The Architecture of our Inner Motives

Our psyche has a kind of inner structure, like a building.

It’s not visible, but it is experienceable. In the way we allow closeness, how we hold tension, how we exert influence or withdraw. A construction that changes with us and yet provides a certain form in which we live.

This structure has two essential elements.

First, the tension axes of psychological needs:

~ Attachment is closeness and distance

~ Self-determination is freedom and security

~ Self-worth is uniqueness and belonging

They work like the framework of a building: a system of forces that constantly wants to be balanced, so that the structure doesn’t become rigid or unstable.

Second, those needs of self-regulation. They operate at an even more fundamental level, like a foundation that supports us when we stand upright or enter into contact. These include, for example, being alive, being “I,” being in resonance, being relaxed and strong.

Together, both form something like the architecture of our inner motives. Always in motion, always dependent on how nourished, overloaded, or protected our needs are in daily life.

When you place partly very different theories side by side – Bowlby’s attachment theory, the Self-Determination Theory of Deci & Ryan, Grawe’s psychotherapy research, or Baumeister’s work on “Need to belong” – a common core emerges:

Psychological basic needs are innate, universal motivational orientations directed toward our social environment, whose appropriate fulfillment is central to psychological health.

When we satisfy them, we promote development, vitality, inner coherence, and relational capacity.

< When we frustrate them persistently, fragile self-images, narrowed or distorted perceptions, rigid or boundaryless relationships often arise.

They lie – often unconsciously – behind our goals, roles, and strategies.

Our motives are thus an expression of what we psychologically need to feel alive and coherent. They give our everyday life direction – in team meetings as well as at the kitchen table – and shape what we invest energy in, what we protect ourselves from, and what helps us grow.

Needs like attachment, autonomy, or self-worth are not lifestyle, but fundamental building blocks of psychological well-being.

When we take our basic needs seriously, we’re not dedicating ourselves to superficial cosmetics, but to the fundamental architecture of the entire house in which we live internally.