Henry Murray
Henry Murray | |
---|---|
PhD) | |
Known for | Personality psychology Thematic Apperception Test |
Awards | Bruno Klopfer Award (1967) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Psychology |
Institutions | Harvard University |
Signature | |
Henry Alexander Murray (May 13, 1893 – June 23, 1988) was an American psychologist at Harvard University. From 1959 to 1962, he conducted a series of psychologically damaging and purposefully abusive experiments on minors and undergraduate students. One of those students was Ted Kaczynski, later known as the Unabomber.
Murray was Director of the Harvard Psychological Clinic in the School of Arts and Sciences after 1930. Murray developed a theory of personality called personology, based on "need" and "press". Murray was also a co-developer, with Christiana Morgan, of the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), which he referred to as "the second best-seller that Harvard ever published, second only to the Harvard Dictionary of Music".
Early life and education
Murray was born in New York City into a wealthy family of Henry Alexander Murray Sr. and Fannie Morris Babcock, daughter of financier
After
He received his doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Cambridge in 1928, aged 35.[4]
In 1916, Murray married at age 23 to Josephine Lee Rantoul.[5] In 1923, after seven years of marriage, he met and fell in love with Christiana Morgan; he experienced a serious conflict as he did not want to leave his wife. This was a turning point in Murray's life as it raised his awareness of conflicting needs, the pressure that can result, and the links to motivation. Carver and Scheier note that it was Morgan who was "fascinated by the psychology of Carl Jung" and it was as a result of her urging that he met Carl Jung in Switzerland.[2] He described Jung as "The first full blooded, spherical—and Goethean, I would say, intelligence I had ever met." He was analyzed by him and studied his works. "The experience of bringing a problem to a psychologist and receiving an answer that seemed to work had a great impact on Murray, leading him to seriously consider psychology as a career".[6]
Professional career
During his period at Harvard, Murray sat in on lectures by Alfred North Whitehead, whose process philosophy marked his philosophical and metaphysical thinking throughout his professional career.[7]
In 1927, at the age of 33, Murray became assistant director of the Harvard Psychological Clinic. He developed the concepts of latent needs (not openly displayed), manifest needs (observed in people's actions), "press" (external influences on motivation) and "thema"—"a pattern of press and need that coalesces around particular interactions". [citation needed]
Murray collaborated with
In 1935, Murray and Morgan developed the concept of apperception and the assumption that everyone's thinking is shaped by subjective processes, the rationale behind the
In 1937, Murray became director of the Harvard Psychological Clinic. In 1938 he published Explorations in Personality, a classic in psychology, which includes a description of the Thematic Apperception Test. In 1938 Murray acted as a consultant for the British Government, setting up the Officer Selection Board. Murray's work at The Harvard Psychological Clinic enabled him to apply his theories in the design of the selection processes with a "situation test", an assessment based on practical tasks and activities, an analysis of specific criteria (e.g. "leadership") by a number of raters across a range of activities. Results were pooled to achieve an overall assessment.[citation needed]
World War II, Office of Strategic Services, 1939–45
During World War II, he left Harvard and worked as lieutenant colonel for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). James Miller, in charge of the selection of secret agents at the OSS during World War II, said the situation test was used by British War Officer Selection Board and OSS to assess potential agents.
In 1943 Murray helped complete
Harvard human experiments, 1959–62
In 1947, he returned to Harvard as a chief researcher, lectured and established with others the Psychological Clinic Annex.
From late 1959 to early 1962, Murray was responsible for unethical experiments in which he used twenty-two Harvard undergraduates as research subjects.[8] Among other goals, experiments sought to measure individuals' responses to extreme stress. The unwitting undergraduates were submitted to what Murray called "vehement, sweeping and personally abusive" attacks. Specifically tailored assaults to their egos, cherished ideas, and beliefs were used to cause high levels of stress and distress. The subjects then viewed recorded footage of their reactions to this verbal abuse repeatedly.
Among the subjects was 17-year-old Ted Kaczynski, a mathematician who went on to be known as the 'Unabomber', a domestic terrorist who targeted academics and technologists for 17 years.[9] Alston Chase's book Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist connects Kaczynski's abusive experiences under Murray to his later criminal career.[8]
In 1960,
Some sources have suggested that Murray's experiments were part of, or indemnified by, the United States government's research into mind control, known as the MKUltra project.[11][12][8]
Retirement and death
In 1962, shortly after the death of his wife,[13] Murray became emeritus professor, and earned the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association and the Gold Medal Award for lifetime achievement from the American Psychological Foundation.[14] He later married Caroline "Nina" Fish, a child psychologist at Boston University[13] and the Massachusetts Mental Health Center who was a former student of Jean Piaget.[15]
Murray died from pneumonia at the age of 95.[14]
Murray was a leading authority on the works of American author Herman Melville[16] and amassed a collection of books, manuscripts and artifacts relating to Melville which he donated to the Berkshire Athenaeum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.[17]
Personology
Murray's Theory of Personality, also called personology, is explained in his book, Explorations in Personality, written in 1938.[18] Murray's system of needs is an important part of the personological system.[19] and developed while personality theory in psychology was becoming dominated by the statistics of trait theory.[citation needed] Personology was a holistic approach that studied the person at many levels of complexity all at the same time by an interdisciplinary team of investigators.[citation needed]
According to Murray's ideas, an individual's personality develops dynamically as each person responds to complex elements in her or his specific environment. Murray viewed an individual's entire life as one unit, and pointed out that although a specific element of a person's life can be studied through psychology, this studied episode gives an incomplete picture of the entire life unit. To properly analyze the entire life cycle, Murray favored a narrative approach to studying personality, which he called "personology". The personological system has been used as an approach for multiple academic disciplines: philosophy, humanism, biological chemistry, and societal and cultural studies.
Murray divided personology into five principles: (1) Cerebral physiology, rooted in the brain, governs all aspects of personality. (2) People act to reduce physiological and psychological tension to gain satisfaction, but do not strive to be tension-free, and rather cycle between seeking excitement, activity and movement in their lives and then relaxing. (3) An individual's personality continues to develop over time and is influenced by all of the events that occur over a person's lifetime. (4) Personality is not fixed and it can change and progress, and (5) Each person has some unique characteristics and others which are shared by everyone.
Murray's theory of personality is rooted in psychoanalysis, and the chief business and aim of personology is the reconstruction of the individual's past life experiences in order to explain their present behavior. To study personality, Murray used free association and dream analysis to bring unconscious material to light. Murray's personality theories have been questioned by some psychologists,[20] and extended by others, such as David McClelland.[21]
Legacy
Murray's identification of psychological needs, the Murray's system of needs, including Achievement, Affiliation and Power (1938) provided the theoretical basis for the later research of David McClelland and underpins development of competency-based models of management effectiveness such as Richard Boyatzis's. McClelland, Boyatzis and Spencer went on to found the McBer Consultancy. However, Murray's contribution is rarely acknowledged in contemporary academic literature.[citation needed]
Explorations in Personality underlying principles were later adopted by AT&T in the development of
In popular culture
Manhunt: Unabomber (2017)
Murray was portrayed by Brian d'Arcy James in Manhunt: Unabomber, the 2017 docudrama miniseries created by Andrew Sodroski, Jim Clemente and Tony Gittelson.[22]
Selected works
Books
- Explorations in Personality, with a foreword by Dan P. McAdams. New York: Oxford University Press (1938); reissue (2008).
- Assessment of Men: Selection of Personnel for the Office of Strategic Service, with OSS Selection Staff. New York: Rinehart (1948).
- Personality in Nature, Society, and Culture, with Clyde Kluckhohn. New York: Knopf (1953).
- Myth and Mythmaking. New York: G. Braziller(1960).
Articles
- "The Effect of Fear Upon Estimates of the Maliciousness of other Personalities." .
- "Psychology and the University." Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, vol. 34 (Oct. 1935). .
- "Assessment of OSS Personnel," with doi:10.1037/h0057480.
- "America's Mission." Survey Graphic, vol. 37, no. 10 (Oct. 1948), pp. 411–415. Full issue. Full audio.
- "In Nomine Diaboli." JSTOR 361337.
- "Introduction to the Issue 'Myth and Mythmaking.'" JSTOR 20026491.
- "The Personality and Career of Satan." .
- "Studies of Stressful Interpersonal Disputations." doi:10.1037/h0045502.
Reviews
- "This is 'Psychology'..." Review of Personality: A Biosocial Approach to Origins and Structure, by Gardner Murphy. Survey Graphic, vol. 37, no. 3 (Mar. 1948), pp. 167–168.
- Review of Anthropology and the Classics, by .
- "The Freudian Hawthorne." Review of The Sins of the Fathers: Hawthorne's Psychological Themes, by JSTOR 41209472.
Contributions
- "The Effect of Fear upon Estimates of the Maliciousness of Other Personalities in Understanding Human Motivation." In: Understanding Human Motivation, by C. L. Stacey & M. DeMartino (eds). Cleveland:
- "Historical Trends in Personality Research" (Part One: Overview). In: Perspectives in Personality Research, edited by Henry P. David and Johannes C. Brengelmann. Berlin: ISBN 978-3662395981.
- G. Braziller (1960). pp. 9-17.
- G. Braziller (1960). pp. 300-353.
Reports
- Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler: With Predictions of his Future Behavior and Suggestions for Dealing with Him Now and After Germany's Surrender. Washington: Office of Strategic Services (1943). Full text.
References
- . (subscription required)
- ^ ISBN 978-0205131990.
- .
- ^ "Henry Murray". psychology.fas.harvard.edu. Retrieved December 8, 2022.
- ^ "Resource: Josephine Lee (Rantoul) Murray Papers, 1903-1947, undated". Peabody Essex Museum.
- .
- PMID 11609728
- ^ The Atlantic, vol. 285, no. 6, pp. 41-65.
- ISBN 0393020029.
- ^ Moreno, Jonathan D. (May 25, 2012). "Harvard's Experiment on the Unabomber, Class of '62." Psychology Today.
- Dana Press(2006).
- ^ "MKUltra: Inside the CIA's Cold War mind control experiments". The Week. Retrieved December 23, 2017.
- ^ a b "Papers of Henry A. Murray, 1925-1988". Harvard.edu.
- ^ McGraw-Hill Education.
- ISBN 978-0-14-312774-1.
- ^ Fowler, Glenn (Jun. 24, 1988). "Henry A. Murray is dead at 95; developer of personality theory." (obituary). The New York Times, p. D17.
- ^ "Herman Melville Room". Berkshire Athenaeum. Archived from the original on September 7, 2017. Retrieved July 1, 2016.
- ISBN 978-1-59385-071-5.
- ISBN 978-81-269-0303-0.
- ISBN 978-0-9778545-1-6.
- ISBN 978-3-642-37054-0.
- ^ Barber, Nigel (Nov. 9, 2017). "Is Psychology Responsible for the Unabomber?: 'Manhunt' partly blames research by Henry Murray." Psychology Today.
Further reading
- Barresi, John, and Tim J. Juckes (Sep. 1997). "Personology and the Narrative Interpretation of Lives." Journal of Personality, vol. 65, no. 3. pp. 693–718.
- Fry, Franklyn D. (1953). "Manual for Scoring the Thematic Apperception Test." .
- Hutt, Max L., and John N. Buck (1953). New York: Ronald Press Company. pp. 636–701.
- .
- Millon, Theodore (2012). "On the History and Future Study of Personality and its Disorders." Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, vol. 8, pp. 1–19.
- PMID 12664714.
- ISBN 978-0674539280.
- ISBN 0060140399, 978-0060140397.
- S2CID 145612190.
- .
- "Henry Murray: Personology" (Chapter 5). In: Schultz, Duane P., and Sydney Ellen Schultz (2008). Cengage Learning (2008). pp. 181–203.
- Triplet, R G (1992), "Henry A. Murray: The Making of a Psychologist?", PMID 1567091
External links
- Henry A. Murray at Neurotree
- TAT Research at the University of Tennessee
- Sandra K. Webster: Henry Murray at Westminster College
- Biographical profile at McGraw-Hill Education