TY - JOUR A1 - Hoffman, Edward T1 - The Social World of Self-Actualizing People: Reflections by Maslow’s Biographer JF - Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 2017. N2 - Maslow’s concept of self-actualization has been a bulwark of humanistic psychology for more than fifty years, and has increasingly gained international appeal beyond its original nexus within the United States. His description of the high-achieving characteristics of self-actualizing men and women has influenced theorists and practitioners in such fields as counseling, education, health care, management, and organizational psychology. Through these same decades, Maslow’s formulation has also been criticized as promoting a hyper-individualistic, even narcissistic, orientation to personality growth. Because Maslow by temperament and intellectual style expressed himself in an ever-evolving set of speeches and writings that were seldom explicit about interpersonal relations, his actual outlook on the social world of self-actualizers has remained elusive. The focus of this paper, therefore, is how Maslow depicted self-actualizing people with regard to five major interpersonal dimensions of life: friendship, romantic love, marriage and lasting intimacy, parenthood, and communal service. By pulling together Maslow’s comments primarily in his published works, and secondarily in his unpublished works-in-progress, it is possible to explicate his tacit viewpoint. Doing so will not only help dispel the misconception that Maslow depicted self-actualizers as loners or even hermits, but also guide future theory and research on personality growth. Y1 - 2017 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hoffman, Edward T1 - How Would Alfred Adler View America’s Loneliness Epidemic? Reflections by His Biographer JF - The Journal of Individual Psychology, Vol. 80 (No. 4, Winter 2024), pp. 275-285. N2 - U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy (2023) has declared that America is experiencing an >epidemic< and >health-care crisis< related to loneliness. Although Alfred Adler is not alive to respond to this dismaying situation, his life and writings offer a vital direction for understanding the nature of this epidemic and reacting appropriately. As Adler’s biographer, I focus on four relevant causal factors concerning chronic loneliness among adolescents and young adults today: intrapsychic, familial, pedagogic, and wider societal forces. Relevant interventions are then discussed. Y1 - 2024 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hoffman, Edward T1 - Age Segregation and the Need for Intergenerational Solidarity: A Call for Humanistic Psychology JF - Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 2025. N2 - This is a >reaction paper< to the seminal paper by Hagestad and Uhlenberg on the impact of age segregation on ageism. Drawing primarily on research in the United States and the Netherlands, they highlighted institutional, spatial, and cultural dimensions of age segregation throughout the individual’s life span. My >reaction paper< identifies how the three major founders of humanistic psychology—Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and Rollo May— presciently addressed this topic from the life-affirming perspective of what I prefer to call intergenerational solidarity. Drawing on personal and clinical experience, each felt it essential that age segregation be decisively reversed in American society. Y1 - 2025 ER -