Mind Body and Soul

In a 1943 paper entitled “A Theory of Human Motivation,” Dr. Abraham Maslow, a prominent psychologist, proposed what has come to be known as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The Hierarchy, often pictured as a pyramid, contains five levels of needs thought to be common to all. These five levels are a road map that each individual must fulfill as they progress to the pinnacle of self-actualization, the goal point of need at which a person overcomes prejudice, is spontaneous, becomes confident in their own ability to problem solve and achieves a higher level of morality.

Before anyone can get to the top level of self-actualization, other needs – needs that are more basic – must first be accomplished. The initial need, found at the base of the pyramid and the most basic level of need, is a physiological one. The essential needs of survival such as food, water, a place to sleep and so forth, must be met in order to get beyond this first stage.

Stage Two encompasses a person’s meeting what Maslow called “safety” and that encompasses a person’s security needs that all fall at this level. Safety includes: having security of resources, job security, home, family, health and property security.

The Third stage is the stage of belonging. As a person develops toward their actualization, the most important needs at this point are family belonging, relationships and group belonging. The need to belong is the focus of this article.

While we can all agree that people have basic needs, such as the need for food, shelter and safety, the need to belong isn’t always as obvious. Yet the need to be a part of something beyond oneself is innate, universal, and quite basic to all humans at all ages. Without belonging, happiness is difficult to achieve. Everyone possesses the need to be a part of a group, and being part of a group means that the group openly includes, and completely accepts, him/her. On the other hand, at this level of Maslow’s Hierarchy, the fear of rejection by a group that a person wishes to be a member of can stall that person’s growth on their way toward the common goal of developing a complete and healthy sense of self. While this threat of rejection is more existential and not a physical one, as might occur at the two prior stages, rejection by a group can cause an individual to have an emotional reaction that causes them to withdraw and lose empathy. Some studies suggest that this change may be temporary, but other studies indicate that there is a real and potentially enduring threat to self-esteem that may cause the person rejected from the group to develop a poor state of emotional health. In fact, there is a good amount of research that strongly suggests that rejection can cause a lowering of IQ test scores, a reduced sense of well-being and even a decrease of self-control. Some data indicates that repeated rejection can cause an individual to be scarred and even traumatized.

On the other hand, belonging creates and enhances a strong sense of self and community. To belong requires that we have a sense of our own identity and know which community we fit in with best. Groucho Marx, upon resigning from a club that he belonged to, is credited as having said, “I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.” That approach can work for individuals who have a strong sense of their own identity and have a comfortable sense of belonging to other groups in their life. For Groucho, his identity secured, family, job and community offered him a sense of belonging that allowed him to be glib in his approach toward the club from which he resigned. For children and teens who are working on understanding and growing their own identity, Groucho’s nonchalant approach is not only unlikely, but is also potentially destructive. Victims of bullying are often harmed by being excluded from the groups they wish to belong to. Others who exclude them maltreat children who do not quite fit in. However, it is not just children. Adults trying to be part of a community and are excluded for reasons that are shallow, meaningless and just plain mean are impacted as well. Allowing people to be a part of a community actually enhances the group along with the emotional well-being of its members.

Belonging, roughly translated as “achdus,” also happens to be a core principal in Judaism. The Ba’al Shem Tov recognized this sense of unity as a core component for the survival of the Jewish people and said the following on the importance of achdus: “A king was riding in a forest with his aides, when he sighted an unusually beautiful bird perched on the top of a nearby tree. He ordered that the bird be caught so that he could study it in more detail. Unfortunately, no ladder was available. He then ordered his aides form a human ladder, with one man on top of another man’s shoulders. Each man climbed up and the last man was about to reach for the bird when the bottom most man became impatient, shifted slightly, and the whole chain collapsed. All the men spilled onto the ground, without having caught the bird.”

The lesson, says the Ba’al Shem Tov, is that just as each man was needed to fulfill his obligation to support the ladder, so too must we do all we can to support each other and our community. Achdus should exist on the greater communal level and not just on the individual level. The erosion of the ability to welcome people to join and belong can affect the mental health of individuals as well as the group and the entire klal. For us to enhance our health and well-being, we must increase our sense of identity and belonging on our way toward developing a healthy and productive self and group self-actualized life.