Maslow claims to build a psychology based upon the observation of healthy people.  He primary criticism of Freud (he has many)  is that Freud arrived at his assumptions about human nature exclusively from his observation of neurotic Victorians.
 

1. Maslow believes that we have an "intrinsic conscience," an inborn sense of right and wrong.  He believes that we all feel a need to get in touch with this intrinsic conscience; that is, we have in us a pressure toward self-perfection and growth.

This pressure toward self-perfection, toward fully realizing in our lives the intrinsic conscience, is weaker than the strong instincts you find in animals.  But if we deny the intrinsic conscience or it we work against it, we get into trouble -- we get emotionally and morally sick. The intrinsic conscience is the essential core of our humanity.

2. Maslow believes that there is a hierarchy of basic needs for us humans:

Some people, Maslow observes, are "self-actualizing," that is, in touch with their intrinsic consciences. He estimates that roughly 1 person in 200 is self-actualizing, but I suspect that now, at the exordium of the century, this estimate is too low.

Maslow asserts that self-actualization is "the perfection of love" and that the "fullest development of people is not possible without self-actualizing love."  He is very aware that his psychology is religion-positive.  He writes that self-actualizing love "is the same as the mystic experience," and notes the "mystic characteristics" of peak experiences, those moments of full psychological functioning that we all have.