Too often needs get confused with wants, wishes, desires, substitutes, or deficits. Human needs are quite simple, but not often met.

Definitions

1. The minimal requirements of health and well-being.
2. A physiological or psychological condition that must be satisfied to remain healthy.
3. Innate psychological nutriments that are essential for ongoing psychological growth, integrity, and well-being.
4. Something that, when fulfilled, promotes integration and well-being and, when thwarted, fosters fragmentation and ill-being.

Human Needs

Human needs can be classified as either physiological needs—those required to sustain and grow a healthy body—or as psychological needs—those required to sustain and grow a healthy mind.

An abundance of one asset cannot relieve a shortage of another. An abundance of water cannot substitute for a shortage of food. An excess of relatedness cannot compensate for a shortage of autonomy.

People relentlessly seek to fulfill their needs. Thirsty people focus attention and energy on getting water. If you are thwarted while working to fill your needs, you will react very strongly, often with anger. Unfortunately because many people are unaware of their true psychological needs, they too often vigorously pursue ineffective substitutes.

Physiological Needs:

• Air—oxygen within a particular range of pressure, concentration, and purity is vital to survival.
• Water—access to adequate safe drinking water, approximately 50 liters per person per day, is a human need.
• Food—Adequate calories, meeting certain minimum nutritional requirements are required to sustain life.
• Shelter—protection from extremes of heat, cold, or other exposure that can lead to hypothermia or hyperthermia.
• [Basic medical care?]
• [touching, intimacy, affection, sex ??]

Psychological Needs:

• Autonomy—Being free to pursue goals you choose. Having a sense of choice, flexibility, and personal freedom. Self-governance. Autonomy is the converse of being controlled, however it is not the same as independence, selfishness, or irresponsibility. Autonomy is the feeling deep inside that your actions are your own choice; you are neither complying with nor defying controls. It requires integration of your choices and overcoming ambivalence.
• Competence—The ability to succeed at an optimal challenge. It is the ability to do something well or to a required standard.
• Relatedness—Feeling connected with others. Having people to care about, and people who care about you. The need to feel belongingness and connectedness with others. It may take the form of friendship and love, dialog and sharing, group participation, and a variety of prosocial activities.

There are no other needs. All other candidates are discretionary "wants" or they represent some surrogate for an actual needs, such as deficit motives or needs substitutes.

You can change what you want, but you cannot change what you need. Work to understand your needs and align your wants with those needs.

Each of these three psychological needs is further discussed under the topic of motivation.

But what about . . .

Many people claim to need many things not listed here as needs. Also, the well regarded hierarchy of needs theory of Abraham Maslow lists needs not described here. These candidates can be understood in terms of true needs as follows.

Safety is the assured fulfillment of basic needs. It is the constant intent to satisfy the needs. It summarizes and emphasizes the importance of the needs. It is the need to meet the needs. It is the result of a needs deficit.

Meaningfulness is a sense of coherence and integrity. It is the result of acting with autonomy, attending to relatedness needs, exercising your competence, and integrating the results. It is the result of meeting the needs.

Self-esteem, feeling good about yourself, has two manifestations known as secure (or true) high self-esteem and fragile (or contingent) high-self esteem.  Secure self-esteem is based on positive feelings of self-worth that are well anchored, authentic, and do not rely on self-promotion. In contrast, fragile self-esteem relies on specific outcomes that are easily threatened. As a result, people with fragile self-esteem are continually seeking external reassurances of their worth.  Fragile high self-esteem results from a lack of autonomy, relatedness, or competence. It is caused by a deficit of true needs. Secure high self-esteem results from the integration of autonomy, relatedness, and competence. It results from having needs met.

References

Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation, by Edward L. Deci, Richard Flaste

Self-Determination Theory Website, especially: Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The "what" and "why" of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11, 227-268.

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). The darker and brighter sides of human existence: Basic psychological needs as a unifying concept. Psychological Inquiry, 11, 319-338.