My reading of a book on the early works of Colin Wilson, referenced here, moved me to check out one of Wilson's influences, the psychologist Abraham Maslow, in the third edition of the title noted above.
Of course I'd probably heard of Maslow's basic concept of "peak experiences" roughly since the 1970s, and the author may even have been mentioned in some of the Wilson books I did read, given that the two of them corresponded for some time. I'd also heard bits and pieces about "Maslow's hierarchy of needs," but I simply didn't get around to reading as much of his work as I did with both Freud and Jung.
The above book-- BEING, for short-- might not be the best introduction to Maslow's work, since its chapters are all rewritten lectures that Maslow gave before various audiences. Nevertheless, I got the general schema. Maslow argues that human beings are doubly motivated by their responses to "deficiency" or to "growth" (which Maslow later terms "being," though this term is actually less clear than the earlier one IMO). Deficiency motivations are fueled by the perception that one can only be happy if one can satisfy one's appetite for wealth, food, love, or some similar commodity. Growth motivations are fueled by the perception that one can overcome all boundaries through a process that Maslow termed "self-actualization." Maslow often drew comparisons between his work and that of his predecessor Freud, finding that Freud's entire system was built on the idea of deficiency, with which point I agree.
Now, despite my agreeing with Maslow on all of his main points, I did find the essays in BEING somewhat unexciting. Freud, Jung, and Colin Wilson are all much better at communicating abstruse concepts so as to make the reader excited by said concepts. At present I don't know if Maslow's schema has much application to my overall lit-crit project-- except for this section from Chapter 11, "Psychological Data and Human Values."
The various chapters in BEING don't explore the peak-experience in as much detail as I would have liked, but in Chapter 11, he contrasts the idea of a subject's "great" peak-experiences vs. his "lesser" ones.
...the process of moment-to-moment growth is itself intrinsically rewarding and delightful in an absolute sense. If [these experiences] are not mountain-peak experiences, at least they are foothill-experiences, little glimpses of absolute, self-validative delight, little moments of Being.
What Maslow calls "foothill-experiences" may be somewhat covalent with what he later calls "plateau-experiences." In any case, this has intrinsic appeal to me for its relevance to literary values.
If I were an elitist like the majority of comics-critics, I would value only the peak-experiences, however I chose to define the content that engendered those experiences. Instead, I am (though I've not advanced the term in a long time) a pluralist, and in this context this means that I value even imperfect works when they have at least the SUGGESTION of reaching concrescence with respect to one or more of the four potentialities.
As indicative of my ceaseless pursuit of even the humble "foothill-experiences" as well as those at the peak, in recent months I've been reviewing a large number of the Italian fantasy-films usually called peplum, first for NATURALISTIC UNCANNY MARVELOUS and secondarily for THE GRAND SUPERHERO OPERA. The more I see of these formulaic productions, the less chance there seems to find any works that hit on all cylinders. When I did find two that developed their mythopoeic ideas-- respectively the 1962 FURY OF ACHILLES and the 1964 TRIUMPH OF HERCULES. If I wanted nothing but the most well-executed works, then I could stop looking at the subgenre right now, with the conviction that these might well be the only ones that offered "peak experiences."
Nevertheless, even though there are a lot of peplum-films that don't offer even the milder foothill-experiences, there are enough of these to keep the hunt going. For example, a film like the 1962 VULCAN SON OF JUPITER has one good undeveloped mythopoeic idea, that of asserting that if mortals manage to trespass on the domain of Zeus, they can actually diminish the god's power, mirroring the magic by which the ruler of Olympus changes three gods-- Vulcan, Ares and Aphrodite-- into mere mortals. The script doesn't use the idea for anything more than a throwaway rationalization, but I like exploring the potential of even insufficiently-developed ideas.
In Stephen King's DANSE MACABRE, the author suggested than hardcore fans of the metaphenomenal genres (not the word he uses, of course) must be the most optimistic people around, since on a regular basis they plow through reams of badly done junk in search of the proverbial "diamonds in the garbage." But if Maslow's concept is true-- that all human beings have some potential for peak experiences, or at least the related foothill-types-- then the fans' optimism is justified in searching for diamonds wherever one can find them-- and that said diamonds can appear at any level of creative accomplishment.
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