One of the most taught pyramids in Pakistani higher education was never drawn by the man it's credited to. Yet walk into any psychology or business studies classroom, and there it is: the same triangle, five layers ascended firmly in order, with physiological needs at the base, self-actualisation - meaning, fulfillment, even a kind of spirituality - at the peak. Credited to Abraham Maslow, who never drew a pyramid, rather warned against the rigidity of his theory. The shape we now treat as a scripture, was built years after him, not by any psychologist, but by a management consultant selling a formula for motivating employees as economically as possible.

In 1943, Maslow laid out his categories of needs in a paper, A Theory of Human Motivation, published in Psychological Review. In 1954, his book, Motivation and Personality, cautioned against it directly: "We have spoken so far as if this hierarchy was a fixed order but actually it is not nearly as rigid as we may have implied... there have been a number of exceptions" (p. 51). He documented seven exceptions, last and the most striking exception: people driven by high ideals or values, "give up everything for the sake of a particular value" (p. 53) his own word for this was martyrdom. If survival itself can be sacrificed for an ideal, ideals can't only matter once survival is secured.

His method for categorising 'self-actualised' relied on biographical analysis rather than controlled study. Eighteen individuals were the core group he........

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