Stan
Cox
In
February, the public health specialist Muna Abed Alah published a paper in the
journal Current Psychology titled “Shattered Hierarchy: How the Gaza Conflict
Demolished Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs.” The idea of a hierarchy of needs—first
published by the psychologist Abraham Maslow in 1943 and subsequently modified
in various ways by Maslow and others—has long been pervasive in the world of
pop psychology, while some in academia have poked holes in Maslow’s logic. Now,
Alah suggests that the Palestinians of Gaza have rendered the hierarchy of
needs wholly obsolete.
