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View Full Version : Your CD/TG Heirarchy of Needs ?



RobertaFermina
03-28-2008, 12:43 AM
So there's this guy, Abraham Maslow who studied 'healthy' people and came up with the needs of a 'healthy' person and the order/priority of these needs.

Going from most fundamental/basic needs, supporting each succeeding level, up to the needs that are supported by all others: "self-actualization".

What comes to my mind is this, where in the "heirarchy of needs" would you place some of your CD/TG needs ? You might not prioritize things like anyone else does...we might teach each other and ourselves about ourselves.

Would you put all of your CD needs/activities at one level in the heirarchy or spread them out? Would you put being dressed in one place, and "passing" in another ? what about acceptance by an S.O. ? or even having an S.O.? Do you even agree with the idea of the heirarchy of needs ?

Whats YOUR 1., 2., 3., 4., 5. of CD/TG Living ?

1. Physiological Needs
These are biological needs. They consist of needs for oxygen, food, water, and a relatively constant body temperature. They are the strongest needs because if a person were deprived of all needs, the physiological ones would come first in the person's search for satisfaction.


2. Safety Needs
When all physiological needs are satisfied and are no longer controlling thoughts and behaviors, the needs for security can become active. Adults have little awareness of their security needs except in times of emergency or periods of disorganization in the social structure (such as widespread rioting). Children often display the signs of insecurity and the need to be safe.

3. Needs of Love, Affection and Belongingness
When the needs for safety and for physiological well-being are satisfied, the next class of needs for love, affection and belongingness can emerge. Maslow states that people seek to overcome feelings of loneliness and alienation. This involves both giving and receiving love, affection and the sense of belonging.

4. Needs for Esteem
When the first three classes of needs are satisfied, the needs for esteem can become dominant. These involve needs for both self-esteem and for the esteem a person gets from others. Humans have a need for a stable, firmly based, high level of self-respect, and respect from others. When these needs are satisfied, the person feels self-confident and valuable as a person in the world. When these needs are frustrated, the person feels inferior, weak, helpless and worthless.

5. Needs for Self-Actualization
When all of the foregoing needs are satisfied, then and only then are the needs for self-actualization activated. Maslow describes self-actualization as a person's need to be and do that which the person was "born to do." "A musician must make music, an artist must paint, and a poet must write." These needs make themselves felt in signs of restlessness. The person feels on edge, tense, lacking something, in short, restless. If a person is hungry, unsafe, not loved or accepted, or lacking self-esteem, it is very easy to know what the person is restless about. It is not always clear what a person wants when there is a need for self-actualization.

RobertaFermina
03-28-2008, 01:04 AM
My CD Needs are:



Claiming space as Roberta...Dressing out at Church, at Men's Group, While shopping, anywhere beyond my own home ! This one is at least in part at my Level 4: Need for Esteem. I want some R.E.S.P.E.C.T. and I'll go out there and get it. In part, Level 3...I want to be loved as Roberta at Church. Actually, some of this is deeper than Level 2: Security, because I will take risks to step out and get respect and actualize myself.



Relating to others as Roberta.Level 3

Being recognized as feminine/female-ish. Level 4.

Confirming my sense of being Roberta...singing, performing, standing out in a crowd...dancing...all that with no sense of being Bob at all....obliterating the male persona. Level 5.

Although, sometimes, when I'm really being at Level 5, being Roberta, free of my male identity, it seems so amazing and necessary that I would miss meals and bear sickness to be there. kinda like being in the Level 5 Zone turns the whole thing on its head....though it can only do so for a while....I guess that is the difference between 'healthy' and 'unhealthy' heirarchies of needs.


Feeling/Awakening my feminine Consciousness - having feminine thoughts, remembering Roberta moments, reading fashion magazines, window shopping, wearing feminine PJs. Level 5, Self Actualization.

Feeling my feminine senses - being clothed, made up, seeing myself in the mirror, feeling pantyhose, walking in high heels. Level 5 again.

Having an SO that celebrates Roberta PRICELESS! Level 1.5. I feel I can open myself, be intimate, safe, respected, free AS I AM with another person. It's embarassing to say that eating is more important in the long run...but I could not receive her without first preserving life itself.

One paradox is that I choose to be Roberta less often so that I can build a life where I can spend time this woman who accepts me as Roberta. Ain't that strange ? Payback is when all our lives are settled and secure, then Roberta is coming out to play more and more...guess that makes me a Level 3 thing!?

:rose: Roberta :rose:

sterling12
03-28-2008, 02:09 AM
Didn't Maslow relate level five to altruism? I though he thought that these people were at the ideal level, unencumbered by the other needs on the list. When I was in school they compared altruistic people at level five to person's who just did actions for the sake of being the best person they could be. Oddly enough they felt that people like Albert Schweitzer were more at level 2 or 3...just doing things so that they could get praise or strokes from others.

For me, I saw a direct comparison with "Nirvana." That Concept seemed very similar, but reached on a spiritual level.

You write that level Five people are "hard to read." So, being enigmatic is a bad thing? Gosh, I hope not!

Peace and Love, Joanie

EnglishRose
03-28-2008, 08:58 AM
Altruism is more a factor of Level 5, rather than the result thereof, so not necessarily what one who reaches that state would do.

(Cynics might argue "altruism" is part of the fourth level, with particular regard to gaining respect from ones peers).

RobertaFermina
03-28-2008, 11:50 AM
First of all, the descriptions of each level in italics are not mine, they are Maslow's or someone representing him.

I didn't actually see people as being of one level or the other. I see myself as being on all these levels. Sometime before dinner, especially if I don't know if or when it's coming, I can take a trip to level 1.

I suppose folks who are secure that their primary needs will be met will manifest needy behavior only at their current edge, the level where their needs are not consistently met.

I think I show up all over the map, especially with a few dysfunctional relationships in my head and in my life.

:rose: Roberta :rose:

Nadia-Maria
03-30-2008, 12:04 PM
Hi Roberta,

ThankYou for this original and most interesting thread.

My need for crossdressing is clearly a level 3.

It's a matter of love and belongingness, and could not happen in emergency situations when higher priorities are to be set up (level 1 or 2).

At level 4, my needs for esteem have forced me to keep my CD in the closet for more than a half century, and to be successful at it. In any case I constantly kept in my life a rather satisfactory level of self-esteem, even believing that crossdressing was some kind of perversion (assessed by DSM-4 for instance, that I took for too long as a reference).

Crossdressing could definately not be rated at level 4 or 5 for me at all.
Because to act well into self-actualization, I need to be at rest with my crossdressing needs.

Whenever I can't crossdress at ease at least one day in 3 or one week in 3, I become unable to think efficiently at high level. Then my thoughts are constantly drawn to crossdressing for finding strategies either to be able to crossdress more at ease, or to compensate with something more or less equivalent.

I don't know if this is a proper answer to your question. Please feel free to question further.

Luvya

Nadia