[Maslow is an American psychologist, educator, and author of Dominance, Self-Esteem, Self-Actualization: Germinal Papers of A. H. Maslow (1973). In the following excerpt, he concurs with Frankl's theories on the "will to meaning," self-actualization, and the role of values and pleasure in life.]

I agree entirely with Frankl that man's primary concern (I would rather say "highest concern") is his will to meaning. But this may be ultimately not very different from phrasings by Buhler [Charlotte Buhler, Values in Psychotherapy] (1962), for instance, or Goldstein, or Rogers or others, who may use, instead of "meaning," such words as "values" or "purposes" or "ends" or "a philosophy of life" or "mystical fusion." As things stand now, different theorists use these and similar words in an overlapping or synonymous way. It would obviously help if they could be defined somewhat more carefully (not too carefully, however, until more data come in).

Another general consequence of this "levels" conception of knowledge and of science is that an all-inclusive, overarching generalization, however true, is very difficult to "work with" or to improve in clarity, usefulness, exactness, or in richness of detail. Thus, I certainly agreed with Goldstein, Rogers, and others that the one ultimate motivation is for self-actualization, but it has proven very helpful to spell this out in more detail, to subject it to holistic-analysis, to give it operational definition, and then to compare the results of different operations. This "liaison work" between the "idea-man" and the tester and checker is already paying off, e.g., in making possible Shostrom's standardized test of self-actualization [the personal orientation inventory].

Frankl's "will to meaning" and also Buhler's "four basic tendencies" are, I feel, compatible both with my empirical-personological description of self-actualizing people [in Motivation and Personality] (1954) and with my theoretical statements in which self-actualization is used as a concept.

First of all, not all grown people seek self-actualization and of course few people achieve it. There are other ways and goals of life as Buhler has maintained. The theoretical statement that all human beings in principle seek self-actualization and are capable of it applies ultimately to newborn babies. It is the same as saying that neurosis, psychopathy, stunting, diminishing, atrophy of potentials are not primarily inborn but are made. (This statement does not apply to the psychoses, where the evidence is not yet clear. It cannot be ruled out that heredity plays an important role.) It may also apply to adults in the sense that we shouldn't give up hope altogether even for those with a bad prognosis, e.g., drug addicts, psychopaths, as well as certain types of smug "normality" and "good adjustment" (to a bad society), resignation, apathy, etc. This parallels the medical profession's insistence on trying to save life even when it looks hopeless. Such an attitude is quite compatible with being completely "realistic."

Secondly, my experience agrees with Frankl's that people who seek self-actualization directly, selfishly, personally, [dichotomized] away from mission in life, i.e., as a form of private and subjective salvation, don't, in fact, achieve it (unless the selfishness is for the sake of the call, vocation, or work, thereby transcending the [dichotomy] between unselfishness and selfishness). Or to say it in a more positive and descriptive way, those people in our society selected out as self-actualizing practically always have a mission in life, a task which they love and have identified with and which becomes a defining-characteristic of the self. And there was no instance in which I did not agree that it was a worthy job, worthwhile, important, ultimately valuable. This descriptive fact can be called self-actualization, authenticity, fulfillment, the achievement of meaning, self-transcendence, finding oneself, the unitive life, or by other names.

The instances that I have seen in which persons sought direct, short-cut self-actualization were originally cases in which private "lower" pleasure, self-indulgence, and primitive hedonism ruled for too long a period of time. More recently, my impression is that impulsivity, the unrestrained expression of any whim, the direct seeking for "kicks" and for non-social and purely private pleasures (as with some who use LSD merely for "kicks" rather than for insight) is often mislabelled self-actualization.

Or to say this from still another perspective, all self-actualizing persons that I have ever known were good workers, even hard workers—though they also knew how to not-work, to loaf, and to saunter.

It is such facts that we have to deal with, these and, of course, many others of this sort. It is well to admit that there are, in principle, many abstract systems or languages that can organize and integrate these facts equally well or almost so. I am not inclined to make a big to-do about the particular labels so long as they do not obscure or deny the facts. Indeed, at this level of knowledge I think it useful to have various points of view on the same world of facts because, through other people's eyes, we can see more than we can with only our own. It is better to consider this intellectual situation synergic or collaborative rather than rivalrous. Science, at least as I define it, is a division of labor among colleagues.

I think a similar type of discussion is in order with reference to Dr. Frankl's remarks on peak-experiences. I feel I know what Dr. Frankl is trying to say and I agree with his intention, as I did with his cautionary remarks on the mistakes that can be made with self-actualization. I'm pretty sure that we have understood each other in conversation and in correspondence. And yet it is well to spell everything out for others, and also to add what I have learned more recently.

Hunting peak-experiences directly doesn't ordinarily work. Generally they happen to a person. We are ordinarily "surprised by joy." Also it becomes increasingly clear that it is wise, for research strategy, to stress the separability of the emotional aspect from the cognitive aspect of peak-experiences. It is more clear to me now that peak-emotions may come without obvious insight or growth or benefit of any kind beyond the effects of pleasure itself. Such raptures may be very profound and yet be almost contentless. The prime examples are sex and LSD, but there are others as well. Sex, LSD, etc., may bring illumination, or they may not. Furthermore, insight (B-Cognition) can come without emotional ecstasies. Indeed, B-Cognition can come from pain, suffering, and tragedy, as Dr. Frankl has helped to teach us. Also, I would today stress even more than I have in the past, the prime importance of "resistance to peak-experiences," which I once called in a humorous moment "non-peaking." People may either not have peak-experiences or they may repress or suppress them, be afraid of them, and deny them or interpret them in some reductive and desacralizing way. The consequences of being a "non-peaker" loom larger and larger as the years go by. I agree with Colin Wilson (in his Introduction to the New Existentialism) in attributing to this one factor much of the difference between pessimistic, hopeless, anguished Nay-Saying on the one hand, and coping, striving, hopeful, unconquerable Yea-Saying, on the other hand. Dr. Frankl's remarks on tension and overcoming are very relevant and very useful in this connection.

As for the similarity of all pleasures, certainly there is a subjective quality which is generally different from suffering, or despair, or pain. In this sense, any pleasure is a pleasure and falls within the same class as any other pleasure. And yet there is also a hierarchy of pleasures (the cessation of pain, the moratorium of drunkenness, the relief of urination, the pleasure of a hot bath, the contentment of having done a job well, the satisfaction of success, on up through the happiness of being with loved friends, the rapture of being in love, the ecstasy of the perfect love act, on up to the final pleasure-beyond-pleasure of the mystical fusion with the universe). Thus, in one very real sense, all pleasures are similar; in another equally real sense, they are not.

We must certainly accept Dr. Frankl's cautions about contentless pleasure and about the necessity for relating pleasure to its trigger, to its context, and also to its consequences. (One day we shall have to go even further for we shall soon have to grapple with the difficult problem of pleasurable emotions coming from neurotic or psychotic or perverted sources. Like the medieval theologians who had to differentiate the voice of God within from the voice of the devil within, we shall soon have to start questioning the absolute and sacred authority accorded by many today to the "inner voice," "the voice of conscience," etc.)

And yet once we have agreed with Dr. Frankl on the intellectual dangers of making pleasure into a deity, we can then feel quite free to enjoy the small and harmless pleasures of life. Even if they teach us nothing, they are still a blessing. Pleasure itself is not a danger; it is only the man-made theories about pleasure that are a danger.