ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that human needs, conceptualized as analogs of primary emotions, and a control orientation used by individuals attempting to gratify these needs provide the basic "flesh" of agency giving causal power to individuals. It examines the classification of human needs based on the consequences of conditioning during the primary socialization process, which proved unsatisfactory for a number of reasons. The chapter discusses the process by which emotions come to be attached to the self during socialization. It also argues that individuals take a control orientation toward others attempting to gratify these needs. The chapter explains that agency can be understood best in terms of four basic human needs: security, meaning, self-esteem, and satisfaction, which are to be understood as analogs of human primary emotions. Critique based on human needs would specify that societies that do not provide roughly equal opportunities for the gratification of the needs of the body and the needs of the self should be changed.
