sexual Revolution, A.S. Neil's Summerhill, and Herbert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization. Summerhill was an optimistic account of alternative education at a private English school that stressed self-motivated learning. Reich and Marcuse, similar to Fromm, both sought to integrate Freudian with Marxist thought to chart humanity's future effectively. While teaching at Brandeis University, Maslow and Marcuse weren’t close friends, but often met socially and enjoyed each other's intellectual company.

In an earlier post, I noted Maslow's ardent interest in science-fiction—and his recommended books included these three: Poul Anderson's anthology Time and Stars, Robert Heinlein's bestseller Stranger in A Strange Land, and Olaf Stapledon's classic Odd John. For Maslow, each in its own way challenged conventional thinking about contemporary society and its accepted values about human possibilities. With a degree in physics, Anderson had an essentially optimistic view of science—especially involving space travel—to help humanity mature as an earthbound species. In their respective novels, Heinlein and Stapledon both presented quasi-superhuman protagonists seeking to maintain, develop, and protect their superior abilities amidst those motivated by fear and distrust.

Undoubtedly, the most enduring legacy of Maslow's course was the handout he gave students in order to spur their creative thinking about utopia. Originally titled "Notes and Questions for Psychology 150b (Utopian Social Psychology) on Island by Aldous Huxley," it was later reprinted in both the Journal of Humanistic Psychology and posthumously, in Farther Reaches of Human Nature. Maslow obviously liked this brief tract, in which he offered his most detailed musings on what he called eupsychia or the best possible human society. Limitations of space preclude a full exposition of this tract, whose later format comprised an introduction followed by 29 sections with terse questions to guide the discussion, such as:

“Must individuals be kept in the society once they have been selected or born into it? ... How much planning is possible? Must it be centralized? ... How to handle aggression (and) conflict? Can these be abolished? ... How simple should life be? ... How tolerant can a society be? What cannot be tolerated? ... Is permanent contentment possible? ... How to integrate enthusiasm with skeptical realism? Mysticism with practical shrewdness and good reality testing?”

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Fifty-five years later, where are the answers to these and similar questions? Dystopian works are now a dime a dozen. It’s time to build on Maslow’s utopianism.