Andy’s Quick Hits (105): The Five Needs that Control Motivation, Behaviour, and Wellbeing

Klaus Grawe died on a Sunday morning in 2005 of a heart attack while doing his weekly swim. An unfortunate departure for a well-respected academic well-known in Europe and internationally. And if it weren’t for his untimely death his concept of basic psychological needs may be better known.

Shortly before his death he had published Neuropsychotherapie (in German)— the first book by a respected academic on the brain and psychotherapy. Until this point these had, broadly by the psychotherapeutic community, been treated separately. This was posthumously published, in English, in 2007

What Grawe proposed in his book, and had plenty of evidence to back it up, was that psychological needs were foundational to human mental well-being. Not only that, but increasing the satisfaction of these needs (or reducing their disruption) massively improved any mental disorder. In fact he proposed that the route to successful psychotherapy goes through these needs.

“This suggests that well-being depends almost entirely on the degree to which individuals manage to attain their motivational goals [fulfil their psychological needs]”

So you may now wonder what these needs are. He proposed these four needs: