There is very little about which I am 100 percent certain, least of all my interpretations of Freud and Maslow. That being said, I am pretty confident that this interpretation is defensible on the basis of textual evidence. As I noted in this essay, any way of characterizing motivations is going to admit of exceptions. Whether you use Maslow’s hierarchy, or flip it over and invert his hierarchy, there will be exceptions to the general rule. So that begs the question, “What is the general rule?”

For Maslow, the general rule is that individuals work their way up to moral agency; from my point of view, individuals are moral actors from the get go. Admittedly, our moral agency develops as we age, and as we learn, and a thousand other factors enter into it — e.g., we are likely to be different moral actors when we are hungry than when we are well fed.

I will admit that if Maslow’s hierarchy is a hierarchy of urgency, you’re right, but if you read the whole of Toward a Psychology of Being and Religion, Values, and Peak Experiences I think you will find that Maslow is writing about the whole of life — the fully functional individual — and not exclusively about moments of urgency.

Best wishes,

Nick