Published by the International Journal of Peace Studiesthis excellent article by Richard Rubenstein is well worth reading!

In Control: The Basis of Social Order (1973), Paul Sites defined eight essential needs whose satisfaction was required in order to produce "normal" (non-deviant, non-violent) individual behaviour.

According to Sites, these included the primary needs for consistency of response, stimulation, security, and recognition, and derivative needs for justice, meaning, rationality, and control.

Sites, in turn, recognized the importance of Abraham Maslow's conception of human development as the sequential satisfaction of basic needs, which Maslow (1954) had grouped under five headings: physiological, safety, belongingness/love, esteem, and self-actualisation.

The idea that humans qua humans have needs whose satisfaction is the effective antidote to alienation is considerably older than this, of course, as Karl Marx's youthful reflections on Hegel suggest:

The whole of history is a preparation for 'man' to become the object of sense perception and for needs to be the needs of 'man as man'.

Rubenstein says: There is much to be gained, in my view, by ... asking, for example, whether imperative needs are expressions of a libidinal drive, as Freud (1989b) thought, whether they emerge in the course of human development, as Erikson (1963) and others believed, or whether their nature and role is best explained by cognitive theory, discourse analysis, or some other perspective on mind and personality.

Related phrases:   social cognitive theory   social cognitive theory of morality

Definitions of cognitive theory on the Web:

  • The theory of cognitive development, one of the most historically influential theories was developed by Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist (1896-1980). ... brc.iop.kcl.ac.uk/glossary.aspx

Definitions of discourse analysison the Web: