Those needs which he shares with the animal – hunger, thirst, need for sleep and sexual satisfaction – are important, being rooted in the inner chemistry of the body, and they can become all powerful when they remain unsatisfied. But even their complete satisfaction is not a sufficient condition for sanity and mental health. These depend on the satisfaction of those needs and passions which are specifically human, and which stem from the conditions of the human situation: the need for relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, the need for a sense of identity and the need for a frame of orientation and devotion. ― (1955a: The Sane Society, New York (Rinehart and Winston, Inc.) 1955, p. 67.)
„What are the needs the fulfillment of which brings about happiness?“ (…) By and large, there are two opposing positions. The first, and today almost exclusively held, position is that a need is defined entirely subjectively; it is the striving for something I want badly enough so that we have a right to call it a need, the satisfaction of which gives pleasure. In this definition the question is not raised what the source of the need is (…) or what effect the satisfaction of the need has on a person. (…) ― The opposite position is fundamentally different. It focuses on the question of whether a need is conducive to man’s growth and well-being or whether it hobbles and damages him. It speaks of such needs as are rooted in man’s nature and are conducive to his growth and self-fixlfillment. In this second concept the purely subjective nature of happiness is replaced by an objective, normative one. Only the fulfillment of desires that are in man’s interests leads to happiness. In the first instance I say: „I am happy if I get all the pleasure I want“; in the second: „I am happy if I get what I ought to want, provided I want to attain an optimum of self-completion.“ ― (1989a [1974-75]: The Art of Being, New York (Continuum) 1993, pp. 2-3.)