Physiological Needs: These are biological needs - oxygen, food, water, warmth.

Safety Needs: When physiological needs are satisfied and are no longer controlling thoughts and behaviors, the needs for security can become active.

Needs of Love: Affection and Belongingness: When the above needs are satisfied, the needs for love, affection and belongingness can emerge. This involves both giving and receiving love, affection and the sense of belonging.

Needs for Esteem : When the first three levels of needs are satisfied, the needs for esteem can become dominant. These involve needs for both self-esteem and for the esteem a child gets from others. Children, indeed humans, have a need for a stable, firmly based, high level of self-respect, and respect from others. When these needs are satisfied, the child feels self-confident and valuable as a person in the world. When these needs are frustrated, by ordeals of the past for example, the child feels inferior, weak, helpless and worthless.

Needs for Self-Actualization : When all of the foregoing needs are satisfied, then can the needs for self-actualization be activated. Maslow describes self-actualization as a person's need to be and do that which the person feels they were "born to do." "A musician must make music, an artist must paint, and a poet must write."