Maslow's hierarchy of needs in the context of "Individual"

Self-actualization, in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, is the highest personal aspirational human need in the hierarchy. It represents where one's potential is fully realized after more basic needs, such as for the body and the ego, have been fulfilled, and is recognised in psychological teaching as the peak of human needs. Maslow later added the category self-transcendence (which, strictly speaking, extends beyond one's own "needs").

Self-actualization was coined by the organismic theorist Kurt Goldstein for the motive to realize one's full potential: "the tendency to actualize itself as fully as [...] the drive of self-actualization." Carl Rogers similarly wrote of "the curative force in psychotherapy – man's tendency to actualize himself, to become his potentialities [...] to express and activate all the capacities of the organism."

A shelter is an architectural structure or natural formation (or a combination of the two) providing protection from the local environment. A shelter can serve as a home or be provided by a residential institution. It can be understood as both a temporary and a permanent structure. In the American Counterculture of the 1960s, the concept of "Shelter" intervenes as one of the key concepts of the Whole Earth Catalog, and expresses an alternative to the modes of teaching architecture practiced in American academies.

In the context of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, shelter holds a crucial position as one of the fundamental human necessities, complementing other physiological imperatives such as the need for "air, water, food, rest, clothing, and reproduction."

A refugee camp is a temporary settlement built to receive refugees and people in refugee-like situations. Refugee camps usually accommodate displaced people who have fled their home country, but camps are also made for internally displaced people. Usually, refugees seek asylum after they have escaped war in their home countries, but some camps also house environmental and economic migrants. Camps with over a hundred thousand people are common, but as of 2012, the average-sized camp housed around 11,400. They are usually built and run by a government, the United Nations, international organizations (such as the International Committee of the Red Cross), or non-governmental organization. Unofficial refugee camps, such as Idomeni in Greece or the Calais jungle in France, are where refugees are largely left without the support of governments or international organizations.

Refugee camps generally develop in an impromptu fashion with the aim of meeting basic human needs for only a short time. Facilities that make a camp look or feel more permanent are often prohibited by host country governments. If the return of refugees is prevented (often by civil war), a humanitarian crisis can result or continue.

Kurt Goldstein (November 6, 1878 – September 19, 1965) was a German neurologist and psychiatrist who created a holistic theory of the organism. Educated in medicine, Goldstein studied under Carl Wernicke and Ludwig Edinger where he focused on neurology and psychiatry. His clinical work helped inspire the establishment of The Institute for Research into the Consequences of Brain Injuries. Goldstein was forced to leave Germany when Hitler came to power, because of his Jewish heritage. After being displaced, Goldstein wrote The Organism (1934). This focused on patients with psychological disorders, particularly cases of schizophrenia and war trauma, and the ability of their bodies to readjust to substantial losses in central control. His holistic approach to the human organism produced the principle of self actualization, defined as the driving force that maximizes and determines the path of an individual. Later, his principle influenced Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. He was the co-editor of Journal of Humanistic Psychology.

Abraham Harold Maslow (/ˈmæzloʊ/ MAZ-loh; April 1, 1908 – June 8, 1970) was an American psychologist who created Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in priority, culminating in self-actualization. Maslow was a psychology professor at Brandeis University, Brooklyn College, New School for Social Research, and Columbia University. He stressed the importance of focusing on the positive qualities in people, as opposed to treating them as a "bag of symptoms". A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Maslow as the tenth most cited psychologist of the 20th century.