CHAPTER SEVEN
OUTLINE
I.
Henry Murray
A.
B.
The Life of Murray
1.
Murray was born into a wealthy family in New York. Murray reported, at an
early age; memories of rejection by his mother and childhood depression. This
depression was masked by Murray with a socially cheerful and outgoing manner.
Later, Murray would question Freud’s idea of the Oedipus complex, since he had
no attachment with his own mother. Murray also was physically inept, had visual
problems, and a speech impediment of stuttering. Even with these problems,
Murray seemed to overcome them with his drive to be successful.
2.
Murray graduated from Columbia University Medical School and taught
physiology at Harvard. Murray received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from
Cambridge University.
3.
After reading a book by Carl Jung, Murray faced a personal relationship dilemma
with a wife of seven years and a wealthy depressed married woman, (named
Christina Morgan); whom he was having an affair. After consulting personally
with Jung, Murray continued an open relationship with both women for the next
forty years. This experience with Jung influenced Murray of the value of
psychoanalysis.
4.
Murray was offered a position at the new Harvard Psychological Clinic, where he
underwent orthodox Freudian psychoanalysis. In the 1930’s, Murray and Morgan
developed the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), which is still one of the most
widely used projective measures of personality. The actual test was mostly
developed by Christina Morgan and some of Murray’s women students. When
the work became a best seller, Morgan’s name was left of the publication. Murray
did not acknowledge this error, until he was 94 and after Morgan’s death.
Murray’s book, Explorations in Personality: A Clinical and Experimental Study of
Fifty Men of College Age helped make the study of personality an academically
respectable part of American psychology. Murray remained at Harvard until his
retirement in 1962, after receiving many awards for his contributions to
psychology.
Principles of Personality
1.
Murray’s term for personality is personology, in that personality rooted in the
brain. To Murray, everything on which personality depends exists in the brain,
including feeling states, conscious and unconscious memories, beliefs, attitudes,
fears, and values. Murray also believed in the idea of tension reduction, which is
a process of acting to reduce tension that is satisfying, rather than free of all
tension. If we have no tension, this can be a source of distress. Murray believed
we needed some level of tension to reduce. Murray believed the personality
develops over time and is constructed by events that occur during the course of
that person’s life. According to Murray, we are never fixed or static. Our
personality changes and progresses and there is no other person that is exactly like
another person.
C.
D.
E.
The Divisions of Personality: Id, Superego, and Ego
1.
Murray’s’ id is the same as Freud’s’ id, however; Murray was also influenced by
Jung. Murray’s concept of the id included innate impulses that society considers
acceptable and desirable.
2.
Murray defined the superego as the internalization of the culture’s values and
norms, by which rules we come to evaluate and judge our behavior and that of
others. Unlike Freud, Murray’s concept of the superego allows the influences
beyond the parent-child interaction and is not crystallized by age five, but
continues to develop throughout life. While the superego is developing, so is the
ego-ideal, which provides us with long-range goals for which to strive.
3.
The ego is the rational governor of our personality and attempts to modify or
delay the id’s unacceptable impulses. The ego is the arbiter between the id and the
superego and may favor one over the other. According to Murray, conflict can
occur between the id and the superego, so a strong ego can mediate effectively
between the two.
Needs: The Motivators of Behavior
1.
Murray believed in the concept of needs to explain the motivation and direction of
behavior. A need involves a physicochemical force in the brain that organizes and
directs intellectual and perceptual abilities. Murray developed a list of 20 needs
which we might experience throughout life.
2.
Primary needs (viscerogenic needs) arise from internal bodily states and include
those needs required for survival, as well as such needs as sex and sentience.
Secondary needs (psychogenic needs) arise indirectly from primary needs. They
are called secondary, because they are developed only after the primary needs.
Reactive needs involve a response to something specific in the environment and
are aroused only when that object appears. Proactive needs do not depend on the
presence of a particular object. They are needs that elicit appropriate behavior
whenever they are aroused.
3.
Needs differ in terms of the urgency with which they impel behavior, a
characteristic Murray called a need’s prepotency. The concept of subsidization
refers to a situation in which one need is activated to aid in satisfying another
need. Murray believed that childhood events can affect the development of
specific needs, and later in life these needs can be activated. This is the influence
of press since an environmental object or event presses or pressures the individual
to act in a certain way. The thema, (or unity thema); combines environmental
factors that pressure or compel our behavior (presses).
Personality Development in Childhood
1.
Murray developed five stages for personality development. Each stage leaves its
mark on our personality in the form of an unconscious complex that directs our
later development.
2.
In the claustral stage, people who have the simple claustral complex are
dependent on others, passive, and oriented toward safe, familiar behaviors that
worked in the past. People who have the insupport form of the claustral complex
center on feelings of insecurity and helplessness that cause the person to fear a
variety of life situations. The anticlaustral or egression form of the claustral
complex is based on a need to escape from restraining womb-like conditions.
F.
3.
The oral succorance complex, in the oral stage of development; features a
combination of mouth activities, passive tendencies, and the need to be supported
and protected. The oral aggression complex combines oral and aggressive
behaviors, including biting, spitting, shouting, and verbal aggression such as
sarcasm. Behavioral characteristics of the oral rejection complex include
vomiting, being picky about food, eating little, fearing oral contamination (such as
kissing); and desiring seclusion, and avoiding dependence on others.
4.
In the anal rejection complex of the Anal stage, there is a preoccupation with
defacation, anal humor, and feces-like material such as dirt, mud, plaster, and
clay. Persons with this complex may be dirty and disorganized. The anal
retention complex is manifested in accumulating, saving, and collecting things,
and in cleanliness, neatness, and orderliness.
5.
The urethral complex of the urethral stage is associated with excessive ambition,
a distorted sense of self-esteem, exhibitionism, bed-wetting, sexual cravings, and
self-love.
6.
The final stage for Murray was the genital or castration stage. In Murray’s
castration complex, Murray disagreed with Freud’s contention that fear of
castration is the core of anxiety in adult males. Murray believed such a fear was
rooted in the childhood discovery of masturbation by the parents and the fear of
their punishment.
Assessment in Murray’s Theory: The OSS Program and the TAT
1.
Murray did not use dream analysis or free association as other psychoanalysts who
were working with emotionally disturbed persons. Murray used an intensive
evaluation of the normal personality on 51 male undergraduate students; with the
use of interviews, projective tests, objective tests, and questionnaires covering
childhood memories, family relations, sexual development, sensory-motor
learning, ethical standards, goals, social interests, and mechanical and artistic
abilities.
2.
Murray was chosen to head a government program to select people to serve as
spies and saboteurs, during World War II. Murray directed the assessment
program for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a forerunner of the CIA.
People were given interviews, the Rorshach and the TAT projective tests and
questionnaires covering a variety of topics. They performed situational tests in
stressful situations to simulate the action of the job. This was one of the first
attempts to select employees using large-scale personality assessment. Today,
Murray’s techniques have evolved into the successful assessment-center approach
widely used in business today to select promising leaders and executives.
3.
The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) consists of a set of ambiguous pictures
depicting simple scenes. The person is asked to tell a simple story describing the
people and objects in the picture, what might have happened before and after their
main story of the picture. The TAT was derived from Freud’s defense mechanism
of projection. In projection, a person attributes or projects disturbing impulses
onto someone else. In the TAT, the projection is on the people in the pictures,
which may reveal hidden conflicts, thoughts, feelings, and fears of the subject
being evaluated. However, the TAT is a subjective test and should only be used
in conjunction with other tests to make a diagnosis for a subject.
G.
Research in Murray’s Theory
1.
Murray’s original research with the 51 male undergraduate students was
undertaken by a staff of psychiatrists, psychologists, and anthropologists. So
much information was collected that the data had to be divided into time
segments: these were called proceedings and serials. Proceeding was defined as
the period of time required for the occurrence and completion of a pattern of
behavior-from beginning to end. Proceedings are linked in time and function.
When each of the proceedings are taken together, this is called a serial.
2.
Research has been done on Murray’s theories, especially in the areas of (A) the
need for affiliation and (B) the need for achievement. This research has been
conducted in academic areas to pursue who may be low or high on achievement.
Performance on a job was also rated in people with low or high achievement.
High-need achievement people prefer jobs with considerable responsibility.
Gender, culture, and child-rearing practices were also studied with the need for
achievement.