ABSTRACT
We take the experience of being human for granted. The safety and integrity of our bodies, the unperturbed flow of our psychic subjectivity, and a comfortable locus within the context of historical and current group processes provide us with the foundation of this mostly acknowledged privilege. A commendable by-product of such “humanity” is that it aligns us with our fellow human beings in very fundamental ways. Apart from the obvious sharing of physiognomy and anatomy, we find ourselves motivated by psychological needs that are common to all members of our species. These include the need for biological dignity, the need for identity and affirmation, the need for intrapsychic and interpersonal boundaries, the need to know the causes of events, the need for the optimal emotional availability of significant others, and the need for self-expression and generativity. While they seek their gratification through wishes that are experience-bound and hence individually and culturally variable, the needs themselves are ubiquitous and universal in their distribution (for an explication of the need-wish distinction and for further discussion of the ubiquitous human psychic needs, see Akhtar, 1999a). In addition to this shared motivational substrate, there exist other features that are common to the human experience, including the capacity for thought 152and thinking, the acquisition of language, barriers against murder and incest, group affiliation, and the elaboration of myths and rituals.
