Abraham Maslow and Adventure Therapy:
Self Actualization through Process
by Eric Kappus

Intro:
Adventure Therapy is a professional counseling technique that uses group dynamics and adventure to promote self-actualization of the individual. Learning is experiential. Lessons come with bumps and bruises, tears and giggles. Participants (clients) are guided through a process—or generalized series of conditions, events, and objects—which interact to produce the desired personal growth and healing. This process can be understood in terms of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which theorizes that all individuals must fulfill certain personal needs before other needs can be addressed. Participants in Adventure Therapy programs are provided with an experience that nurtures them through the stages of Maslow’s hierarchy with the goal of eventual self-awareness and healthy integration into social arenas.
Maslow:
Abraham Maslow was a prominent psychologist of the 20th century who departed from the traditional schools of psychology of his day (Freud and Skinner) to develop his own form of humanistic psychology. Maslow believed that the study of the sick and unhealthy led to a psychology of the unhealthy, so he studied healthy, successful individuals such as Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Frederick Douglas. Maslow theorized that humans are motivated by unsatisfied needs, and created a diagram to show this (modified version in Figure 1.). He saw that there were fundamental elements of physical as well as psychological survival for every person..

Figure 1. Simple hierarchy of human needs (Modified from Maslow)

Adventure Therapy:
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is fundamental to the process of Adventure Therapy. What is Adventure Therapy? It is a counseling approach that is based on personal growth and eventual integration as a productive member of society, using the adventure and group process as the primary therapeutic environment. Adventure therapy is an approach that reaches all ages and all walks of life because the adventure is universal and the group is the main, flexible logistical tool. Adventure Therapy draws from many disciplines, including counseling theory in psychology, experiential education and service learning, environmental education, group development theory, and outdoor recreation and leisure studies. Since the beginning of organized camps, children have been undergoing one form of adventure therapy or another.
Adventure Therapy uses several educational tools and experiences to facilitate a growth process in the individual aimed at a ‘higher’ stage within Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. This is termed “process” and is critical to the experience. In order for students to understand Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, they are guided through a series of outdoor activities and problem solving initiatives which allow for the group to work through each stage in the hierarchy. This begins with survival. Students/clients of Adventure Therapy commonly find themselves backpacking, carrying all the supplies they need to survive (Biological Needs, Figure 1.), or learning primitive skills such as shelter, water, fire, and food. Depending on the program, students may or may not spend a significant amount of time on these skills. The end result is that participants have an understanding of the fundamentals of survival and can relax to think about other needs. Very few children in modern societies are taught the fundamentals of survival. The supermarket has robbed us of our self-reliance.

Next in the process is security, or the need to belong. Everyone needs to feel accepted, that they are a part of something. A good Adventure Therapist will milk group dynamics for all they are worth at this time, providing team building experiences and lacing daily life with trust activities. Naturally this guides the participant mentally and emotionally to the next stage, status or social needs.
Every person feels a need to have a sense of place in the world; whether it is within society or on the periphery, no man is an island. The Adventure Therapist uses the group dynamic as well as activities that root the participant in a spot, teaching them a sense of place. Many Adventure Therapy programs utilize a “solo” experience, where each participant is left alone in a natural setting for at least 24 hours. Simply surviving this experience has tremendous effects on each participant. Also, each person in the group has special skills, and no two participants are ever alike. During the course of living, traveling, and playing together, the members of the group each begin to open up and show what they have to contribute to the group. Instinctually, participants who feel more established socially begin to take other less assertive and vocal individuals and integrate them into the group, a perfect segue way to the next stage, self-esteem/self-worth.
Once a participant feels a sense of place, is content with what he or she contribute to the group, natural feelings of positive self-worth in the form of sacrifices, encouraging other group members, assisting leaders, etc begin to find expression.. This stage in the process is one of many smiles and jokes, all the while participants are lifting each other up towards self-actualization.
Self-actualization is the final stage of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It is the goal of Adventure Therapy to bring each participant to an understanding of the process involved in becoming self-actualized. Self-actualization is a state of mind more than an accomplishment. Everyone has a desire to become something more, to become everything that one is capable of becoming. This is what self-actualization is. It is a state of comfort with oneself only achieved by meeting the foundational needs listed above.
Conclusion:
In order for our youth to be able to handle the problems that we are passing down to them—nuclear waste management; a society entirely dependent on petroleum; homelessness; unemployment—they need to enter society as fully functional, emotionally healthy individuals. This can only be accomplished if their needs are met, starting with biological self-sufficiency and ending with a sense of place on this planet and within the “civilized” world. This is the primary goal of Adventure Therapy: to make use of Maslow’s hierarchy to empower our children to have a greater awareness of their natural and social environments by empowering them to meet their own needs.

Essays: Youth Section • Trust • Adventure Therapy