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Henry Murray Outline Abstract Life and work of the scientist Contributions to psychology Conclusion References Abstract Henry Murray is an American psychologist whose most significant contribution to the science was the development of personality theory based on need and press. For more that thirty years the scientist has been teaching at Harvard. Besides, he is a founder of Boston Psychoanalytic Society. Murray is also the one to have developed a Thematic Apperception Test which is now widely used in psychology to help in evaluating emotionally disordered patients. Further the test was improved and its purpose is to help people to understand themselves better and their personalities to grow and develop.
Life and work of the scientist Henry A. Murray was born in 1893. His family parents, sister and brother lived in New York. In 1915 Murray got a degree in history at Harvard.
Though was not the most successful student because history seemed to interest him little, he was very good at football, rowing, and boxing. In 1919 he earned a medical degree from Columbia College and appeared to be much more successful in medicine than in history. In 1926, the future psychologist got married, and in a year became an assistant director at Harvard psychological clinic. In the same, 1927, year Murray got a doctorate in biochemistry from Cambridge. In 1937 he became the director of the clinic (Anderson, 1988). A turning point in Murray's life and future career was reading Jung and meeting him.
Jung persuaded Murray to study psychoanalysis. Murray followed the advice and competed his training at Harvard University where he stayed for the rest of his professional career (All Psych online, 2004). In 1938 Murray completed and published his work "Explorations in Personality", in which he included a description of the Thematic Apperception Test. During the Second World War Murray worked at the Office of Strategic Services and held a position of lieutenant colonel.
In 1938 he worked as a consultant for the government of Great Britain. In 1943 the scientist took part in the creation of Analysis of the Personality of Adolf Hitler which, according to Anderson (1988) became the basis for further development of offending profiling and political psychology. In 1947 Professor Murray came back to Harvard, where he became a chief researcher, lectured and established the Psychological Clinic Annex. Murray also became an emeritus professor the American Psychological Association rewarded him with the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. From American Psychological Foundation the scientist got the Gold Medal Award. At the age of 95 Murray died from pneumonia on on June 23, 1988.
Contributions to psychology One of the earliest theories of needs was the manifest need theory proposed by Henry A. Murray. Murray believed that needs are mostly learned rather than inherited and are activated by cues from the external environment (Murray, 1938). For example, an employee who has a high need for affiliation will pursue that need by associating with others only when the environmental conditions are appropriate.
Only then would the need be manifest. When the need was not cued, the need was said to be latent or not activated. Murray (1938) identified a wide range of needs that people supposedly acquire to one degree or another through interaction with their environment. He first developed a list of fifteen needs that were classified as viscerogenic (primary) and psychogenic (secondary).
The needs for food, water, sex, urination, defecation, and lactation, all associated with physiological functioning, are examples of Murray's viscerogenic needs. Murray's psychogenic needs include abasement, achievement, affiliation, aggression, autonomy, deference, dominance, and power (All Psych online, 2004). Murray's need categories attempted to focus on specific, relatively narrow need-related issues and a separate need was created for almost every human behavior. Murray's list of needs was not derived from empirical research but from his personal observations and clinical experience.
Periodically he added additional needs to his list, and the length of the list increased with his career (Anderson, 1988). Murray and his colleagues also invented a new kind of test which became very well-known. It is called TAT (Thematic Apperception Test). Initially the purpose of the test was to study the dynamics of personality (All Psych online, 2004): they showed some ambiguous pictures to the people and asked them to write a story about the picture based around: who are the people in the picture, what are they doing, and what will the outcome be. They also maintained that people interpret these kinds of pictures according to their own perception. Murray believed that it would reflect their own personal dreams, wishes or worries, and that such a test can uncover the basic themes that recur in the unconscious.
He also asked subjects to complete impossible puzzles aiming to test their ability to cope with frustration, asked people to write simple autobiographies or to describe their childhood experiences. These methods were used by Murray and his colleagues to analyze subjects personalities, internal conflicts, major driving forces, interests and bases of motivation (Anderson, 1988). Further the test was improved and developed to evaluate emotionally disturbed patients, evoke persons self-understanding, and personal growth and development. Conclusion To conclude, it should be mentioned that Murray's theory also included Freud's concepts, but their language is wider than that of Freud.
For example, either than biological influence, they also considered psychological and social needs. Also, Murray used a variety of methods to analyze personality, and the methods he and his colleagues used were more testable. They would then attempt to fit all the observations and interpretations together in an understandable and convincing portrait of a person. It seems that their theory is more practical. Bibliography Anderson, J. W. (1988).
Henry Murray's early career. A sychobiographical exploration. Journal of Personality, 56, 138 - 171. Murray, H. (1938) Explorations in Personality, New York: Oxford University Press. Henry Murray and the TAT (2004). Personality Synopsis.
Chapter 7: Trait Theory. Psychogenic needs. All Psych online. The Vital Psychology Classroom. Available online: < web > Accessed November 29, 2006.
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