Maslow on Radio 4

Maslow has always been a hero of mine so you can bet I'll be tuned in to Radio 4 this Friday - 19th April - at 11.00am to listen to "Mindchangers"

To quote the BBC - "In his 1954 book, Motivation and Personality, Maslow explained his Heirarchy of Needs: how only when basic physiological needs, and those of safety and security, are met can humans aspire to be motivated by higher goals such as status and self-respect. And he maintained that only a small number of exceptional people - he gave Albert Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt as examples - are capable of reaching the highest level of motivation, and are driven by the desire to accomplish all they are capable of.

Maslow was also a pioneer, with Carl Rogers, of Humanistic Psychology - a response to the sharply opposing schools of psychoanalysis and behaviourism which dominated psychology at the time.

Claudia Hammond visits Brandeis University outside Boston, where Maslow was the founding Professor of Psychology, to speak to some who knew him, and hears from psychologists and management experts how his influence persists. Contributors include Margie Lachman - Professor of Psychology at Brandeis University, Lawrence Fuchs - emeritus Professor of American Civilization and Politics at Brandeis (who died last month), and Warren Bennis - Professor of Management and Organization at the USC Marshall School of Business."

If you read this after the 19th then you should be able to track it down on the BBC iPlayer.

You can read a little more about applied Maslovian theory (allegedly) by doing a search on this blog for "Dave and his hierarchy of needs". You can even find a Maslow game to play there. Dave, in case you were wondering, is doing well.

Medicalising Grief

Interesting programme from Radio 4.

From the BBC site - "The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - or DSM - is a book full of lists of symptoms, strange sounding names, codes and guidelines. It's also a book that changes lives. Its champions say it is simply a system of classification, a diagnostic tool. Its critics claim it is more - it decides what is and isn't a disease and that every time a new version is published an increasing number of people are labelled mentally ill.

And for every diagnosis in the DSM, there is a corresponding medical treatment waiting in the wings.
In May 2013, the American Psychiatric Association will publish the latest edition of their DSM and it is likely to cause tension within the American psychiatric establishment. But why is this medical-looking manual causing such controversy?

Where some say the previous DSM was responsible for pathologising childhood, critics of the new edition will medicalise grief.

Are the intense feelings most people experience after the death of a loved one misery or melancholia? That is the ongoing debate, the result of which will have an impact on millions of people and our understanding of a fundamental human reaction.

In a post-Prozac world, when normal becomes abnormal, medication generally follows. An estimated 8 to 10 million people lose a loved one every year and something like a third to a half of them suffer depressive symptoms for up to a month afterward. How much does the pharmaceutical industry stand to benefit if an extra 5 million people a year are prescribed anti-depressants?

Matthew Hill investigates the DSM, its decisions over what is and is not a mental illness, and the people behind it.
Producer: Gemma Newby A Sparklab production for BBC Radio 4."

It was broadcast on Easter Sunday, but you can still catch it on the iPlayer Site